Borghino was asked to speak about the current global impact of the BigTech platforms on publishing. He spoke of the clashing business models of publishing and the platforms, how that clash has manifested in the recent past in Europe, Africa and North America, and he detailed how BigTech’s influence can be discerned in IPA’s current copyright battles in Canada, South Africa, Namibia and New Zealand. Borghino affirmed the IPA’s unwavering commitment to promoting and protecting Copyright in the face of well-funded global campaigns to try and undermine it. He contrasted publishers’ staunch commitment to the quality, accuracy and responsibility of their content, to the platforms’ indifference to such issues and their unbridled pursuit of clicks and profit through free, unverified and often misleading information. Borghino said, however, that there were signs that we may have reached ‘Peak Platform’.

Others speaking at the Roundup were copyright lawyer Carlo Scollo Lavizzari, who spoke about so-called ‘Controlled Digital Lending’; and Asma Faizi, General Counsel for Canadian CMO Access Copyright, who gave an overview of Canadian copyright law since the infamous 2012 changes which have crippled Canadian educational publishing and made Canada an outlier in global publishing.