The Canadian political and business communities are unsurprisingly focused on the prospect of U.S. President Donald Trump instituting 25% tariffs on Canadian goods and services. The threat of tariffs, which could spark a retaliatory response by Canada and fuel a damaging trade war, would likely cause serious harm to the Canadian economy. But tariffs aren’t the only story arising from new Trump actions in his first day in office. Amidst the many executive orders signed on day one are several with significant implications for Canadian law, particularly Canadian digital policies such as the digital services tax, mandated streaming payments arising from Bill C-11, and mandated payments for news links due to Bill C-18. When combined the government’s decision to prorogue Parliament earlier this month, the results of years of Canadian digital laws and policies now largely fall into two groups: those that have died due to prorogation and those that are likely to die due to Donald Trump.
Search Results for "c-18" : 195
New Era and New Risks: Meta’s Content Moderation Reforms and Freedom of Expression Online
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg yesterday announced significant new changes to the company’s content moderation policies. The five-minute video is worth watching in its entirety, as it demonstrates the shifting political sands that seemingly pressured even the world’s largest social media company to pay heed. Zuckerberg said the company’s reliance on third-party fact checkers had resulted in too much censorship and vowed to return to an emphasis on freedom of expression. That means the fact checkers are gone, replaced by the Twitter (X) model of community notes. Moreover, the company is moving its content moderation team from California to Texas (a nod to claims the California-based teams were biased), increasing the amount of political content in user feeds, and pledging to work with the Trump administration to combat content regulation elsewhere, including in Europe and South America.
The Year in Review: Top Ten Posts
Last week’s Law Bytes podcast featured a look at the year in review in digital law and policy. Before wrapping up for the year, the next three posts over the holidays will highlight the most popular posts, podcast episodes, and Substacks of the past year. Today’s post starts with the top posts, which starts with a major copyright ruling involving fair dealing and digital locks. The remaining posts include four posts on the Online Harms Act and two on Bill S-210, alongside posts on the implementation of Bills C-11, C-18, and the recent decision to ban TikTok from operating in Canada.
Government Finally Splits the Online Harms Bill: Never Too Late To Do The Right Thing…Or Is It?
Justice Minister Arif Virani yesterday finally bowed to public pressure by agreeing to split Bill C-63, the Online Harms bill. The move brings to an end the ill-conceived attempt to wedge together Internet platform responsibility with Criminal Code provisions and the potential weaponization of the Canada Human Rights Act that had rightly sparked concerns from a wide range of groups. I wrote about the need to drop those provisions two days after the bill was introduced last February. By the time the fall had rolled around, it was hard to find anyone who supported the bill in its current form.
Canadian Media Companies Target OpenAI in Copyright Lawsuit But Weak Claims Suggest Settlement the Real Goal
Canada’s largest media companies, including the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Postmedia, CBC, and Canadian Press, came together last week to file a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI, the owners of ChatGPT. The lawsuit is the first high profile Canadian claim lodged against the enormously popular AI service, though there have been similar suits filed elsewhere, notably including a New York Times lawsuit launched last year. While the lawsuit itself isn’t a huge surprise, the relatively weak, narrow scope of the claims discussed below are. Unlike comparable lawsuits, the Canadian media companies claim is largely limited to data scraping, which may be the weakest copyright claim. Moreover, the companies say they have no actual knowledge of when, where, or how their data was accessed, an acknowledgement that doesn’t inspire confidence when there is evidence available if you know where to look.
So why file this lawsuit? The claim is sprinkled with the most obvious reason: the Canadian media companies want a settlement that involves OpenAI paying licence fees for the inclusion of their content in its large language models and the lawsuit is designed to kickstart negotiations. The companies aren’t hiding the ball as there are repeated references along the lines of “at all times, Open AI was and is well aware of its obligations to obtain a valid licence to use the Works. It has already entered into licensing agreements with several content creators, including other news media organizations.” The takeaway is that Canadian media companies want to licence their stuff too, much like the licensing agreements with global media companies such as News Corp, Financial Times, Hearst, Axel Springer, Le Monde, and the Associated Press.
Recent Posts
Canada’s DST Debacle a Case Study of Digital Strategy Trouble 
Canadian Government Caves on Digital Services Tax After Years of Dismissing the Risks of Trade Retaliation 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 238: David Fraser on Why Bill C-2’s Lawful Access Powers May Put Canadians’ Digital Security At Risk 
Ignoring the Warning Signs: Why Did the Canadian Government Dismiss the Trade Risks of a Digital Services Tax? 
Why Bill C-2 Faces a Likely Constitutional Challenge By Placing Solicitor-Client Privilege at Risk
