SOCAN calls on the Federal Government to stand up for Canada’s creative industries
AI is running amok when it comes to pillaging intellectual property. Material created by humans is being used to train models without regard to ownership, permission, and attribution. AI cannot innovate; it can only regurgitate using probabilistic functions.
SOCAN, Canada’s biggest performing rights organization when it comes to music, knows this. It has started a national campaign to call upon the entire music industry to urge the Federal Government to rule out “any new copyright exceptions that would permit free unauthorized use of copyright-protected works for AI training.”
I quote:
“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.
“Generative AI is reshaping the music and cultural sectors at an unprecedented pace. Every day, global streaming platforms are flooded with tens of thousands of AI-generated outputs by tools trained on copyright-protected works without consent, without credit, and without compensation. AI companies continue to scrape and use copyright protected works without transparency or accountability.
“This is having immediate and measurable consequences for Canadian music creators and publishers.”
By how much? A lot. By the end of 2028, music creators’ incomes could drop up to 24%. Would you sit back and allow a quarter of your income to disappear?
SOCAN has conducted some studies, revealing that 87% of Canadians say they want music from humans over AI. And 85% want the government to regulate AI use.
Here’s what SOCAN hopes to gain from this collective action:
- 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.
AI is a growing threat to IP and culture. It’s not going away, but it needs to be regulated.
If you want to know more and maybe join the campaign, go here. As they say, “creativity isn’t a dataset.”
