Canada Targets AI Copyright Rules While Weighing Social Media Age Restrictions — Web Summit - Deadline

Ah, Canada — the nation that brought us poutine, politeness, and now, the most cautious AI copyright rules this side of a parliamentary subcommittee. The government is preparing new rules on compensating copyright holders when their work is used by AI systems, and also weighing age restrictions on social media. Because nothing says 'bold tech leadership' like a two-pronged approach that simultaneously irritates every AI lab and every teenager with a TikTok account.

Let's be honest: compensating copyright holders sounds lovely in theory, but we all know how this goes. The music industry spent years suing Napster only to end up with Spotify paying fractions of pennies per stream. The Canadian government will likely conjure a complex royalty framework that satisfies nobody, while AI companies just use data from jurisdictions with weaker laws. And the age restrictions? A noble gesture, but enforced with the same enthusiasm as Canada's online streaming regulations — lots of press releases, minimal actual impact.

Meanwhile, frontier models keep stealing copyrighted works with impunity, and Canada's solution is to set up a working group to study the issue 'in the context of a digital economy.' Bold. Truly. The rest of the world will race ahead, and Canada will be left with a beautifully drafted policy paper that future historians will cite as 'the moment we overthought ourselves into irrelevance.' But hey, at least the AI companies will have to send cheques to authors — cheques that will bounce because the authors will all be replaced by AI writers by then.