Post Tagged with: "fair use"

SADTU National, Copyright Bill Protest, https://twitter.com/SadtuNational/status/1231905922806620160?s=20

The LawBytes Podcast, Episode 59: “It’s a Racist Policy” – Ben Cashdan on the U.S. Effort to Derail South Africa’s Copyright Reform

South Africa spent years embroiled in a high profile effort to update its copyright law responding to concerns from creators, the education community, and the visually impaired that the longstanding laws did not serve the national interest and were harming creativity and access to knowledge. Its Parliament ultimately passed progressive reforms in 2019, but the bill languished on the desk of President Cyril Ramaphosa, who faced enormous trade pressures from the United States and European Union to not sign the bill and stop it from becoming law. Last month, he seemingly caved to the pressure, citing constitutional concerns in sending it back to the Parliament.

Ben Cashdan is a South African documentary film maker and television producer who was active during the copyright reform process. He worked with Recreate ZA, which brought together a broad coalition of creatives, to advocate for both the interests of owning copyright in their own works, and in fairly using copyrighted materials in the creation of new works He joins me on the podcast this week to discuss the decade-long reform process, the external pressures, and explains why he thinks those pressures should be viewed as racist policies.

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July 13, 2020 1 comment Podcasts
Screenshot from Wikipedia’s #FairCopyrightOz campaign, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/2017/05/23/wikipedia-says-time-fair-use-australia/

My ADA Keynote: What the Canadian Experience Teaches About the Future of Copyright Reform

In late March of this year, I travelled to Canberra, Australia to deliver a keynote address at the Australian Digital Alliance’s 2019 Copyright Forum. The ADA is a leading voice on copyright issues in Australia and its annual Copyright Forum brings together government, creators, education, libraries, and the broader public to explore copyright issues. This year’s event included innovative film makers, the President of the Australian Society of Authors, European Parliament MEP Julia Reda, as well as leading academics, trade negotiators, government policy experts, and many others.

My talk focused on the Canadian copyright experience, using real data to dispel the misleading claims about the impact of Canada’s 2012 reforms. A video of the keynote has been posted to YouTube and is embedded below.

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April 17, 2019 1 comment News
ISED Superclusters

How Canadian Copyright Reform Could Support the Government’s Supercluster Investment

The release of Budget 2019 yesterday again placed the government’s innovation strategy in the spotlight as the government emphasized its significant spending record, including $950 million for the superclusters, $4 billion for science research, $795 million in 31 strategic innovation fund agreements and $2.3 billion for clean technology support. The investments were highlighted in a recently released an innovation scorecard, Building a Nation of Innovators, which takes stock of the government’s efforts over the past three years. My new CIGI policy brief argues that while the benefits from this spending will take years to realize, increased investments in strategic sectors are the easy part of innovation policy.

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March 20, 2019 3 comments Columns
Toronto Lab to Help Lead Global AI Research & Development; Joins UK, and Russia as Part of a Network of Global AI Centres by Samsung Newsroom (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/27wrmYy

Want to Keep Canadian AI Thriving?: Create a Copyright Exception for Informational Analysis

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met earlier this week with Jean-Francois Gagné, the CEO of Element AI, the Montreal-based applied artificial intelligence lab. Trudeau tweeted that the two men “talked about what Canadians are doing in AI in Montreal & across the country, and how we can keep the industry thriving.”

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October 18, 2018 3 comments News
Translations by Quinn Dombrowski (CC BY-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/8CUAGo

Why Copyright Law Poses a Barrier to Canada’s Artificial Intelligence Ambitions

The federal government placed a big bet in this year’s budget on Canada becoming a world leader in artificial intelligence (AI), investing millions of dollars on a national strategy to support research and commercialization. The hope is that by attracting high-profile talent and significant corporate support, the government can turn a strong AI research record into an economic powerhouse.

Funding and personnel have been the top policy priorities, yet other barriers to success remain. For example, Canada’s restrictive copyright rules may hamper the ability of companies and researchers to test and ultimately bring new AI services to market.

What does copyright have to do with AI?

My Globe and Mail column notes that making machines smart – whether engaging in automated translation, big data analytics, or new search capabilities – is dependent upon the data being fed into the system. Machines learn by scanning, reading, listening or viewing human created works. The better the inputs, the better the output and the reduced likelihood that results may be biased or inaccurate.

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May 18, 2017 2 comments Columns