Grand theft Australia

Oct 08, 2025

Welcome to a midweek update from Unmade. Today: News Corp boss Michael Miller takes the fight to the AI thieves; and on the Unmade Index, Vinyl Group (sort of) updates the market.

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The Big Steal, redux

July 1, 2009 was an exciting day in the Mumbrella newsroom.

I started receiving messages on my Blackberry (yes, it was that long ago) that News Ltd CEO John Hartigan had given a speech at the Australian Press Club about the state of journalism - and he’d dropped in a couple of unflattering references to the likes of Mumbrella and Crikey. For a masthead that was just eight months old at the time, even to be criticised by Big Harto felt like a form of validation.

Some 16 years on, there was an echo today. News Corp Australasia’s executive chairman Michael Miller also gave a speech on the state of journalism, this time to the Melbourne Press Club. And validatingly (if that is indeed an adverb) he referenced a piece I wrote here on Unmade about the unprecedented market failure being experienced within the Australian media industry.

Miller: News closures are ‘devastating’ to communities

You can still read Hartigan’s speech on Mumbrella. And Miller’s full speech is now available on Mumbrella too.

Hartigan’s speech came at a time before News Corp had launched digital paywalls but after the disruption had begun. Rereading it today, it’s an interesting artefact from another time. In hindsight, Hartigan looked towards the wrong enemy, railing against the bloggers and aggregators. He made only one, passing reference to Google. He refused to accept that the business of news was in trouble.

Since then the baton passed from Hartigan to Kim Williams to Julian Clarke to Peter Tonagh, and now to Miller. And News Ltd became News Corp.

Today’s speech from Miller offered a far more realistic diagnosis of the coming threats to the business model of news - and what that risks for society - particularly with the arriving wave of AI disruption and attempts to weaken Australia’s copyright laws.

By coincidence, Miller’s speech came the same day Google turned on AI Mode for search in Australia. Zero-click draws ever closer as Google serves up more and more information directly on its own page, without sending traffic to the publishers it has lifted it from.

The most pressing subject of Miller’s speech was the push to weaken Australia’s copyright laws to create a specific exemption for AI companies to freely mine content. Grand Theft Australia, as Miller put it.

I’d assumed that Australian Tech Council chair Scott Farquhar had made such a bad job of prosecuting the case that the copyright push had died. Even more so after Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young last week ripped into the consultative failings of the Productivity Commission before it published its thought bubble.

However, Miller still appears to be treating the proposal as a live danger. Perhaps that’s wise. OpenAI’s approach to the newly launched video builder Sora 2 is that if you don’t want to give it permission to take your Intellectual property, you have to opt out. That’s not how copyright law works. But OpenAI is big enough to drag out any legal fight for years.

Miller also swung at the platforms again: “Social media does nothing more than tear and fray the social fabric. They are the true monster at our gates.”

The part that landed most strongly from Miller was the reality of what is already happening to news:

“According to the Public Interest Journalism Initiative 161 news outlets closed their doors in the five years to March last year.
“That’s three times more closures than in the decade to 2018.
“I would describe every one of those closures as devastating. Not only at an industry level but at a community level.
Because that’s thousands of local stories no longer being told. Dozens of local councils no longer being held to account. Reduced celebrations of local achievements and culture.”

That’s the real point. We don’t know what we’re missing from the stories untold.

Fail

Tim Burrowes

May 27

Read full story

AI's copyright capture cheerleader Scott Farquhar melts under the studio lights

Tim Burrowes

Aug 13

Read full story

Vinyl Group shares rise after it tells ASX it is “on track”

Shares in Vinyl Group rose slightly today after the music platforms and publishing company issued what it labelled as a price sensitive announcement which said that the company “remains on track for its December quarter forecast”.

CEO Josh Simons has previously told the market that he aims to take the company to breakeven by the end of the year. But the company has not actually previously published a forecast for its December quarter, which began last week. The company did not respond to a request for clarification on what forecast it was referring to.

Vinyl Group dedicated most of today’s announcement to the performance of its newly acquired events production company Funkified, which it bought in December. It said Funkified had picked up two new contracts for events around the Ashes Test Cricket and for an automotive company.

Vinyl said that Funkified’s revenues for the FY24 year were $4m. It did not disclose Funkified’s revenues in FY25, which ended three months ago, but said that in FY26, it expected Funkified to reach revenues of $4.5m.

Vinyl Group shares rose by 1.1% today to a market capitalisation of $120m.