Statutory licences for education and government and AI-related activities

Copyright Agency manages statutory licence schemes for the education sector and the government sector.

These schemes allow activities related to AI in Australia. Here is a summary.

Who What Does not apply if Examples
People working in education institutions Any reproduction or communication for educational purposes
  • reproduction or communication outside education institution environment
  • use for something other than educational purposes
  • reproduction sold or supplied for profit
  • use unreasonably prejudices rightsholders
  • a teacher includes a page from textbook in prompt for an AI tool and asks for three quiz questions for grade 5 students
  • a teacher shares with students an output from an AI tool that contains human-authored content such as a diagram from a textbook
People working in government departments and agencies (Commonwealth, State, Territory) Any use for government purposes A government legal service establishes a curated dataset of journal articles on Australian law to improve outputs from an AI tool designed to assist government lawyers to respond to requests for legal assistance from other public servants.

A statutory licence means that rightsholders cannot prevent a use, but can be entitled to fair compensation.

Copyright Agency has multi-year, fixed-price agreements for the school, university and Technical and Further Education (TAFE) sectors, negotiated with peak bodies for those sectors. Use of Generative AI tools was not occurring in these sectors when those agreements were made. Copyright Agency also has fixed-price agreements with the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments.

The use of Generative AI tools will form part of future negotiations for new agreements in the education and government sectors. We will also work with these sectors on best practices regarding AI that align with frameworks and guidelines developed by them.

November 2024

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