9 ms·

> Why don't we just make Google give every news org a few million a year then? That sounds sensible enough to me. As an example, Canada taxed blank CDs and CDR

> Why don't we just make Google give every news org a few million a year then? That sounds sensible enough to me. As an example, Canada taxed blank CDs and CDR drives and distributed the revenue to their music industry.

cronix 8y ago
Interesting, I hadn't heard of that. They assume people only store audio on cds? So individuals/companies that were storing data on cd's were supporting the music industry?
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  https://torrentfreak.com/canada-increases-music-industry-subsidy-on-blank-cds-081213/ https://torrentfreak.com/canada-increases-music-industry-sub... I'm not Canadian so I don't know the details, but it doesn't seem like a terrible model to me.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Isn't this the same as the link tax? Except that the link tax clearly assigns the money to the news outlets who are actually producing the news people are reading on Google, whereas "every news org" is hard to quantify and discerning who should receive how much funding is a complicated question otherwise? Is it possible people are opposed to the link tax not because of what it does, but the marketing they've been exposed to characterizing it as bad? Even the description "link tax" is oddly loaded, as "snippet tax" would be far more accurate, to that it applies to lifted content, not "literally the URL".
stale2002 8y ago
Instead of that, why not just put a tax on oil companies and have them pay the media companies? I mean, we've already thrown out all pretexts of supplier/consumer relationship. Why not just have the tax be on oil companies instead?
vorpalhex 8y ago
I suppose my sarcasm wasn't indicated well enough. Google doesn't have any special duty to fund the news, anymore than Zuckerberg does personally, or George Soros, or any other financier. You can't just go around and demand someone pays for something you think is important.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  The issue is that Google is, in fact, scraping news content and delivering it to users while cutting the creators of that news out of the revenue. Google doesn't have a "special duty" to fund the news, it has an obligation to pay for what it's taking, usually without permission to do so.
scarejunba 8y ago
This sounds fantastic. I think I could set up a ‘news org’ for the free government revenue pretty easily.

cronix 8y ago

Interesting, I hadn't heard of that. They assume people only store audio on cds? So individuals/companies that were storing data on cd's were supporting the music industry?

ForHackernews 8y ago
https://torrentfreak.com/canada-increases-music-industry-subsidy-on-blank-cds-081213/ https://torrentfreak.com/canada-increases-music-industry-sub... I'm not Canadian so I don't know the details, but it doesn't seem like a terrible model to me.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Isn't this the same as the link tax? Except that the link tax clearly assigns the money to the news outlets who are actually producing the news people are reading on Google, whereas "every news org" is hard to quantify and discerning who should receive how much funding is a complicated question otherwise? Is it possible people are opposed to the link tax not because of what it does, but the marketing they've been exposed to characterizing it as bad? Even the description "link tax" is oddly loaded, as "snippet tax" would be far more accurate, to that it applies to lifted content, not "literally the URL".

stale2002 8y ago

Instead of that, why not just put a tax on oil companies and have them pay the media companies? I mean, we've already thrown out all pretexts of supplier/consumer relationship. Why not just have the tax be on oil companies instead?

vorpalhex 8y ago

I suppose my sarcasm wasn't indicated well enough. Google doesn't have any special duty to fund the news, anymore than Zuckerberg does personally, or George Soros, or any other financier. You can't just go around and demand someone pays for something you think is important.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
The issue is that Google is, in fact, scraping news content and delivering it to users while cutting the creators of that news out of the revenue. Google doesn't have a "special duty" to fund the news, it has an obligation to pay for what it's taking, usually without permission to do so.

scarejunba 8y ago

This sounds fantastic. I think I could set up a ‘news org’ for the free government revenue pretty easily.