Evidence of meeting #130 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was games.
A video is available from Parliament.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Entertainment Software Association of Canada
I don't have a particular policy on the streaming of games when it comes to simply playing the games. That's outside the scope of what I do.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
We've also heard from the music industry that they would like sound recordings used for movies or TV shows to require repeat broadcasting royalties. Obviously, some of the games that are created by many of your members are akin to almost a movie-like production. Do you know how that would affect the video game industry, and would your association oppose such a move?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Entertainment Software Association of Canada
The issue was...?
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
It is the soundtrack recordings, because we do have musicians and people who create sounds. When these are included into a work, they are seeking further royalty every time it's rebroadcast and the sound is used.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Entertainment Software Association of Canada
Every company that licenses music for a game or creates music for a game would license that through a management or a collective or something. They would pay for that up front, typically. But with respect to—and I don't know if you're referring to the making available right, which is with respect to an issue that's currently ongoing before the Copyright Board.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Yes, there's an exemption for sound recording, but it sounds to me as if there's an established practice in your industry of people being paid for the use of work.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Entertainment Software Association of Canada
Absolutely.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Again, some artists are asking for there to be a continual stream of income from the repeated use of sound recordings.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Entertainment Software Association of Canada
Okay. The only one that I'm aware of is the current issue that's in front of the Copyright Board with respect to the making available right.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
In regard to the machine learning, I'm just going to throw this out to Element AI. Obviously, it sounds as if there is an unlevel playing field with Japan and the United States for the certainty that you're asking for.
We also have another group that's made a briefing available to this committee called the Canadian Legal Information Institute, which talks about the Crown copyright provision, section 12. They say that there needs to be further clarification on the use of Crown materials, for example, a government bill, a debate in Parliament and whatnot, because they can't use chat boxes to explain newer requirements or regulations or whatnot. Is this along the same lines of what you're saying, that there's not sufficient certainty for the use of machine learning, but would you also believe there needs to be certainty on the use of Crown copyright?
Legal Advisor, Element AI
I definitely believe that additional clarity can be reached under Crown copyright as well. It ties back into open data initiatives as well. If you look at licence terms that are offered by the government under open data licences, the aim is to make these things available without restriction. That isn't completely harmonized across different levels of government. Even within different datasets, different information made available by government under Crown copyright, additional clarity there definitely would be most helpful.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Okay. I really wonder what the AIs would learn, though, listening to all of our debates.
Liberal
Rémi Massé Liberal Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here.
I'll start with the gaming association. I think that people just think about it in terms of console gaming, but the reality is that it's a serious development with regard to everything from advertising and issues related to training and sport. South Korea, for example, has a minister of gaming. That's really where it's headed or it's already there.
You've used innovation in many respects to block some of the piracy that's taking place. The quandary, for example, with the new Spiderman, is that you can play individually and offline, but to get the full game experience that you want out of the purchase, you need to go online. That requires higher broadband speed and so forth. Can you at least provide some information on how you came about looking at a technological solution to combat piracy versus that of others who have come before the committee? They've basically asked for more enforcement.
I would point to Windsor where we used to have a lot of piracy with regard to DirecTV, for example. It was so easy to get this American channel system. Then they introduced some new measures that eliminated it.
Could you provide a little more information on what the industry has done to invest in combatting piracy with regard to innovation?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Entertainment Software Association of Canada
As I said in my opening remarks, similar to ITAC, we feel that the Copyright Act is working. We're not looking for many changes. What we are looking for is to ensure that technological protection measures and the circumvention clauses within the Copyright Act remain through any review. As you say, the technological innovation that is happening in our industry to block those who would pirate our games has been one of the reasons that we've been able to continue to grow.
TPMs could be anything from a password that would allow you to enter. It can be that simple. It can be as complicated as hardware in a console that makes copy discs unreadable—like headers on software that would identify what is an authentic copy versus an inauthentic copy. Quite frankly, in Canada we've been fortunate enough that our industry was at the centre of a Federal Court battle where Nintendo used the new law to challenge the clauses and the TPMs. They were successful in getting damages and remedies against a company that was selling what we call modchips that essentially allowed people to play copied games, and also do a number of other things to the console that it was not manufactured to do.
Quite frankly, as Mr. Troncoso said, copyright is really there to ensure that creators have an incentive to continue to make new products. For us, TPMs are one of the number one ways that we protect the creative works that we put out in order to make revenues so that we can continue to make products.
Liberal
Rémi Massé Liberal Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
This is not for this discussion here, but I also have some concerns with regard to loot boxes and so forth.
There are certainly a lot of positive elements in terms of transferable technology. There are lot of exciting things happening in the industry.
I used to be a board director for the CNIB, as an employment specialist when I had a real job. I used to do job accommodation including voice software and recognition. I want to make sure I understand this correctly. Are you looking to purchase one time the images and materials that have been out there, and then allow them to adapt to the technology that you're driving? I'm trying to get a full understanding and appreciation—
Director, Policy, BSA The Software Alliance
I think there are an infinite number of AI possibilities and different use cases. As a general matter, we would advocate for a copyright exception that says if you have access to a work, you should be able to use a computer to analyze that work, compare it to other works and look for correlations and patterns, which can then be used to develop an AI model for future things. In your case, this would mean voice recognition. What you might need is a sort of large corpus of recorded speaking. In addition, you might also need transcripts of those recordings.
You would then train an AI system based on.... It would be a very large corpus with hundreds of thousands of hours of voice recordings and then the transcripts to create a model, so that the AI system looks for the patterns, matches the voice to the transcript, and can do it again in the future when it hears a new speech.
Liberal
Rémi Massé Liberal Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
Once your model is developed, I guess you would be concerned about having to pay a fee every time it's in play, as opposed to—
Director, Policy, BSA The Software Alliance
Yes, I think that would be the concern. I think right now there's a bit of a legal grey area where a lot of this research is happening. The potential of AI is so great—it's so lucrative and it's going to be helpful to virtually every industry—that at the moment, companies' tolerance for risk may be a bit higher. I think if there were to be an adverse court decision that says, in fact, all of this is infringing, it would have really adverse impacts on Canada's investment in AI.
Liberal
Liberal
