Mona Karimi is a 3L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. This article was written as a requirement for Prof. Pina D’Agostino’s IP Intensive Program.

If you're a fan of Hip-Hop music, you might just find your favourite artist fighting to protect themselves from their own lyrics. Jay-Z, Meek Mill, Big Sean, others have joined forces to openly endorse the . New 91��ɫ Senators Brad Holyman and Jamaal Bailey drafted the legislation to amend the state's criminal procedure law to strictly limit the admissibility of a defendant's lyrics, videos, or other creative expressions as evidence. The bill argues that musical works being admitted as evidence against artists violates their . However, the issue's racial component prompted Hoylman and Bailey to take action. The Senators reasoned that seldomly do we see lyrics from other genres utilized as evidence in criminal courtrooms, but rap lyrics and videos have been used as evidence in hundreds of cases. States like California have taken a stronger stance on this issue with Gov. Gavin Newson recently signing the Decriminalizing Artistic Expressions Act, effectively restricting the use of rap lyrics in courtrooms.

If you thought this was a foreign practice in Canada, think again. Crown in Canada have also relied upon an accused person's artistic creations, unsurprisingly in the form of rap music, to establish guilt. In the Ontario Court of Appeal’s recent decision in , the Trial Judge permitted the accused's rap music to bolster the Crown's case for first-degree murder and devised a new method for admitting this type of evidence, which suffers from some flaws. The admission of rap lyrics (disproportionately more often than other genres) feeds into racial bias and perpetuates damaging racist stereotypes. In his article, "," University of Windsor Law Professor Tanovich offers a compelling case that when rap lyrics are used in court, their cultural and artistic context is stripped away and substituted with one of apparent legal relevance, which can then be distorted to reinforce racial preconceptions. The criminal justice system in Canada has long struggled with systematic anti-Black racism, and the establishment of practices and egregious bias against certain genres of music that are typically linked to Black culture only serves to exacerbate the problem. Rap lyrics’ admissibility doesn’t just sacrifice art for a quick conviction, but arguably enables a racially discriminatory and biased practice to flourish in the legal system.

Where the Crown can use a person's artistic expression as incriminating evidence, the system risks limiting such expression and clashes with the to foster and promote the enjoyment and production of artistic works and threatens growth in the Canadian music scene both domestically and internationally. Imagine how different your favourite Drake song would be if he had to remove every potentially incriminating lyric. It will be interesting see how the judicial system's particular focus on hip-hop affects how people make music and how these competing objectives, in two different areas of the law, will reconcile.

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Mona Karimi is a 3L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. This article was written as a requirement for Prof Pina D’Agostino’s IP Intensive Program.

My internship at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (“ISED”) started long before the semester actually began. ISED works with Canadians in all sectors of the economy and across Canada to create a more favourable environment for investment, strengthen Canada's innovation capacity, boost the country's share of international commerce, and create a market that is efficient, fair, and competitive. Eighteen federal departments and agencies make up the ISED portfolio. I had the pleasure of working with the Copyright and Trademark Policy Directorate Marketplace Framework Policy Branch. A mouthful, I know, but fitting for the highly impactful work they do. The Marketplace Framework Policy Branch is mandated to develop and coordinate policies, laws and regulations concerning corporate and insolvency law, foreign investment, competition, copyright, trademarks and industrial design, patents, and data protection.

So why did I start preparing for my internship months in advance? ISED’s work can deeply impact any industry or marketplace and requires a high degree of confidentiality and security. How high? You need Secret Clearance Level II. This was not a quick criminal check, it required a lot more detail and took months. So long in fact, I did not receive my clearance until almost two months into my placement. I was a little worried for a bit there about what they might find. Of course, I had nothing to hide, but you never know!

While I can’t speak too much about my work for security reasons (I’ve always wanted to say that), I can say that my MBA my approach to policy analysis.  At the Marketplace Framework Policy Branch, I witnessed consultations with a myriad of stakeholders for drafting policies. I have come across something similar during my MBA when I was being taught Edward Freeman's Stakeholder Theory. According to the stakeholder theory, a firm's stakeholders comprise pretty much everyone who is impacted by the firm and how it operates. Although this theory refers to an organization, the same can be applied to a policy, regulation, or legislation. While, it may seem like common sense to make sure to get perspectives from impacted when drafting policies, it’s not always that simple. Identifying all the impacted groups is one task but identifying who should be consulted out of those groups is another. It prompted questions such as, ‘why should this organization speak for the entire group?’, and ‘are we consulting with all the voices represented?’.

I witnessed the collaborative nature of policy work. No one person can capture everything. On quite a few occasions, I thought I understood the reach of a legislation’s impact only to be enlightened by a question another team member posed, a question I had never even considered. It reminded me to employ the following strategies I learned from my MBA Strategy courses. When posed with a problem and/or question, we often kick-start our brains to find a solution as fast as we can. We attribute so much of being a good employee to being able to find a solution before someone else. However, we seldom pause and ask if we are asking the right questions and if the problem is stated correctly. We accept the problem as it was posed. If the problem is not stated correctly, the solutions would not address the real problem. One strategy I learned in that course was to ask, ‘what assumptions am I making and are they valid?’. You learn a lot when you challenge your own assumptions whenever you approach an issue.

That’s the beauty of diverse perspectives, they ignite deep discussions that may be missed if everyone had the same perspective. Unfortunately, much of law school is an isolated experience; but in practice, the law is extremely collaborative. Through the clinics, mooting and intensives like this one, you really get to experience the collaborative nature of legal work before embarking into that world after you graduate. If you would like to sharpen that skill and have an interest in IP, this intensive is for you!

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