Michael GeistOpinion

Denial, Hate, and Silence: The Three Responses to Overwhelming Evidence of Canada’s Campus Antisemitism Crisis

One week ago, the release of the Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE) report provided the most comprehensive ...
Michael Geist

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 278: Ben Waldman on Gander Social and the Challenges of Building a Sovereign Social Network

Sovereignty, whether digital sovereignty, data sovereignty, or AI sovereignty, has been the hot-button issue in Canada for months. Governments have shifted policies in hopes of addressing the issue, ...
Michael Geist

Canada’s Campus Antisemitism Crisis: National Survey Finds Antisemitism Nearly Everywhere and University Responses Nowhere

For the better part of two years, I have written about antisemitism on Canadian university campuses from the vantage point of personal experience: a post I never thought I would need to write on the ...
Opinion
Michael GeistOpinion

Why the Answers to Hateful Content Online are Hiding in the Platforms’ Own Rules

The Canadian government has a two-pronged legal strategy to counter rising hate: New Criminal Code provisions to address offline harms, such as intimidation or protests outside schools and places of ...
Michael Geist

From CCH to ChatGPT: How Canadian Copyright Law Played the Key Role in Deciding a Leading AI Training Data Case in India

The Delhi High Court has released what may be one of the most consequential copyright decisions yet on artificial intelligence, ruling in ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. OpenAI that OpenAI’s use of copyrighted ...
Michael Geist

Starting Over: Court Filing Confirms the CRTC’s Streamer Contribution Decisions Are Dead With a Full Online Streaming Act Reset to Come

When the government announced plans last month to kill the CRTC’s Online Streaming Act ruling, it left a critical question unanswered: was the target only the Commission’s decision to increase ...
Michael Geist

A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: The Trouble With Canada’s Quiet Decision to Sign the UN Cybercrime Convention

Last week, the government announced that Canada has signed the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime, with Ministers Anita Anand, Gary Anandasangaree and Sean Fraser touting the treaty’s child ...
Michael Geist

Outdated Data and Dubious Comparisons: Digging into the Government’s AI Strategy Adoption Claims

The government’s national AI strategy is largely framed around the notion that Canada has an AI adoption problem. At the launch last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney said that “only 12% of Canadian ...
Michael Geist

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 275: David Loukidelis on Why Stripping Privacy Enforcement from Canada’s Privacy Commissioner in Bill C-36 is Unnecessarily Risky Policy

The government’s privacy reform bill was supposed to earn applause for its effort to modernize outdated rules and provide Canadians with stronger privacy ...
Michael Geist

Improv Policy: The Government Doesn’t Know What To Do About Its Online Streaming Act Mess

Earlier this month, the government shocked the culture sector by announcing it was effectively reversing the CRTC decision that implemented the Online Streaming Act. Culture Minister Marc Miller tried ...
Michael Geist

Soft Ban or Hard Verification Requirement?: Why Bill C-34’s Social Media Ban Exemption Gets the Incentives Wrong and Comes Too Late to Matter

The debate over Bill C-34’s social media ban for those under sixteen has largely focused on the impact on users, including mandated age verification for millions, the privacy risks of verification ...
Michael Geist

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Bill C-36 Modernizes Canada’s Privacy Law, Then Delays It to 2030

Canada’s private sector privacy law is more than 25 years old and there is broad consensus that a modernization is long overdue. Bill C-36, tabled on Monday, is the government’s third attempt at ...