US companies hoping to make fortunes from AI want the creative product of our country to be available to them for free, or for peanuts. Words fail meLast week I went to Canberra with a group of other people who live by selling our creative work. We make the books, songs, artwork, First Nations artworks, films, music and TV shows that delight and entertain us, reveal us to ourselves as humans, and connect us as Australians.The works we make are our property. They are ours to sell. In my case, this involves licensing my books to publishers around the world, who produce and distribute them for money, 8-12% of which comes back to me as royalties. This is how copyright works. It is the law, in the same way as Torrens Title is the law for real estate property. Without copyright, no one would make anything. Why would you, if it could immediately be stolen from you? But this is what has happened. All my books have been ingested into AI computer programs without my consent and without payment. Continue reading…
