The Government of Canada launched a public Consultation paper on a modern copyright framework for artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). The Consultation, launched on July 16, aims at ensuring that the Copyright Modernization Act (‘The Act’) adequately addresses the disruptions and challenges brought about by these new and fast evolving technologies.
The Government is looking for technical and views on the challenges related to AI and IoT.
The issues related to AI include the following:
Absence of an agreed definition of AI that poses challenges for copyright policymaking. The paper points out the divergence of definition between the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). The Government acknowledges that differences between general AI, narrow AI, deep learning, algorithmic methods that do not necessarily involve AI, and automation and computation in general should be taken into account in Copyright policy.
An exception to Text and data mining (TDM) to address the burden caused by the obtention of any necessary authorisation from the right holders to make reproductions for all works used in TDM activity. TDM refers to various techniques of informational analysis, including the computer-based, automated process of analysing large amounts of machine-readable information to identify trends, patterns, and relationships, and to make predictions TDM can be used to train and develop AI applications. The Government outlined the benefit of TDM in health care and legal services.
Authorship and ownership of AI-generated work or AI-assisted work. The Government is seeking comment on 3 proposed approached to help clarify this issue, namely
- Attribute authorship of AI-generated works to the person who arranged for the work to be created, similar to the UK’s copyright framework;
- Clarify that copyright and authorship apply only to works generated by humans, or that no copyright may subsist in a work created without a human participating in some shape or form in the creation of the work
- Create a new and unique set of rights for AI-generated works.
Infringement and liability regarding AI. The Government is seeking for additional evidence to determine to what extent the copyright framework should be clarified with respect to infringement and liability by AI applications and AI-generated or AI-assisted works.
The issues related to IoT include:
Repair: Consumers and businesses pursuing circumvention activities for repair purposes that are not covered by the existing technological protection measures (TPM) exceptions, can be in violation of one or more of the TPM prohibitions in the Copyright Modernization Act. The Government is proposing two broad approaches to introduce a new TPM exception for repair
- Introduce a specific legislative exception to the prohibitions regarding TPMs for the purpose of repair, or
- Exercise the regulatory authorities under the Act to create a regulatory TPM exception for the purpose of repair.
Interoperability: The Government acknowledges that although the Act contains the TPM exception for interoperability of computer programs, it might not provide enough protection to business and insufficient freedom to operate and to innovate. The Government is thus seeking for stakeholders feedback on the challenges they are having with the copyright framework in achieving interoperability.
The Consultation paper also incorporates approaches taken by other jurisdictions
Interested stakeholders must provide their technical evidence and views by e-mail to copyright-consultation-droitdauteur@canada.ca. and by September 17.