COUNTRY Press Australia (CPA) has welcomed the Federal Government’s decision to rule out a copyright exemption for AI companies, but said urgent action is needed to enforce copyright laws and stop AI platforms from stealing regional journalism.
CPA President Damian Morgan said the damage to regional journalism is no longer hypothetical or distant, it is already occurring.
“AI companies think they are above the law. They are harvesting local news stories, paraphrasing them, and delivering them back to users as answers rather than links,” said Mr Morgan. “The public still consumes the journalism, but they never reach the publisher, never subscribe, and never see a local advertiser. The reporting is ours, but the commercial benefit is captured by offshore technology companies.”
He added that many regional publishers now operate metered or hybrid paywalls to fund journalism, but AI scraping routinely bypasses those protections, further threatening the economic base needed to keep local journalists employed.
“The problem is not only training data. These platforms are now replacing the publisher in real time. They extract our reporting, convert it into their own output, and keep the audience. That removes the economic base needed to keep journalists employed in regional Australia.”
Mr Morgan said the policy failure that occurred when Meta walked away from funding news must not be allowed to repeat itself in the AI era.
“Google has remained engaged with the industry, but Meta walked away from, while still benefitting from Australian journalism,” said Mr Morgan. “We cannot go through a second cycle where big tech uses regional reporting to drive engagement but refuses to fund the journalism that makes it possible.
“If AI companies want to use Australian news, they must license it and pay for it.”
CPA is calling for a national framework that ensures licensing covers both training and output; that regional publishers are explicitly included alongside larger media companies; and that there is low-cost, fast enforcement pathway for small publishers who cannot afford lengthy litigation.
“Regional journalism is not simply a commercial product. It is public infrastructure in democratic life. If scraping continues unchecked, local reporting will disappear not because communities don’t value it, but because AI has siphoned away the audience and revenue that sustains it. Once a regional newsroom closes, there is no replacing it,” warned Mr Morgan.
He said the government had taken the correc first step by rejecting a copyright carve-out for AI, but the next stage – licensing and enforcement – will determine whether regional publishing can remain viable.
“Australia solved this problem once through the News Media Bargaining Code. We need the AI equivalent before the harm becomes irreversible,” he said.
