7 ms·

Absolutely crazy that governments around the world want websites to pay to allow users to link to content. It's the kind of thing that makes no sense to anybody

by veave 3y ago

Absolutely crazy that governments around the world want websites to pay to allow users to link to content. It's the kind of thing that makes no sense to anybody with a bit of technical education.

SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
I'm not sure how a technical education plays into what's ultimately not a technical issue.
- macksd 3y ago
  Because there are technical nuances in what they're actually reproducing, where it came from and how it was shared with you. Are they actually reproducing content wholesale? If so, I would think copyright law would allow content producers to stop that unless it's properly licensed anyway. Are they posting content from meta tags that use Facebook's OpenGraph standard for specifying how content should be previewed when linked? Then how is that not intended for this exact use case in the first place? Are they scraping content, and using heuristics / ML to generate an appropriate subset of the content for a preview and choose an appropriate picture, that they then reproduce? Okay - that's more of a grey area. But do the people debating this even understand the difference between what would actually be happening for these different use cases? Do they know enough to clearly write a law that allows one but not the other? I hardly think so. I just had a meeting with some lawyers at a massive tech company, whose job it is to approve the use of open-source licenses, who couldn't grasp the concept that viewing a web page results in code being downloaded and executed by the browser. Because somebody assigned that job to corporate lawyers who don't understand technology, thinking it wasn't a technical issue and didn't require any technical education, experience, or understanding.
ttul 3y ago
The perspective of Canada is useful here. Canada is culturally dominated by the US, with a 10x larger population only an hour’s drive from the majority of the Canadian population. Canadians are generally supportive of some level of government protection for the fragile and tiny Canadian cultural industry (music, the press, TV, and film). Meanwhile, Canada’s media and telecom industry is concentrated in the hands of three wealthy families. These empires have successfully lobbied the Canadian government for decades to achieve a degree of protection from US competitors, to the detriment of Canadians in terms of higher mobile phone and internet bills, a bland selection of privately produced journalism, and underwhelming TV content. The same playbook is at work with this latest bit of protectionism. The media empires leverage Canadians’ somewhat justified desire to protect Canadian culture to convince politicians in Ottawa to provide some monopoly-preserving protectionist measures. It’s a disgusting symbiosis that suppresses dynamism, but it’s likely not going away any time soon.
- pxue 3y ago
  Accurately assessed. Marketed as "protecting Canadian culture". In reality it's oligarchs lobbying to keep the status quo and their margins fat.
- neom 3y ago
  Canada also already has pretty strict internal content regulations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content It's part of the reason why so many artists come out of Canada. Inorder to satisfy the content regulations the government heavily subsidized the arts.
  - 908B64B197 3y ago
    The most interesting thing is what's defined as "Canadian Content". Most of what Celine Dion produced in her career doesn't fit the government approved list of cultural content, so is considered foreign music. Celine Dion, probably Canada's most recognizable voice and signer, signing in French, a language almost exclusively spoken in Canada on the North American continent, isn't considered Canadian culture. But some recordings from Elvis do count because he happened to record them on Canadian soil. [0] [0] https://nationalpost.com/news/extremely-canadian-media-that-ottawa-doesnt-consider-cancon https://nationalpost.com/news/extremely-canadian-media-that-...
    - neom 3y ago
      Makes sense, if you pick up and make a career for yourself using American resources you shouldn't be cancon, same with startups, can't get amazing startup Canadian capgains if you start Canadian and later basically become an American company. JB, Celine, Brian Adam's etc arguably started because Canada is such a hospitable environment to artists, if they pick up and basically come American... Why should we classify them as Canadian artists? Don't think any of them even live in Canada anymore, can't say I think they do much for the industry. Matt Dusk, CRJ, lightfoot etc keep it real.
      - modzu 3y ago
mfer 3y ago
There is a real problem. Content creators are not getting enough income to operate on. Middle companies (e.g., Google and Facebook) are making a lot of money. This is a problem especially for local and regional content. Useful solutions to the problem are where we are running into disagreements. And, any useful solution is going to run into disagreement because it's going to change the distribution of wealth from the status quo. Content creators will get more of it. Two analogies come to mind... 1. It reminds me of record labels and artists. There have traditionally been many cases where the artists made very little income but the producers and label made a lot of money. The distribution channel captured the profits. 2. I also think of cars and car dealerships. Imagine if car manufacturers couldn't make enough money to run a functioning business but car dealerships were making a lot of income. In the case of news articles the underlying problem isn't discovery of content. Instead, it's about the income model around advertisements. The middle companies that broker ads are making a lot of money while the organizations displaying them get a fraction of the income. The issues are often part of todays advertising model.
- veave 3y ago
  >There is a real problem. Content creators are not getting enough income to operate on. Middle companies (e.g., Google and Facebook) are making a lot of money. The solution to "someone makes more money than someone else" is not necessarily "steal from the one who makes more money". >In the case of news articles the underlying problem isn't discovery of content. Instead, it's about the income model around advertisements. The middle companies that broker ads are making a lot of money while the organizations displaying them get a fraction of the income. The issues are often part of todays advertising model. Newspapers not making enough money from their ads is not Facebook's fault. Facebook is not brokering ads for those publishers. The examples you provided are irrelevant because the relationship publishers have with Facebook is nothing like that. For starters, Facebook and publishers do not enter any kind of agreement or contract.
  - mfer 3y ago
    I didn't claim it was Facebook's fault. I did write... > Useful solutions to the problem are where we are running into disagreements. I consider Useful to be Usability + Utility. One of the problems in finding a useful solution is that politicians are driving solutions based on things they are not experts in. A reasoned understanding of the situation with information on which knobs to turn is not present. > Newspapers not making enough money from their ads is not Facebook's fault. Yes and no. A specific issue is local and regional news. Facebook and Next Door are examples of applications that have changed how we engage with and know about local and regional happenings. That means less traffic to Newspapers to learn about local happenings. This kind of change isn't necessarily a bad thing. But, it is transformative with trade-offs that are worth looking into. For example, I can easily get the scores for the local high school football games via social media. But, getting a good understanding about some outstanding players is going to be missing. Something gained and something lost. There is a lot here. And, while I don't like the proposed law I do see a need for understanding and change. Some knobs needs to be adjused around this space.

by veave 3y ago

Absolutely crazy that governments around the world want websites to pay to allow users to link to content. It's the kind of thing that makes no sense to anybody with a bit of technical education.

SketchySeaBeast 3y ago

I'm not sure how a technical education plays into what's ultimately not a technical issue.

macksd 3y ago
Because there are technical nuances in what they're actually reproducing, where it came from and how it was shared with you. Are they actually reproducing content wholesale? If so, I would think copyright law would allow content producers to stop that unless it's properly licensed anyway. Are they posting content from meta tags that use Facebook's OpenGraph standard for specifying how content should be previewed when linked? Then how is that not intended for this exact use case in the first place? Are they scraping content, and using heuristics / ML to generate an appropriate subset of the content for a preview and choose an appropriate picture, that they then reproduce? Okay - that's more of a grey area. But do the people debating this even understand the difference between what would actually be happening for these different use cases? Do they know enough to clearly write a law that allows one but not the other? I hardly think so. I just had a meeting with some lawyers at a massive tech company, whose job it is to approve the use of open-source licenses, who couldn't grasp the concept that viewing a web page results in code being downloaded and executed by the browser. Because somebody assigned that job to corporate lawyers who don't understand technology, thinking it wasn't a technical issue and didn't require any technical education, experience, or understanding.

ttul 3y ago

The perspective of Canada is useful here. Canada is culturally dominated by the US, with a 10x larger population only an hour’s drive from the majority of the Canadian population. Canadians are generally supportive of some level of government protection for the fragile and tiny Canadian cultural industry (music, the press, TV, and film). Meanwhile, Canada’s media and telecom industry is concentrated in the hands of three wealthy families. These empires have successfully lobbied the Canadian government for decades to achieve a degree of protection from US competitors, to the detriment of Canadians in terms of higher mobile phone and internet bills, a bland selection of privately produced journalism, and underwhelming TV content. The same playbook is at work with this latest bit of protectionism. The media empires leverage Canadians’ somewhat justified desire to protect Canadian culture to convince politicians in Ottawa to provide some monopoly-preserving protectionist measures. It’s a disgusting symbiosis that suppresses dynamism, but it’s likely not going away any time soon.

pxue 3y ago
Accurately assessed. Marketed as "protecting Canadian culture". In reality it's oligarchs lobbying to keep the status quo and their margins fat.
neom 3y ago
Canada also already has pretty strict internal content regulations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content It's part of the reason why so many artists come out of Canada. Inorder to satisfy the content regulations the government heavily subsidized the arts.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  The most interesting thing is what's defined as "Canadian Content". Most of what Celine Dion produced in her career doesn't fit the government approved list of cultural content, so is considered foreign music. Celine Dion, probably Canada's most recognizable voice and signer, signing in French, a language almost exclusively spoken in Canada on the North American continent, isn't considered Canadian culture. But some recordings from Elvis do count because he happened to record them on Canadian soil. [0] [0] https://nationalpost.com/news/extremely-canadian-media-that-ottawa-doesnt-consider-cancon https://nationalpost.com/news/extremely-canadian-media-that-...
  - neom 3y ago
    Makes sense, if you pick up and make a career for yourself using American resources you shouldn't be cancon, same with startups, can't get amazing startup Canadian capgains if you start Canadian and later basically become an American company. JB, Celine, Brian Adam's etc arguably started because Canada is such a hospitable environment to artists, if they pick up and basically come American... Why should we classify them as Canadian artists? Don't think any of them even live in Canada anymore, can't say I think they do much for the industry. Matt Dusk, CRJ, lightfoot etc keep it real.
    - modzu 3y ago

mfer 3y ago

There is a real problem. Content creators are not getting enough income to operate on. Middle companies (e.g., Google and Facebook) are making a lot of money. This is a problem especially for local and regional content. Useful solutions to the problem are where we are running into disagreements. And, any useful solution is going to run into disagreement because it's going to change the distribution of wealth from the status quo. Content creators will get more of it. Two analogies come to mind... 1. It reminds me of record labels and artists. There have traditionally been many cases where the artists made very little income but the producers and label made a lot of money. The distribution channel captured the profits. 2. I also think of cars and car dealerships. Imagine if car manufacturers couldn't make enough money to run a functioning business but car dealerships were making a lot of income. In the case of news articles the underlying problem isn't discovery of content. Instead, it's about the income model around advertisements. The middle companies that broker ads are making a lot of money while the organizations displaying them get a fraction of the income. The issues are often part of todays advertising model.

veave 3y ago
>There is a real problem. Content creators are not getting enough income to operate on. Middle companies (e.g., Google and Facebook) are making a lot of money. The solution to "someone makes more money than someone else" is not necessarily "steal from the one who makes more money". >In the case of news articles the underlying problem isn't discovery of content. Instead, it's about the income model around advertisements. The middle companies that broker ads are making a lot of money while the organizations displaying them get a fraction of the income. The issues are often part of todays advertising model. Newspapers not making enough money from their ads is not Facebook's fault. Facebook is not brokering ads for those publishers. The examples you provided are irrelevant because the relationship publishers have with Facebook is nothing like that. For starters, Facebook and publishers do not enter any kind of agreement or contract.
- mfer 3y ago
  I didn't claim it was Facebook's fault. I did write... > Useful solutions to the problem are where we are running into disagreements. I consider Useful to be Usability + Utility. One of the problems in finding a useful solution is that politicians are driving solutions based on things they are not experts in. A reasoned understanding of the situation with information on which knobs to turn is not present. > Newspapers not making enough money from their ads is not Facebook's fault. Yes and no. A specific issue is local and regional news. Facebook and Next Door are examples of applications that have changed how we engage with and know about local and regional happenings. That means less traffic to Newspapers to learn about local happenings. This kind of change isn't necessarily a bad thing. But, it is transformative with trade-offs that are worth looking into. For example, I can easily get the scores for the local high school football games via social media. But, getting a good understanding about some outstanding players is going to be missing. Something gained and something lost. There is a lot here. And, while I don't like the proposed law I do see a need for understanding and change. Some knobs needs to be adjused around this space.