3 ms·

The term "link tax" is always a bit of a misnomer. It is a tax for copying small snippets, which those companies would claim fair use on. I am unsure what is t

by belorn 3y ago

The term "link tax" is always a bit of a misnomer. It is a tax for copying small snippets, which those companies would claim fair use on. I am unsure what is the most appropriate way. Fair use laws was never designed with the idea of facebook copying news segments, search copying whole segments of websites and inline them, google making full copies of every page of every book, machine learning models, and so on. It also seem to have failed rather extremely with sites like youtube. All those cases of fair use also happens to only provide rights to large companies with hordes of lawyers. Anything smaller just get gunned down with copyright claims and strikes. I can imagine someone trying to write a bot that join every public facebook group and copy a snippet of every comment that is being made (with a helpful link if anyone want to read the full text) and publish that outside of facebook and their ads. How fast would that bot be kicked out by facebook?

Marsymars 3y ago
> The term "link tax" is always a bit of a misnomer. It is a tax for copying small snippets, which those companies would claim fair use on. I don't think it is; as far as I can tell, both the spirit and letter of the law is to require payment for links only, that include no content snippets. e.g. the bill's charter reads: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/charter-charte/c18_1.html https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/charter-charte/c18_... "Under the Bill, a digital news intermediary could make news content available by reproducing it or by facilitating access to the news content, including by generating links to news content. Facilitating access to news content could be done through any means, including by way of an index, aggregation or ranking, all of which are methods used by online platforms to organize and distribute news content." This also comes up in the clause-by-clause review: https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/CHPC/meeting-57/evidence https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/CHPC/meetin... 1: "Facebook has said that they may consider removing the ability of news to be shared on their platform so that they cannot be scoped into this legislation. If they were to make that decision and Canadians wanted to take a quote from a newspaper article and post that quote on their Facebook page as a small snippet, would Facebook be allowed to permit that without being captured by this legislation?" 2: "[...]Regarding the example you give, in a context where Facebook has made the business decision to essentially prevent the ability of users to link to news articles but an individual is quoting from a particular news article without a link, no, I do not believe that would engage or trigger the application of the act." 1: "But as soon as a link is included, then they would be scoped into this legislation." 2: "From my perspective, the act of linking is a critical one. It boils down to the facilitation of access. Again, at the crux of this bill is a recognition that the ways that a significant number of Canadians navigate to news content is via social media services or via a search service, which involves clicking on the link. Yes." If the intention was for this law to apply to snippets rather than links, it should have been written that way, because as-is, it applies to links, and not snippets.
- belorn 3y ago
  Interesting that the bill's charter indeed says that. However, according to the Legislative Summary of Bill C-18 (https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/LegislativeSummaries/441C18E https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/Resear...), it says: Clause 2(2) stipulates that news content is “made available” if two conditions are met: that it, or any portion of it, is reproduced; and that access to it is facilitated by “any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content.” The word link or hyperlink is not mentioned a single time.
  - Marsymars 3y ago
    I'm not familiar with legalistic conventions around summaries vs bill text, but the "and" there looks to be directly at odds with the actual text of Clause 2(2) in the full text of the bill, which reads: (2) For the purposes of this Act, news content is made available if (a) the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced; or (b) access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content. Given the "any means" wording, I don't think the absence of the word "link" or "hyperlink" should be taken to mean that links aren't covered by "any means".

by belorn 3y ago

Marsymars 3y ago

> The term "link tax" is always a bit of a misnomer. It is a tax for copying small snippets, which those companies would claim fair use on. I don't think it is; as far as I can tell, both the spirit and letter of the law is to require payment for links only, that include no content snippets. e.g. the bill's charter reads: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/charter-charte/c18_1.html https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/charter-charte/c18_... "Under the Bill, a digital news intermediary could make news content available by reproducing it or by facilitating access to the news content, including by generating links to news content. Facilitating access to news content could be done through any means, including by way of an index, aggregation or ranking, all of which are methods used by online platforms to organize and distribute news content." This also comes up in the clause-by-clause review: https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/CHPC/meeting-57/evidence https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/CHPC/meetin... 1: "Facebook has said that they may consider removing the ability of news to be shared on their platform so that they cannot be scoped into this legislation. If they were to make that decision and Canadians wanted to take a quote from a newspaper article and post that quote on their Facebook page as a small snippet, would Facebook be allowed to permit that without being captured by this legislation?" 2: "[...]Regarding the example you give, in a context where Facebook has made the business decision to essentially prevent the ability of users to link to news articles but an individual is quoting from a particular news article without a link, no, I do not believe that would engage or trigger the application of the act." 1: "But as soon as a link is included, then they would be scoped into this legislation." 2: "From my perspective, the act of linking is a critical one. It boils down to the facilitation of access. Again, at the crux of this bill is a recognition that the ways that a significant number of Canadians navigate to news content is via social media services or via a search service, which involves clicking on the link. Yes." If the intention was for this law to apply to snippets rather than links, it should have been written that way, because as-is, it applies to links, and not snippets.

belorn 3y ago
Interesting that the bill's charter indeed says that. However, according to the Legislative Summary of Bill C-18 (https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/LegislativeSummaries/441C18E https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/Resear...), it says: Clause 2(2) stipulates that news content is “made available” if two conditions are met: that it, or any portion of it, is reproduced; and that access to it is facilitated by “any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content.” The word link or hyperlink is not mentioned a single time.
- Marsymars 3y ago
  I'm not familiar with legalistic conventions around summaries vs bill text, but the "and" there looks to be directly at odds with the actual text of Clause 2(2) in the full text of the bill, which reads: (2) For the purposes of this Act, news content is made available if (a) the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced; or (b) access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content. Given the "any means" wording, I don't think the absence of the word "link" or "hyperlink" should be taken to mean that links aren't covered by "any means".