21 ms·
Govt of Canada proposes a 4% Link Tax
- tomComb 3y agoThe precedent of a tax on links is rather scary for the web.
- outside1234 3y agoyeah, no thanks
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- slashdev 3y agoThis is a nice example of the terrible decision making that goes on in the Canadian government. Canada is a lovely country, filled with hard working, friendly people, that kind of chug along in spite of the disastrous leadership by those in power. I gave up and left to seek my fortune elsewhere.
- fidotron 3y agoThere was a story on here the other day "Managed to death: How Canada turned its forests into a carbon bomb". I was tempted to comment that the words "how" and "turned its forest into a carbon bomb" are extraneous.
- jiofj 3y agoCanada is a fully democratic country where citizens are allowed to vote for whomever they see fit. They have the politicians they voted for.
- browningstreet 3y agoDoesn't feel like an adequate take on voter/government outcomes anymore.
- chongli 3y agoExactly! Don’t just blame politicians for this. I have had multiple heated arguments with my idiotic compatriots over this one. They don’t get it at all! They just stand on the sidelines and cheer: “Yay Government! You stand up to those big tech bullies! Boooo Facebook and boooo Google!”
- causality0 3y ago"Democracy is the belief that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard"
- pdmccormick 3y agoCorrection: Canada is a country with a small number of large cities that determine the national government. There are whole regions of the country that have no representative voice within the governing parties.
- jiofj 3y agoWhich is good, since votes shouldn't be worth more depending on where you live.
- robertlagrant 3y agoIf you live in a big city then your vote is worth more because of where you live.
- chongli 3y agoIt's actually the opposite [1]. The largest ridings tend to be in the largest cities and vice-versa. Remote areas like Nunavut and Labrador have way fewer electors in their ridings than the big population centres, by a factor of over 6. So a vote in Nunavut is worth 6 in Brantford. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Canadian_federal_ridings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Canadian_federal...
- robertlagrant 3y agoBecause of the counterveiling effect of representation. I mean in a direct democracy city-specific policies would always win.
- oppositesexact 3y agoIt’s funny to hear Canadians complaining about rural areas being underrepresented and Americans complaining about rural areas being overrepresented. I wonder if the real issue is “people don’t want to do things the way I want to do things!”
- HappMacDonald 3y ago
- theptip 3y agoCanada has a FPTP voting system and so voter preference is only weakly expressed in the binary choice of Red Team vs. Blue Team.
- panick21_ 3y agoAlmost as if democracy doesn't necessarily lead to a government that represent people very well.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoA lot of democratic votes in the west recently, end up on the wire, where you have to vote for the known crook just so the fascist doesn't win. So not an ideal situation that results in a competent, efficient and incorruptible government.
- slashdev 3y agoI think a big problem in the West is we don’t have great leaders anymore. The election is between a few nincompoops that all make you kind of sick to your stomach. Where are the Winston Churchill’s or the Abraham Lincoln’s?
- panick21_ 3y agoChurchill wouldn't be a great leader in current politics. It doesn't work that way. You get 'great leaders' when you lead your nations events, and 99% of the time those are major wars. Churchill was a marginally important political figure until he basically lucked into premiership in WW2. Lincoln came to power over a particular issue, resolved that issue in a war and got killed. Neither of those things are happening. And with Churchill its questionable how good he was other then basically deciding not to surrender. Even if you look at FDR, he came to power during a great economic downturn but by the end of his second term, if not for WW2, he would be remembered very differently. The economy wasn't doing well. And his initial upswing happened mostly because he came into power when the Great Depression was very much ending. Ornery times when leaders face long term issues like population, immigration and climate change will simply not produce such leaders. And the leaders who do handle these topics well are almost never actually popular and are not guaranteed to win many reelections.
- bettercallsalad 3y agoDepends how you determine “democratic”. The current government is the outcome of less than 30% of the people voting for them. If that’s democracy then I don’t have much hope for it.
- soperj 3y agoThe Caveat being that we use first past the post, so the majority of the (already poor % of) votes get tossed, and we end up in a situation like we're in now where the party with the most seats actually lost the election. They also all lie through their teeth, so you have no idea what you're voting for, and can't kick them out for 4 years. That's all without mentioning that a vote in Quebec or PEI is worth way more than a vote in Alberta or BC.
- slashdev 3y agoDo they? Some 70-80% of the time, it’s the liberal party. That makes Canada almost a single party democracy. On top of that majority governments have almost unchecked power. When the government in power is a good one, they can really get things done. But I don’t think I was even alive the last time that happened. When the government is a bad one, they have unchecked incompetence. I’ve seen a lot of that, including when the liberals are not in power.
- Tiktaalik 3y agoWell sort of, except the distortions of First Past the Post and regionalism mean that some votes are more valuable than other votes. This has direct outcomes on the legislation that the government produces. In this particular case of this particular legislation, we have the government focusing strongly on an issue of particular importance in Quebec, because those seats are critically important for them remaining government. If we had a proportional representation system then regionalism wouldn't be as important and we'd see the government focus on different policy objectives.
- thiht 3y agoShut up with that… you vote for the least worst option you got in a full panel of… 2? 5? Maybe 10 people? If you don’t vote, it’s held against you, but when someone is elected it’s somehow your fault and you deserve it? Even if you didn’t vote for that person? Even if you voted for them and it happens they were lying? You make no sense, and this whole rhetoric makes no sense. “Fully democratic” implies this is as good as it gets, yet no one is happy with it. The so called democratic process objectively sucks.
- kenmacd 3y ago> The so called democratic process objectively sucks. It's not the democratic process that's the issue, it's the first-past-the-post. Fortunately the party to win the 2015 election vowed: "To make sure that every vote counts, the Government will undertake consultations on electoral reform, and will take action to ensure that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.", so it must be fixed...
- tensor 3y agoThis kind of drive by shit posting is pretty unfortunate. All countries have pros and cons. As a Canadian I am opposed to this bill, and don't love the current government. But we have this government to avoid having an even worse one. People here typically vote to avoid a particular party getting in power rather than for a given party. If we got rid of first past the post and adopted some form of proportional representation maybe we'd have a better time of it, but every government who promises to do that (including this particular one), break that promise. It's hard to blame the voters for the state of our voting system. As for elsewhere, aside from possibly some places in Europe, Canada is pretty damn good in my eyes. I suppose if you don't care about having healthcare for everyone and other social protections and instead just focus on making money there could be better places, but that's certainly not my cup of tea.
- idopmstuff 3y agoMeanwhile, they complain that news can't be shared on Meta anymore, which Meta very explicitly told them would happen if they passed their last act along these same lines. I wonder what big tech will do if they pass this... /s https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/22/world/canada/canada-wildfires-meta-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/22/world/canada/canada-wildf...
- fwungy 3y agoGovernments are basically becoming organized crime syndicates who use their state monopoly on violence to enforce taxes on their subjects. Yes, they do some legitimate good at times, but even mafia gangs support their community and police it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- all2 3y agoFor those down voting, I will note the US Internal Revenue Service is amassing firearms and ammunition [1]. I will also note that civil forfeiture (your stuff did the crime, so we'll take it and you have to prove it was innocent) was practiced until very recently. [0] Relevant quote: In 2015, Eric Holder ended the policy of "adoptive forfeiture", which occurred "when a state or local law enforcement agency seizes property pursuant to state law and requests that a federal agency take the seized asset and forfeit it under federal law" due to abuse.[21] Although states proceeded to curtail the powers of police to seize assets, actions by the Justice Department in July 2017 have sought to reinstate police seizure powers that simultaneously raise funding for federal agencies and local law enforcement.[22] It is horrifying and hysterical that the example of case law if simply titled "United States v. Forty-Three Gallons of Whiskey". We live in an insane age. - [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United... - [1] I've managed to find multiple sources that state the IRS spent ~700k USD on firearms and ammunition. Why do the country's accountants need guns or bullets?
- jeffbee 3y agoWhat’s remarkable about your comment is how precisely it identifies your media diet. There’s no way you could credulously repeat this unless you were exposed to it from far right wing propaganda outlets and you lack any exposure whatsoever to credible sources of information. As for the substance of this claim, the IRS has always had an armed law enforcement role. I suggest researching the origins of the American colloquial word “revenuer”. https://loganwv.us/the-reverends-and-the-revenuers/ https://loganwv.us/the-reverends-and-the-revenuers/
- paxys 3y agoCanadian government just keeps taking Ls in this saga. Facebook and Google aren't going to give in to your extortion. Linking to websites is free, and always will be. Just kill the bill so everyone can move on.
- post-it 3y agoIt could be nice to have news off of social media. Fewer people reading headlines, either full articles or nothing at all. It'll kill all independent/local media, but then that's the goal all along.
- paxys 3y agoSo if Canadians search for a current event on Google and only see links from foreign sources that's a desired outcome?
- post-it 3y agoThey won't see foreign sources either, the bill applies to showing news in Canada rather than just Canadian news. They'll have to visit sources directly. Is it desired? Probably not, but there could be silver linings. Fewer governments posting important information exclusively on social media, for example, and people being conditioned to look directly to news sources for their news.
- ttul 3y agoDon’t be misled. This is not government trying to protect Canadian journalism. This is a few rich, mostly billionaire-owned telecom/media companies working as hard as they can to keep out competition. It’s not Google’s fault that Canadian media oligopolists have no interest in paying for good journalism. Their only interest is in continuing to profit from lackluster offerings while holding down the pay of journalists by ensuring they have very few employment options in the country.
- autoexec 3y agoI'm pretty sure a link tax is a terrible idea anyway, but how does charging google a tax for linking to news articles prevent journalists from working for other news companies or starting their own?
- HeyImAlex 3y agoMaybe discoverability? If you can’t google “major event” to find news, you’ll wind up just going to big-news-site.com and searching there.
- paxys 3y agoOr just not bother at all.
- esquivalience 3y agoI hope this short comment gets the up votes it deserves. Access to news information is a boon. Restricting it is a step backwards. If lack of access dissuades people from finding information, the people as a whole will be more likely to see an unbalanced picture and be less well informed overall.
- paxys 3y agoWhich, as it turns out, is exactly what the government and large business syndicates that fund it (Rogers & Bell & co in this scenario) want. An open internet is a very dangerous thing to people in power worldwide.
- fidotron 3y agoThere is the clear subtext here that the current Canadian government are desperate to be able to control the narrative heading into the next elections, which may still be years away.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- erulabs 3y agoCanadas current administration trying to virtue signal on a bill that won’t pass? It’s a strange math that someone there thinks an image of appearing to fight big horrible tech bullies is a better campaign strategy than actually fighting big horrible Arctic bullies.
- post-it 3y agoThe bill is already law. I don't think it's virtue signaling, I think it's trying to funnel money into the pockets of Bell/Corus/Thomson Reuters/etc.
- deepspace 3y agoThe bill passed. Meta has already stopped allowing links to news on Facebook. This is just an announcement of the fee the government will be charging companies like Google and Meta for linking.
- MBCook 3y agoAt some point some government is going to have to pass this. The idea clearly isn’t going to go away until somewhere feels the consequences that come with passing it. Just like Google News failing to show French news sites due to a law. Of course France seems to decided to fine Google for not complying correctly with what they hoped would happen.
- wiml 3y agoThe nature of a link tax makes no sense anyway. Can I charge someone for citing an article? Can I charge someone for mentioning an article even if they don't use MLA style? Can I charge someone for obliquely referencing the existence of an article? Despite chasing links (heh) for a while, I have been unable to find a description of what the Canadian act actually does, only page after page of "Whereas…" intent/caveat.
- betaby 3y agoYou can not. Billionaires - can.
- steven135 3y agoWhat happens when you open Google News in France? You don't have links to French news websites?
- MBCook 3y agoThat’s my assumption but honestly I don’t know.
- arielcostas 3y agoGoogle News was closed in Spain between 2014 and 2021[1] because our conservative government ~of blithering idiots~ decided it would be a good idea to change copyright law and force companies like Google to have to pay AEDE (Spanish Diary Editor Association) for linking to articles of members of that organisation. And it wasn't until the EU Copyright Directive was transposed to Spain that we were able to use Google News again. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/3/22761041/google-news-relaunch-spain-payments-publishers-eu-copyright-directive https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/3/22761041/google-news-rela...
- fyzix 3y agoNews can spread fast on social media so this might be a willful attempt at limiting the reach of negative news as it can sway elections. Media outlets, social networks nor users benefit from this bill. The only beneficiaries seem to be corrupt politicians.
- paxys 3y agoLarge media outlets (Rogers, Bell) are the ones who lobbied for this bill. And they do benefit from it, because smaller, independent outlets are the ones that get the most exposure from social media.
- FlyingBears 3y agoThe whole bill C11 is the scariest form of censorship that is sold as some national pride benefit. Control over information is only tightening with this new link tax to line up Google and other social media to the party line.
- bonestamp2 3y agoI hope search is exempt from this tax... it's of historical and educational importance that people can search for news articles. On social media, fine whatever, tax it in a similar way to Australia where Meta and Google pay for it.
- seydor 3y agoThis can only work if every government does it. Google imposes a tax on everyone (advertising) so it is only fair that others impose a tax on google
- bstockton 3y agoI was little confused after reading the article exactly how this would work. I checked out the actual regulations and found this formula and explanation: > (Intermediary global revenue) × (Canadian share of global GDP [≈2%]) × (Contribution rate [4%]) Proxy for “Canadian revenue” Intermediary global revenue This figure refers to the annual global revenue of a digital news intermediary. It excludes other unrelated revenues from the company operating the intermediary. Doesn't seem like a very fair or accurate way to implement it regardless of whether this is a good idea or not.
- x0x0 3y agoYou can see why Meta, and likely Google, are quitting news though. eg Google's profit was approx 25% 2022q3. So this would be a 16% of profit tax. Oof.
- chongli 3y agoHow does 2% * 4% = 25% * 16%?
- z_ 3y agoDon’t ruin their fiction with facts.
- x0x0 3y agoIf profit is 25% of revenue, then 4 percent of revenue is 16 percent of profit. Not sure what your equation is besides randomly putting numbers on a line.
- kbelder 3y ago25% * 16% = 4%. He's saying they're taking 16% of Canadian profit. Or maybe his numbers are off.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoCanada O Canada. When will thou learn. Innovation has to be created in the country. That is the only way out of the mess you find yourself in. And it will only get worse.
- intrasight 3y agoBill C-18 nowhere contains the word "link" or "url". Has anyone read it and can point out the specific language that makes it a "link tax"?
- gspencley 3y agoHere you go: https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-18 https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-18 The language of the bill is "makes available." It is intentionally broad. > digital news intermediary means an online communications platform, including a search engine or social media service, that is subject to the legislative authority of Parliament and that makes news content produced by news outlets available to persons in Canada.
- intrasight 3y agoA URL is not "new content". I really don't see how they can interpret it as such. And if they are not sure, they should ask. Or is the issue that they have asked and have not received clarification?
- beej71 3y agoI once had a post removed from Facebook (not sure if it was DMCA, but it was a copyright claim). My offense: I had linked to a page that linked to a page with pirated content. Of course, the reporter had zero copyright claim on the URL I posted. But that didn't matter at the end of the day. And expecting politicians to willingly understand this instead of doing big political posturing is serious wishful thinking, I'm afraid.
- Tiktaalik 3y agoA bare URL alone I think yeah very arguably isn't news content, but a URL wrapping a headline and a photo is certainly news content. Generally we're seeing the latter.
- intrasight 3y ago
- spullara 3y agoTime to setup a URL shortener in a different country that all the links go to instead of the news sites.
- jimcsharp 3y agoI was thinking about that. A site like that wouldn't meet all the tests of eligibility in the bill, but it would probably not meet the eligibility to be copyright exempt for one reason or another. That's as much as I've thought of that. The thing at issue is not URLs, it is these sites' ability to pull and serve above the fold content. I think that's something the term "link tax" is obfuscating.
- artursapek 3y agoCanada looks like one of the most woefully mismanaged countries on Earth.
- Valodim 3y agoHaha, reminds me of the Canada on strike south park episode. "We want some of that internet money!"
- tomComb 3y agoBut we don’t get the money – bell and Rogers do.
- panick21_ 3y agoAh that old move. German media tried this like a decade ago. Canada bit slow I guess.
- motohagiography 3y agoI can get weather from satellites, traffic from platforms, local crime from social media, regulatory changes from professionals and blogs, and markets from market data. So long as we can get news from outside the country, news within Canada doesn't matter because it's all state narrative anyway. For an increasing number of people, mainstream news outlets offer nothing of value. Just today I ran into a random hiker in the woods and the conversation turned immediately to political corruption and how the media won't touch it. The govt in Canada likely wants the internet and news restrained, as they need to pull some things and probably don't want the news to foment popular cross border support again. Sure, link tax, whatever, there is no expectation the media or government are anything but hollow facades for some minority interests that have captured them. The popular mood talking to people in the street is very dark.
- noduerme 3y agoMaybe I'm looking for logic where there is none, but could someone explain what, precisely, the CA gov't is proposing to tax here? Is it a percentage of revenue from any ads that appear on the same page as a news link? A percentage of global ad revenue even if the ads are on different pages than the news links? Just Canadian news links or what? Also, what is "news"? Do links to Hacker News count? Would, let's say, a blog about cars based in another country get a tax bill from Canada if it ran ads and also included a link to a news site somewhere in its content? What if users post a news link in the blog's comments? Do "real" news sites have to pay tax for links to other news sites? The mind reels once you start thinking about all the potential gray areas in something so vague. But maybe it's simple and I'm just missing the core concept. What the hell is going on here?
- paxys 3y agoDon't try to find sense in the hundreds of pages of meaningless legalese. They are nothing but a reverse justification of a single directive – the Canadian government simply wants Google and Facebook to pay 4% of their annual revenue to Rogers, Bell and CBC.
- chongli 3y agoThe law only applies to businesses deemed by the government's regulatory agency (CRTC) to be "news intermediaries". So far, it looks like only Facebook and Google will be covered by this. The law has guidelines on who qualifies as a "news intermediary", and it requires you to be of a certain size (large revenues), so this isn't going to apply to Joe Blogger's Car News.
- mschuster91 3y agoTo provide an alternative take / a couple thought fragments on the idea of a "link tax"... the problem is that the Internet has turned anything involving news into a ruthless race to the bottom. Good journalism, surprise, costs serious money - you need to pay journalists, and if you're actually willing to step on people's toes, you need to have serious budgets allocated for lawyers and damage claims, should the courts not interpret the facts as liberal as you did. And on top of that, the Internet has won the fight against stuff printed on dead trees for convenience reasons. Unfortunately, the business model of the Internet is at its core rabid capitalism: the one with the lowest cost for the end user usually wins the most eyeballs, which means free, ad supported tabloid/outrage bait. And as we've seen with COVID or with the conspiracy peddlers that ended up pushing the 45th to office, that can have serious side effects on society as a whole. So, assuming that high quality journalism is essential to the survival of democracy (alone because journalism is vital in holding politicians and companies accountable), there are only a few options left: 1. the government pays for journalism and distributes it for free, either in the form of outright tax funding or via mandatory fees. This is the old "public broadcast" model, and it requires a lot of effort to keep it accepted as neutral by the general public, and it needs constant oversight to not become a government mouthpiece (an allegation that continues to rise in popularity in the case of the BBC, and something that has already happened in Hungary with disastrous effects). Also, independent media don't like it very much because obviously, they can't compete with "free and high quality". 2. the government bans or introduces strict licensing requirements to get foreign influence (such as propaganda content farms like in the Balkans [1]) under control. That raises serious constitutional issues in most Western democracies and legitimizes Putin doing the same in Russia. 3. governments go to those who actually make the money on the back of legitimate content creators and force them to hand over a part of the profit. Aka, a "link tax". It's hard for me to sympathize with Google, one of the richest companies on the planet, and Facebook which has played a key role in tearing our societies apart by letting fake news and propaganda run rampant on their platform. Pay your goddamn bills. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-balkan-troll-farms-are-spreading-coronavirus-disinformation/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-balkan-troll-farms-are-spr...
- r00fus 3y agoWhy not something like the fairness doctrine like existed in the US until the late 80s - at which point, inflammatory reporting become way more common?
- ungruntled 3y agoRegardless of the merits of this tax, a scary thing is that the availability of news in an entire nation can be thwarted by Facebook and Google.
- juancn 3y agoNewsflash: Canadian government desperate to be able to control the narrative on the next election. Joking aside, this is "Succession" style bullcrap. They're scratching big news backs so they scratch back on the next election period.