7 ms·

Tim Berners-Lee says Australian media pay law would make internet unworkable

47 points by eddieoz 6y ago

eddieoz 6y ago
Just imagine if you create any platform where people link some post, then you need to pay to the author some royalties. Because someone else engaged in some content. Unbelievable.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402 All joking aside, if the law required payment be made to someone when users link to a post, you either build that functionality into the platform or don't build the platform. Taking the opposite of your argument, why you do you believe a platform creator is entitled to the value of a link aggregator without compensating those creating the content? Royalties are a well established compensation mechanism in the intellectual property sphere, and platforms shouldn't be allowed to free ride.
  - codegladiator 6y ago
    I would agree if the content was being copied over. But links ? What would HN look like ?
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Like it does now? With some content paywalled and some not, and perhaps some links rejected from the submission form if the link has attributes indicating a payment is required. I will concede that adaption would be required, but I disagree with the idea that this model is entirely unreasonable. When Hacker News users link to paywalled content, some of us consume it without issue because we pay those sites (Bloomberg, WSJ, Economist, etc).
      - cheph 6y ago
        No, it would not exist because ycombinator makes no revenue and can't pay anyone.
      - fatsdomino001 6y ago
        Yeah Hacker News would likely have to shut down if targeted by bills like these.
  - simonh 6y ago
    The usual model for creating awareness and providing access to a product is for the vendor of the product to pay for that service. If I have a media service such as a TV channel, Youtube channel or podcast, I charge vendors to use my channel to reach that audience. Promoting content is a valuable service, why should publishers get it for free? So congratulations, you've convinced me. I think Facebook and Google should charge Australian news sites to carry their links in their feeds. These are after all little more than adverts.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      > So congratulations, you've convinced me. I think Facebook and Google should charge Australian news sites to put their links in their feeds. These are after all little more than adverts. Anecdotally (n=1), my Australian friends have already signed up directly with email newsletters and apps of the news sources they previously would've consumed through Facebook's feed (when Facebook started blacklisting links to media websites by domain). Those news sources are going to be just fine without Facebook, and existed before Facebook was a thing.
      - simonh 6y ago
        It really is incredible to me that you think that's an actual solution. The main value Facebook and Google have to news sites isn't access from established readers, they will find the content anyway because they already know they want it. The problem is discovery and by and acquisition of new readers. That's the primary value and service social media and search platforms like facebook and google offer in this area. It's why they are primarily adverting platforms, and get most of their revenue from advertising in the first place. News organisations have been free-riding off this for years but are so desperate and entitled they want to charge their advertisers for promoting their content.
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        > It really is incredible to me that you think that's an actual solution. Likewise regarding your position. I fall firmly on the side that Big Tech should be heavily regulated, and in some cases broken up. This is simply an extension of that, shifting monetary rewards to those creating content versus platforms extracting all of the financial rewards, throwing scraps to the content (which has a real cost, versus the zero marginal cost advantage platforms have). Google and Facebook have a combined market cap of almost $2.2 trillion dollars and collectively generate over $260 billion a year in revenue. Am I supposed to feel bad for them? I pay for my news content (listed in another comment), and I think they should too (disclaimer: I am not a trillion dollar adtech platform).
  - Isinlor 6y ago
    Mozilla Corp. should sent you a bill for their content that you linked, because now you are taking a free ride.
  - kgwxd 6y ago
    App stores are link aggregators. They charge people to put a link to their own stuff in there and even take a cut of sales they make after that.
  - cheph 6y ago
    > Taking the opposite of your argument, why you do you believe a platform creator is entitled to the value of a link aggregator without compensating those creating the content? If it is not copyright infringement why would you need to pay someone?
  - pca006132 6y ago
    What is the difference between the user discovering the URL from the news organization webpage/news feed, and from Facebook/Google? What would the news organization lose from this instead of gaining more viewers?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - fatsdomino001 6y ago
    The problem isn't so much the financial cost to link aggregators, it's the regulatory burden. All this bill does is entrench the existing biggest companies in the space and prevent competition, because smaller entrants will be unable to e.g. negotiate contracts with all media providers. This is just legacy media using their quasi monopoly and regulatory capture to squash competition.
martin_drapeau 6y ago
Tim is so right. In addition, for friends and family a post on FB about my cat is just as news worthy as a NYT article. It is not for governments to decide what is news or not. Keep the web free. Avoid imposing rules and taxes. Ultimately a news organization is an internet citizen like you or me. They should not have different privileges.
- soco 6y ago
  Very true, the master's words. But do they really apply? I see the story rather like two giants trying to strong-arm each other: social media trying to have everything under their control as always (and not pay for said control), and old media habits trying to have everything under their control as always (and get paid for said control). Either way I lose, because they aren't fighting about the content per se, just about how to handle it.
  - martin_drapeau 6y ago
    I fail to see how you lose if the internet remains free. Just avoid social media if it bothers you. I really don't mind social media being so big and growing. You don't have to live on their platforms.
    - soco 6y ago
      I lose by the grip of the law - internet may stay free but I'm getting restricted in what I can do with it.
- pmlnr 6y ago
  > as news worthy as a NYT article ::insert doubt meme:: Make them write a blog post, please. If it's inside Facebook, it's useless; it can't be added to archive.org, can't be read without Facebook.
  - martin_drapeau 6y ago
    Agreed. However anyone is free to make things publicly available or not.
diego_moita 6y ago
As non-australian this debate sounds very incomprehensible to me. I understand that old media is complaining that tech is making money with their content while the authors get nothing. To me that is the equivalent of complaining that someone else is using your house because you left the door open. So what is the problem with locks, pay-walls, creating accounts or blocking links? Could it possible be the case that the old media actually wants the burglars inside?
- adrianb 6y ago
  That has been my question for years. Back in the day when I was only hearing of this thing called the Internet, people mentioned how they can read the New York Times online or another famous paper. Coming from a small town in Eastern Europe that was amazing. But I also wondered why they were able to read it for free. I wonder what made the newspapers post their content online for free - probably because the internet was a fringe curiosity and they only realized it's becoming important when it was too late.
  - lazide 6y ago
    It's still an open question because you're confusing what they are saying with what is going on, and not looking at what they are doing first as a source of truth. News that no one pays for doesn't help them. But also, news no one knows they have first is also news no one will pay for - or tell any of their friends to go to them for! They're in a catch 22 re: their business model - they need visibility, they need people to be able to see them and know they have something insightful to add or they're dead in the water. Now that means the search engines and aggregators, as that is where most people are looking. Most people also won't pay for random links sent by friends, or even an insightful article if they can get it somewhere else (even at a lower quality). It's an even more brutal version of what the music and movie industry deal with around streaming (and will again in movies due to the proliferation of half baked streaming services).
- martin_a 6y ago
  > Could it possible be the case that the old media actually wants the burglars inside? We see this in Germany, too. On the one hand, "old media" is eager to take any traffic that Google et al. send to them, but on the other hand they don't like aggregration and ask Google et al. to pay for text snippets. This has already led to bizzare laws, driven by old media and conversative politicians.
pca006132 6y ago
Questions: 1. If we send the links to Australian news in instant messengers, is it required for the platform to pay the publisher? 2. If 1 is yes, who would pay them if we use email?
- docdeek 6y ago
  The answer to both is 'it depends on what The Australian Government says'. The law will apply to platforms at the discretion of the Minister - it's why we are talking Facebook and Google and not Twitter and iMessage.
  - pca006132 6y ago
    So they can target whoever they want and charge them? Sounds a lot more alarming...
    - stephen_g 6y ago
      Yep, it’s super arbitrary. Super bad legislation and introduces huge sovereign risk. There will be companies who choose not to do business here or not to do business with our companies when the Government has shown they’ll happily target random successful foreign companies to be extorted by local failing industries... And this is just one in a whole string of bad tech legislation (like the one that the Government can force you to secretly break your app’s encryption for any users they want to surveil, without them requiring a warrant!)
    - docdeek 6y ago
      The text of the (soon to be) law is online [1] and at Division 2.52E it states the Minister alone decides which digital platforms it applies to. Today is it Facebook and Google (though likely not Google after some recent moves by that company) but it could be any digital platform should the Minister designate it as covered by the law in the future. 1: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=LEGISLATION;id=legislation%2Fbills%2Fr6652_first-reps%2F0001;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbills%2Fr6652_first-reps%2F0000%22;rec=0 https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
cdogl 6y ago
Tim's perspective here is disappointingly narrow. The line he's drawing in the sand has already been crossed in all sorts of ways in many different jurisdictions and commercial/legal contexts. This is a complex (and tiring) debate where all of the key players (largely News Corp and the Australian Commonwealth Government on one side and Facebook and Google on the other) have shown themselves to be untrustworthy, user-hostile and utterly flippant with regard to the public good provided by news. They have all been dishonest to the public through this process and the best outcome would be one where all the major parties to this issue lose out. There's a strong argument to be made that Google and Facebook should be made to cough something up. They've essentially done an attention economy land grab and the state exists to regulate such disruptive practices in order to preserve certain public goods. But of course the actual facts of this law are that it's a blatant opportunistic maneuver to get wads of cash out of one set of corrupt peoples' pockets into those of another group who happen to be mates with the people who hold legislative power.
- strictnein 6y ago
  > "They've essentially done an attention economy land grab and the state exists to regulate such disruptive practices in order to preserve certain public goods" The state doesn't exist to protect an industry from competitors, even ones that are "disruptive".
- cdogl 6y ago
  My framing of this issue partly inspired by this piece: https://www.eigenmagic.com/2020/09/07/a-deep-dive-into-google-facebook-and-australian-news/ https://www.eigenmagic.com/2020/09/07/a-deep-dive-into-googl...
umvi 6y ago
If Facebook complied with this law, wouldn't they be incentivized to suppress viral sharing of news articles since the more viral a news story being shared is, the more they have to pay out? And would that mean news companies would be doing everything they can to "go viral" since it means a big payday? These incentives are all misaligned.
- stephen_g 6y ago
  Facebook are complying with the law, by removing news content so they don’t have to participate in the scheme. But the crazy thing is, if they decided to let any ‘news content’ through - say, block the big Aussie media players but allow overseas news and local independent news from small orgs that aren’t eligible for payments (because it was the big players that lobbied for these laws), then they would still be forced into arbitration and be forced to pay the big orgs, despite not having any of their content on the platform! The law doesn’t actually really distinguish between what is actually “used” or not, or the difference between full article content or just links. If the media companies don’t like any proposed deal, everybody is forced into arbitration and then it’s judged on criteria that specifically exclude factors like the value of the traffic referral from Google or Facebook to the news site.
tyleo 6y ago
While I disagree with the legislation I think it’s good that governments are experimenting and learning. Regulating tech is a hard problem and there will be mistakes. If this turns out to be a big one I imagine it will be rolled back but lessons learned along the way will stay in our memory.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  This seems far less like an experiment, and far more like blatant regulatory capture and corruption.
- stephen_g 6y ago
  Unfortunately our Government here in Australia has an extremely bad record for tech policy, and in this case have basically written a law based entirely on only what an extremely powerful lobby group wanted...
pmlnr 6y ago
This is the same person who created HTTP 402 Payment Required, in the HTTP 1.1 RFC in 1999, right? https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-10.4.3 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-10.4.3
okprod 6y ago
TBL sold out a while ago, with DRM/EME only a recent example. Also not sure anything he says on this matter can be unbiased when both Facebook and Google pay membership fees to the W3C.
Axien 6y ago
Could Facebook simply say "We will only allow links from sites that do not charge"? If someone tries to post a new article from News Corp, Facebook displays a message suggesting alternative links from "free" news sources. The differentiation from free or paid could be a variable in the HTML code of the news source. If you want to allow links, specify cost=free.
- stephen_g 6y ago
  No, the laws don’t allow that. Payments are only made to the big players, but if Facebook or Google block the big players and show any other news content they still have to pay the big players. Despite not having any content/links on their site. So, yeah, it’s bad legislation.
antattack 6y ago
It's a fact that Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and others are free-loading by extracting information from content creators and posting it on their platform. However, if just linking to content could be considered as somehow using the content - it would be a blatant power grab by publishers facilitated by the government. How would wikipedia function if linking to content cost them money?
- xtracto 6y ago
  Im not sure about facebook. The article refers to how FB grabs "snippets" of content from websites. But I was under the impression that what FB does is grab certain info in META tags in order to create previews. As a content creator you need to explicitly write that html to allow sites like facebook to render a preview.
49para 6y ago
Canada is also trying to push for the same law. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/internet-link-fee-canada_ca_5fb06552c5b6d05e86e785f7 https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/internet-link-fee-canada... This is an attempt to keep news orgs relevant despite their continuing drop in readership. Canada has already been paying news orgs $600M a year in addition to the $1.3B or so that they pay the CBC to remain afloat.
jb775 6y ago
We now know who this guy is a mouth-puppet for. This past election cycle has shown Big Tech's true colors. They censor information to the world, tweak their algorithms to misrepresent situations, hide trending hashtags, etc based on California's preferred politics. They literally just got finished pooling their power to silence an entire political party (i.e. Parlor), and people still for some reason think they deserve the right to be gatekeepers of all information. I don't say this because I feel bad for big media, I say it because big media content is certainly not made better by being pre-filtered through facebook's algorithms (or whatever big tech company). The current state of big media content is a fucking dumpster fire...at least more money to them might result in improved quality.
toddh 6y ago
Web != Internet. The internet is fine. You can tell because you can can route around any of these problems. This attack is at a completely different level of the stack.
pocket 6y ago
Easily the worst part of this for me is that Australia has put me in the position of supporting Facebook/Google - which I almost never would do otherwise. The control over what if anything Facebook/Google can parse automatically/display as a preview is defined by open standards that are well documented putting it wholly in the control of the media organizations. Additionally content being posted to Facebook by users comes from the media companies own customers… Ben Thompson and others have documented this well: If you want to tax the social media companies and redirect that revenue to journalism - write that law and make it happen (assuming your constitution allows for it). But trying to frame this as redressing an imbalance in power is ridiculous, and the binding arbitration process defined is ludicrous as well.
- stephen_g 6y ago
  Yeah, I mean you don’t need to say Facebook and Google are entirely good to say the law is bad. The law is terrible, and Facebook has done the right thing in this case at least.

47 points by eddieoz 6y ago

Just imagine if you create any platform where people link some post, then you need to pay to the author some royalties. Because someone else engaged in some content. Unbelievable.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402 All joking aside, if the law required payment be made to someone when users link to a post, you either build that functionality into the platform or don't build the platform. Taking the opposite of your argument, why you do you believe a platform creator is entitled to the value of a link aggregator without compensating those creating the content? Royalties are a well established compensation mechanism in the intellectual property sphere, and platforms shouldn't be allowed to free ride.
- codegladiator 6y ago
  I would agree if the content was being copied over. But links ? What would HN look like ?
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Like it does now? With some content paywalled and some not, and perhaps some links rejected from the submission form if the link has attributes indicating a payment is required. I will concede that adaption would be required, but I disagree with the idea that this model is entirely unreasonable. When Hacker News users link to paywalled content, some of us consume it without issue because we pay those sites (Bloomberg, WSJ, Economist, etc).
    - cheph 6y ago
      No, it would not exist because ycombinator makes no revenue and can't pay anyone.
    - fatsdomino001 6y ago
      Yeah Hacker News would likely have to shut down if targeted by bills like these.
- simonh 6y ago
  The usual model for creating awareness and providing access to a product is for the vendor of the product to pay for that service. If I have a media service such as a TV channel, Youtube channel or podcast, I charge vendors to use my channel to reach that audience. Promoting content is a valuable service, why should publishers get it for free? So congratulations, you've convinced me. I think Facebook and Google should charge Australian news sites to carry their links in their feeds. These are after all little more than adverts.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    > So congratulations, you've convinced me. I think Facebook and Google should charge Australian news sites to put their links in their feeds. These are after all little more than adverts. Anecdotally (n=1), my Australian friends have already signed up directly with email newsletters and apps of the news sources they previously would've consumed through Facebook's feed (when Facebook started blacklisting links to media websites by domain). Those news sources are going to be just fine without Facebook, and existed before Facebook was a thing.
    - simonh 6y ago
      It really is incredible to me that you think that's an actual solution. The main value Facebook and Google have to news sites isn't access from established readers, they will find the content anyway because they already know they want it. The problem is discovery and by and acquisition of new readers. That's the primary value and service social media and search platforms like facebook and google offer in this area. It's why they are primarily adverting platforms, and get most of their revenue from advertising in the first place. News organisations have been free-riding off this for years but are so desperate and entitled they want to charge their advertisers for promoting their content.
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        > It really is incredible to me that you think that's an actual solution. Likewise regarding your position. I fall firmly on the side that Big Tech should be heavily regulated, and in some cases broken up. This is simply an extension of that, shifting monetary rewards to those creating content versus platforms extracting all of the financial rewards, throwing scraps to the content (which has a real cost, versus the zero marginal cost advantage platforms have). Google and Facebook have a combined market cap of almost $2.2 trillion dollars and collectively generate over $260 billion a year in revenue. Am I supposed to feel bad for them? I pay for my news content (listed in another comment), and I think they should too (disclaimer: I am not a trillion dollar adtech platform).
- Isinlor 6y ago
  Mozilla Corp. should sent you a bill for their content that you linked, because now you are taking a free ride.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  App stores are link aggregators. They charge people to put a link to their own stuff in there and even take a cut of sales they make after that.
- cheph 6y ago
  > Taking the opposite of your argument, why you do you believe a platform creator is entitled to the value of a link aggregator without compensating those creating the content? If it is not copyright infringement why would you need to pay someone?
- pca006132 6y ago
  What is the difference between the user discovering the URL from the news organization webpage/news feed, and from Facebook/Google? What would the news organization lose from this instead of gaining more viewers?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- fatsdomino001 6y ago
  The problem isn't so much the financial cost to link aggregators, it's the regulatory burden. All this bill does is entrench the existing biggest companies in the space and prevent competition, because smaller entrants will be unable to e.g. negotiate contracts with all media providers. This is just legacy media using their quasi monopoly and regulatory capture to squash competition.

martin_drapeau 6y ago

Tim is so right. In addition, for friends and family a post on FB about my cat is just as news worthy as a NYT article. It is not for governments to decide what is news or not. Keep the web free. Avoid imposing rules and taxes. Ultimately a news organization is an internet citizen like you or me. They should not have different privileges.

soco 6y ago
Very true, the master's words. But do they really apply? I see the story rather like two giants trying to strong-arm each other: social media trying to have everything under their control as always (and not pay for said control), and old media habits trying to have everything under their control as always (and get paid for said control). Either way I lose, because they aren't fighting about the content per se, just about how to handle it.
- martin_drapeau 6y ago
  I fail to see how you lose if the internet remains free. Just avoid social media if it bothers you. I really don't mind social media being so big and growing. You don't have to live on their platforms.
  - soco 6y ago
    I lose by the grip of the law - internet may stay free but I'm getting restricted in what I can do with it.
pmlnr 6y ago
> as news worthy as a NYT article ::insert doubt meme:: Make them write a blog post, please. If it's inside Facebook, it's useless; it can't be added to archive.org, can't be read without Facebook.
- martin_drapeau 6y ago
  Agreed. However anyone is free to make things publicly available or not.

diego_moita 6y ago

As non-australian this debate sounds very incomprehensible to me. I understand that old media is complaining that tech is making money with their content while the authors get nothing. To me that is the equivalent of complaining that someone else is using your house because you left the door open. So what is the problem with locks, pay-walls, creating accounts or blocking links? Could it possible be the case that the old media actually wants the burglars inside?

adrianb 6y ago
That has been my question for years. Back in the day when I was only hearing of this thing called the Internet, people mentioned how they can read the New York Times online or another famous paper. Coming from a small town in Eastern Europe that was amazing. But I also wondered why they were able to read it for free. I wonder what made the newspapers post their content online for free - probably because the internet was a fringe curiosity and they only realized it's becoming important when it was too late.
- lazide 6y ago
  It's still an open question because you're confusing what they are saying with what is going on, and not looking at what they are doing first as a source of truth. News that no one pays for doesn't help them. But also, news no one knows they have first is also news no one will pay for - or tell any of their friends to go to them for! They're in a catch 22 re: their business model - they need visibility, they need people to be able to see them and know they have something insightful to add or they're dead in the water. Now that means the search engines and aggregators, as that is where most people are looking. Most people also won't pay for random links sent by friends, or even an insightful article if they can get it somewhere else (even at a lower quality). It's an even more brutal version of what the music and movie industry deal with around streaming (and will again in movies due to the proliferation of half baked streaming services).
martin_a 6y ago
> Could it possible be the case that the old media actually wants the burglars inside? We see this in Germany, too. On the one hand, "old media" is eager to take any traffic that Google et al. send to them, but on the other hand they don't like aggregration and ask Google et al. to pay for text snippets. This has already led to bizzare laws, driven by old media and conversative politicians.

pca006132 6y ago

Questions: 1. If we send the links to Australian news in instant messengers, is it required for the platform to pay the publisher? 2. If 1 is yes, who would pay them if we use email?

docdeek 6y ago
The answer to both is 'it depends on what The Australian Government says'. The law will apply to platforms at the discretion of the Minister - it's why we are talking Facebook and Google and not Twitter and iMessage.
- pca006132 6y ago
  So they can target whoever they want and charge them? Sounds a lot more alarming...
  - stephen_g 6y ago
    Yep, it’s super arbitrary. Super bad legislation and introduces huge sovereign risk. There will be companies who choose not to do business here or not to do business with our companies when the Government has shown they’ll happily target random successful foreign companies to be extorted by local failing industries... And this is just one in a whole string of bad tech legislation (like the one that the Government can force you to secretly break your app’s encryption for any users they want to surveil, without them requiring a warrant!)
  - docdeek 6y ago
    The text of the (soon to be) law is online [1] and at Division 2.52E it states the Minister alone decides which digital platforms it applies to. Today is it Facebook and Google (though likely not Google after some recent moves by that company) but it could be any digital platform should the Minister designate it as covered by the law in the future. 1: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=LEGISLATION;id=legislation%2Fbills%2Fr6652_first-reps%2F0001;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbills%2Fr6652_first-reps%2F0000%22;rec=0 https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....

cdogl 6y ago

Tim's perspective here is disappointingly narrow. The line he's drawing in the sand has already been crossed in all sorts of ways in many different jurisdictions and commercial/legal contexts. This is a complex (and tiring) debate where all of the key players (largely News Corp and the Australian Commonwealth Government on one side and Facebook and Google on the other) have shown themselves to be untrustworthy, user-hostile and utterly flippant with regard to the public good provided by news. They have all been dishonest to the public through this process and the best outcome would be one where all the major parties to this issue lose out. There's a strong argument to be made that Google and Facebook should be made to cough something up. They've essentially done an attention economy land grab and the state exists to regulate such disruptive practices in order to preserve certain public goods. But of course the actual facts of this law are that it's a blatant opportunistic maneuver to get wads of cash out of one set of corrupt peoples' pockets into those of another group who happen to be mates with the people who hold legislative power.

strictnein 6y ago
> "They've essentially done an attention economy land grab and the state exists to regulate such disruptive practices in order to preserve certain public goods" The state doesn't exist to protect an industry from competitors, even ones that are "disruptive".
cdogl 6y ago
My framing of this issue partly inspired by this piece: https://www.eigenmagic.com/2020/09/07/a-deep-dive-into-google-facebook-and-australian-news/ https://www.eigenmagic.com/2020/09/07/a-deep-dive-into-googl...

umvi 6y ago

If Facebook complied with this law, wouldn't they be incentivized to suppress viral sharing of news articles since the more viral a news story being shared is, the more they have to pay out? And would that mean news companies would be doing everything they can to "go viral" since it means a big payday? These incentives are all misaligned.

stephen_g 6y ago
Facebook are complying with the law, by removing news content so they don’t have to participate in the scheme. But the crazy thing is, if they decided to let any ‘news content’ through - say, block the big Aussie media players but allow overseas news and local independent news from small orgs that aren’t eligible for payments (because it was the big players that lobbied for these laws), then they would still be forced into arbitration and be forced to pay the big orgs, despite not having any of their content on the platform! The law doesn’t actually really distinguish between what is actually “used” or not, or the difference between full article content or just links. If the media companies don’t like any proposed deal, everybody is forced into arbitration and then it’s judged on criteria that specifically exclude factors like the value of the traffic referral from Google or Facebook to the news site.

tyleo 6y ago

While I disagree with the legislation I think it’s good that governments are experimenting and learning. Regulating tech is a hard problem and there will be mistakes. If this turns out to be a big one I imagine it will be rolled back but lessons learned along the way will stay in our memory.

ashtonkem 6y ago
This seems far less like an experiment, and far more like blatant regulatory capture and corruption.
stephen_g 6y ago
Unfortunately our Government here in Australia has an extremely bad record for tech policy, and in this case have basically written a law based entirely on only what an extremely powerful lobby group wanted...

pmlnr 6y ago

This is the same person who created HTTP 402 Payment Required, in the HTTP 1.1 RFC in 1999, right? https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-10.4.3 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-10.4.3

okprod 6y ago

TBL sold out a while ago, with DRM/EME only a recent example. Also not sure anything he says on this matter can be unbiased when both Facebook and Google pay membership fees to the W3C.

Axien 6y ago

Could Facebook simply say "We will only allow links from sites that do not charge"? If someone tries to post a new article from News Corp, Facebook displays a message suggesting alternative links from "free" news sources. The differentiation from free or paid could be a variable in the HTML code of the news source. If you want to allow links, specify cost=free.

stephen_g 6y ago
No, the laws don’t allow that. Payments are only made to the big players, but if Facebook or Google block the big players and show any other news content they still have to pay the big players. Despite not having any content/links on their site. So, yeah, it’s bad legislation.

antattack 6y ago

It's a fact that Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and others are free-loading by extracting information from content creators and posting it on their platform. However, if just linking to content could be considered as somehow using the content - it would be a blatant power grab by publishers facilitated by the government. How would wikipedia function if linking to content cost them money?

xtracto 6y ago
Im not sure about facebook. The article refers to how FB grabs "snippets" of content from websites. But I was under the impression that what FB does is grab certain info in META tags in order to create previews. As a content creator you need to explicitly write that html to allow sites like facebook to render a preview.

49para 6y ago

Canada is also trying to push for the same law. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/internet-link-fee-canada_ca_5fb06552c5b6d05e86e785f7 https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/internet-link-fee-canada... This is an attempt to keep news orgs relevant despite their continuing drop in readership. Canada has already been paying news orgs $600M a year in addition to the $1.3B or so that they pay the CBC to remain afloat.

jb775 6y ago

We now know who this guy is a mouth-puppet for. This past election cycle has shown Big Tech's true colors. They censor information to the world, tweak their algorithms to misrepresent situations, hide trending hashtags, etc based on California's preferred politics. They literally just got finished pooling their power to silence an entire political party (i.e. Parlor), and people still for some reason think they deserve the right to be gatekeepers of all information. I don't say this because I feel bad for big media, I say it because big media content is certainly not made better by being pre-filtered through facebook's algorithms (or whatever big tech company). The current state of big media content is a fucking dumpster fire...at least more money to them might result in improved quality.

toddh 6y ago

Web != Internet. The internet is fine. You can tell because you can can route around any of these problems. This attack is at a completely different level of the stack.

pocket 6y ago

Easily the worst part of this for me is that Australia has put me in the position of supporting Facebook/Google - which I almost never would do otherwise. The control over what if anything Facebook/Google can parse automatically/display as a preview is defined by open standards that are well documented putting it wholly in the control of the media organizations. Additionally content being posted to Facebook by users comes from the media companies own customers… Ben Thompson and others have documented this well: If you want to tax the social media companies and redirect that revenue to journalism - write that law and make it happen (assuming your constitution allows for it). But trying to frame this as redressing an imbalance in power is ridiculous, and the binding arbitration process defined is ludicrous as well.

stephen_g 6y ago
Yeah, I mean you don’t need to say Facebook and Google are entirely good to say the law is bad. The law is terrible, and Facebook has done the right thing in this case at least.