No.
Evidence of meeting #110 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was copyright.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #110 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was copyright.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Noon
Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions
Noon
Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
I don't mean to be a stickler, but there was a public AI consultation in which most of the industry said they were not ready to talk about AI.
Noon
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Almost every witness we've had here over the last few months was not consulted beforehand.
The minister made a big deal about consulting with 300 groups after the bill was tabled. I just looked through that list, and only one of you has been consulted, according to the list that was tabled with this committee. Is that correct?
Since then, have you met with the minister and been consulted on this bill?
Noon
National Executive Director, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists
No.
Noon
Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions
No, you're correct.
Noon
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Music Canada is the only name I see on the list, so it's not surprising to me that he got this part of the bill so wrong when he didn't talk to the groups most involved.
When I buy a book or a company buys a book, or when I buy a ticket to a performance or download a song, post-Napster, I pay to use it for my personal use or for that particular thing within the company. If a university wants to photocopy part of a textbook, it has to pay for copyright because it is using that for commercial purposes. Is that right? It is paying for that right.
Have any of you, or any of your organizations, been paid for any work of your members, artists and writers that's been used by OpenAI, ChatGPT, Microsoft or AWS? Have any of you been paid for any of that work so far?
Noon
National Executive Director, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists
Not that we're aware of, but we wouldn't know, because we don't know whom they've used and what images they've stolen.
Noon
Director of Legal Affairs, Association nationale des éditeurs de livres
As far as I know, that's not the case.
Noon
Executive Director, Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions
As far as I know, that's not the case either.
Noon
National Executive Director, Directors Guild of Canada
No. We haven't been able to identify them.
Noon
Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
Obviously, in the music industry space we've been through this path once before, so we have made major efforts to license music in the best ways we can, but in many of the ways you've listed off, those would not be licensed yet.
Noon
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Copyright law applies, but they're not paying for that. They're obviously building their large language models on the work of artists, writers, performers, musicians—artists of any kind—but you haven't been paid, and they're making money off what you're doing.
Is what you're saying here that the Copyright Act isn't good enough and that this needs to have specific provisions that a large language model needs to abide by for any input that is used to develop it? They need to pay, just as I do. If I buy a book or go to a performance, I have to pay for the right to see that or read it. Are you asking for that in this bill?
Noon
National Executive Director, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists
First of all, actors need to be given moral rights in the Copyright Act. We do not have that.
Second, we need to be able to give consent if they want to use our image. We need to have control over the way it's utilized, and we should be compensated for it.
All of those need to be taken care of.
Noon
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Mr. Rogers, I see that you have your hand up.
February 12th, 2024 / noon
Chief Executive Officer, Music Canada
Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on that.
You can go about it either way. Either you can say that there are no exceptions for AI, that AI is like everything else, and you can do it in a bill like Bill C-27 and go back and reference the Copyright Act, or you can make the change in the Copyright Act and say that this is the case.
We didn't create copyright for the printing press. We created copyright for Dickens and the recognition that the work was worth more than what you paid for it right away, and we extended term of copyright for sound recordings because people were starting to live to the point at which they could hear their song on the radio and not get paid, so we made that change.
If we say that we know they're scraping our stuff, and we know that's a use—it's of value—we can just agree now that that's the case and get out of those sorts of fun academic conversations about “I don't know. Is it a copy?” I know it's a copy. I know they're taking it because our stuff is a thing of value.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you.
We've had some discussion on deepfakes and intimate partner images.
Do you believe this bill should make it a criminal offence to do a deepfake or intimate partner image?
I'll start with ACTRA.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
12:05 p.m.
National Executive Director, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists
As we said, this is going to be multi-faceted. Yes, the Criminal Code should impact and be able to deal with egregious situations of stealing people's images and embedding them in graphic porn. You know, anything that....
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
12:05 p.m.
National Executive Director, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists
That's correct.
