With the first meeting of a UNESCO group of experts on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions in the digital environment now underway in Québec City, the Montreal-based Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (CDCE) is delivering its preliminary recommendations that stem from a day-long conference held Monday prior to the start of the three-day UNESCO meeting.
During the May 27 conference, speakers from cultural, academic and legal sectors addressed the UNESCO group of 18 international experts, as well as senior UNESCO officials and several ministers from Canada and the government of Quebec.
The CDCE, which represents more than 350,000 creators and over 3,000 cultural enterprises in Canada, is calling on the group of experts to consider the CDCE’s recommendations when making their own recommendations for UNESCO and the parties who ratified the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
“The 2005 Convention is an international instrument that has the potential to help all states act effectively in the digital environment: its implementation needs to be updated, and bold and innovative public policies need to be adopted! We look forward to learning about the experts’ recommendations,” CDCE co-chair Hélène Messier said in a statement Wednesday.
“I would like to commend the leadership of Canada and the government of Quebec, who have been the vanguard in the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions since the very beginning — a position they have just reaffirmed by hosting the first meeting of this experts group. We are proud to have been able to contribute to their work,” CDCE co-chair Bill Skolnik said.
Among the CDCE’s recommendations are the following: exclude activities, goods and services from trade agreements through the inclusion of a general cultural exemption in all international trade agreements; include representatives of governments and civil society from cultural sectors in all multilateral bodies impacting the diversity of cultural expressions; and provide adequate support for the operation of the international network that brings together coalitions for cultural diversity (the International Federation of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity) to promote collaboration and amplify the action of cultural sectors.
The CDCE also recommends the adoption of national cultural policies that protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions, including: laws requiring the implementation of measures to enable the recommendation and discovery of local and national content on online platforms; copyright laws that protect human creation and are free of exceptions allowing protected works to be used to feed artificial intelligence (AI) systems without authorization, remuneration or credit; laws requiring companies operating generative AI systems to disclose the protected works used to feed these systems; laws strengthening the protection of performing artists against the proliferation of deepfakes; laws requiring transparency from companies operating AI systems when they broadcast purely AI-generated productions; and laws protecting linguistic diversity.
In addition, the CDCE recommends the stimulation of partnerships between civil society and major AI research centres to foster the development of AI for the benefit of all.
The CDCE said it will publish a detailed report by the fall, presenting the elements of the conference day and its recommendations.
