AI Advocacy

Opening remarks to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage

Introduction

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the Committee. My name is Margaret McGuffin, and I am the CEO of Music Publishers Canada. I am here to advocate for the ethical and transparent development of AI models as we all embrace the opportunity of AI.

Music publishers discover and develop Canadian songwriters and have made significant investments in the vast majority of songs and scores that are heard every day on radio, on streaming services, in video games, in film and television productions and on new emerging platforms around the world.

In the music space, AI has the potential to support the valuable work of human creators, which in turn enriches Canadian culture and society. Our members are already leveraging the benefits of this new technology and are using it in the studio and to scale their operations.

Violations of copyrighted materials 

Unfortunately, the music industry has also seen mass theft of copyright-protected songs by AI companies, both on the input side — for the purpose of training AI models — and output side — the development and publication of unlicensed generative AI models. This poses serious risks for Canada’s creators and the companies that invest in them.

Strong copyright ensures that MPC’s members and their songwriters and composers maintain control over their music and receive the fair compensation they deserve. 

When an AI company uses music that has been scraped or captured from the Internet without authorization, it prevents rights holders from controlling and realizing value for the use of their works. The development and commercialization of unlicensed AI model inputs and generative AI outputs are already creating serious market distortions and raising concerns about fair competition.

Global standards 

MPC works with the International Confederation of Music Publishers. A recent Billboard Magazine story highlights evidence collected by ICMP over the past three years showing that many of the world’s biggest tech companies have scraped copyright-protected music — created by millions of songwriters, composers, and artists — to train generative AI systems without permission or licensing. To put it in perspective, nearly every song ever written by a Canadian songwriter has already been scraped and stolen by these AI companies without consent, credit or compensation. Imagine that someone accessed your paycheck without permission and that this behaviour was normalized.

This extensive non-compliance with copyright laws in turn leads to serious negative economic impacts on creators and the companies that invest in them. Copyrighted works (our songs) add value to AI models. To derive fair value for the use of this copyrighted material, the music publishing industry routinely grants licences to technology companies. AI developers should be no different. The emerging market for licensing music to AI developers should be encouraged, including by requiring AI companies to disclose and maintain records of all their training data.

Conclusion 

In conclusion, MPC believes that the Canadian government must reject any calls for watering down a copyright system with a Text and Data Mining copyright exception. Music rights holders must be able to control, and realize value for, the use of their songs as AI training material, in accordance with current Canadian copyright law.

It is imperative that Canada approach generative AI in a manner that respects creators and incentivizes human expression. This will benefit not just creators, but Canadians as a whole. I look forward to answering any of your questions.