In his editorial of April 15, 2023, Brian Myles asks the government for a “legislative rampart to regulate these robots [conversationnels] programmed to take it all, giving nothing back to content creators. It is about the ability of media, and all artists, to enforce their intellectual property and earn a living in the next cycle of digital transformation.”
If it is necessary to worry about the excesses that artificial “intelligence” deployed by foreign companies can cause, it would still be necessary to start by solving a well-documented and identified national problem which seriously harms intellectual property.
When the Copyright Act was revised in 2012, the legislator introduced the concept of fair use in the education sector, thus conforming to a more Anglo-Saxon thought. In parliamentary committee, the representatives of higher education institutions had taken care to explain that the royalties paid to creators, among others by collective management societies, would not be reduced despite this notion of fair use. .
However, now, more than ten years later, Access Copyright has seen its royalties from the education sector drop by $190 million, sums that will therefore never reach either the publishers or the authors and authors.
In Quebec, thanks to the support of the National Assembly, royalties from the higher education sector paid to Copibec have not completely disappeared, but they have nonetheless been reduced by half. No need to specify that these losses were never compensated; this is indeed a drop in income for rights holders and an appreciable saving for educational establishments.
In their respective mandate letters, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, and the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, both received the mission to correct this inequity. The 2022 federal budget also mentioned the government’s commitment to ensuring fair compensation.
And since then, nothing. Inaction still prevails, particularly on the side of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, which is under pressure from the education sector. However, everything has been explained and demonstrated many times, during a ridiculously high number of meetings, both on the side of Copibec and Access Copyright. Hiding behind great principles of freedom and convoluted accounting, the Canadian education sector cannot bring itself to admit the truth: just as you have to pay for the meal consumed in the cafeteria of their establishments, you have to pay the works used in their classrooms.
Messrs Champagne and Rodriguez, we are expecting a strong and courageous gesture from you to finally settle this file. Your teams are ready, they are just waiting for a signal. Once this injustice has been rectified, Canada will no longer appear as the black sheep of copyright to its international partners, and then it will be time to worry about the ChatGPTs of this world.