Music rights organization SOCAN last week announced the launch of a national campaign calling on its members, the music industry and the public to urge the Canadian government to support Canada’s creative industries by ruling out any new copyright exceptions that would allow free unauthorized use of copyright-protected works for AI training.
“Canada’s creative industries contribute billions of dollars to our economy each year and support hundreds of thousands of jobs across the sector. As the Government of Canada explores policies that will shape the future of AI, it is essential that the voices of the people who power this economy remain at the centre of the discussions and the decisions that follow,” said a SOCAN press release last Thursday.
SOCAN said generative AI is reshaping the music and cultural sectors at an unprecedented pace, with global streaming platforms flooded every day with tens of thousands of AI-generated outputs by tools trained on copyright-protected works without consent, without credit and without compensation.
This is having immediate and measurable consequences for Canadian music creators and publishers, SOCAN said. “Economic assessments indicate that music creators’ incomes are projected to decline by up to 24% by 2028 due to the impact of generative AI,” SOCAN’s press release said, citing a global study commissioned by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) and conducted by PMP Strategy.
SOCAN said Canadians overwhelmingly support protections for human creativity. According to a survey conducted last fall by Pollara on behalf of SOCAN, 87 per cent of Canadians say they want to listen to music created by humans, not AI. In addition, a Leger survey last summer found 85 per cent of Canadians support government regulation of AI to ensure ethical use.
In addition to its “Say No to AI Training on Unlicensed Music” letter-writing campaign, SOCAN is also asking the federal government to adopt the following principles when developing AI policies:
- Protect human expression: Ensure that AI developers cannot use copyrighted works without explicit consent, credit and appropriate compensation to the music creators that made them.
- Require transparency from AI companies: Mandate disclosure of training data sources and establish clear obligations for documentation, reporting and accountability.
- Require clear labelling of AI-generated outputs: Music creators must know when their work has been used in AI-generated outputs, and audiences must know when the music they encounter is generated by AI. This is essential for attributing royalties, consumer awareness, industry fairness and maintaining trust.
- Protect Canada’s cultural sovereignty: Ensure that AI policy prioritizes the long-term health, competitiveness and diversity of Canadian cultural industries.
Image borrowed from SOCAN’s web campaign
