Liwah Keller and Yuan Stevens
CIPPIC, University of Ottawa
CC-BY-SA | Link

The Government of Canada asks how it can amend the Copyright Act to better accommodate AI (“artificial intelligence”) and IoT (the “Internet of Things”) technologies. The consultation document specifically inquires about authorship of AI-assisted works, liability in the context of relying on AI for production, and how technological protection measures (“TPMs”) affect the ability of users to repair IoT devices.

CIPPIC is a public interest clinic that specializes in technology law. Our goal is to advocate in the public interest for policy that promotes innovation, encourages respect for human rights, and responds to the needs of the wider public. These principles underlie the following recommendations that we offer in this submission:

  1. Refrain from introducing laws that attribute authorship to AI or determine how authorship should be assigned for AI-assisted works until there is a clear and pressing need (sections 2.2-2.3).
  2. Develop a cohesive approach to liability for infringing activities that involve the use of an AI and provide an exception or safe harbour for text and data mining (“TDM”) within certain parameters (sections 3.2-3.3).
  3. Amend the prohibition on TPM circumvention to allow circumvention for uses that do not infringe upon copyright and expand the current exceptions to the prohibition (sections 4.2-4.3).