25 ms·

Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

71 points by Corvus 3y ago

Corvus 3y ago
“The agreement would see Canadian news continue to be shared on Google's platforms in return for the company making annual payments to news companies in the range of $100 million, a source with knowledge of the negotiations told CBC News.”
- KingLancelot 3y ago
  Countries are now extorting American tech companies, that’s what’s really going on here.
  - chongli 3y ago
    Yeah it’s a shakedown. I don’t see them getting any money out of Facebook though. I actually think Facebook is a better experience for users without news.
    - darrylb42 3y ago
      Facebook, all Meta properties no longer allow sharing anything considered news in Canada. If you put in a link to a news site it will be blocked. At one point they were event blocking news satire. People sharing news now will drop in an image instead of a link. Much less useful.
      - chongli 3y ago
        I think news sharing on Facebook mainly leads to outrage spirals and toxic engagement. That’s why I say the platform is better off without it. I’m disappointed that people have been able to circumvent the block with screenshots though.
    - pmontra 3y ago
      I'm not sure if this is what you meant but just in case, from the article: "Meta [...] ended its talks with the government last summer and stopped distributing Canadian news on Facebook and Instagram".
  - bensecure 3y ago
    If you're doing business in a country, naturally you need to deal with the regulatory environment of that country. Its surprising to see such explicit american chauvinism when discussing this issue.
    - PoignardAzur 3y ago
      I'm as much against american hegemony as the next frenchman, and I still consider this wave of "we'll make google pay for the traffic they send our way" regulations to be bullshit. It's carriage drivers making the automobile industry pay them a fine for the crime of making them obsolete.
      - polishdude20 3y ago
        I'm just disappointed that it seems the only way our government can make money is by pulling it from American companies.
      - bensecure 3y ago
        > It's carriage drivers making the automobile industry pay them a fine for the crime of making them obsolete. That's utter nonsense. If google is sending traffic to a site, then naturally they consider that site valuable in some way. Nothing about google makes news "obsolete", and in fact google is basically just a website for finding news articles (and other content). The Canadian implementation of this law, unlike the Australian one for example, gives google the option of excluding these news sites from search results entirely if they consider them unnecessary. That google has chosen to negotiate a deal instead demonstrates that google recognizes the value these sites provide.
        PoignardAzur 3y ago
        Fair, that's on me for reacting to the headline without reading the article, and "obsolete" is too strong a word. I was mostly thinking of the lobbying groups in europe which very much didn't want to allow the "exclude from search results" opt-out.
      - 3y ago
  - morbicer 3y ago
    Well it's a shitty way to operate but since these companies pay close to zero taxes I kinda support it
deleted 3y ago
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ratsmack 3y ago
I'm no fan of Google, but if it was me making the decision I would have told them to pack sand. Google is providing them with a service, not the other way around.
- Ajay-p 3y ago
  Agree completely. What's in it for Google? Will they really make that much more money providing news, versus just cutting Canada off?
  - deskamess 3y ago
    They should not have settled. Probably ran the numbers and for ad+search revenue and noticed it was worth it for $100m. If/Maybe you are making 300m then it's okay to give up that 100 to keep 200. And who gets to distribute the revenue?
- tharmas 3y ago
  I'm not taking sides but the issue is Canadian content. Because both countries share the same language, but there is a huge mismatch in economic might, Canadian content finds it hard to compete with American content. Mexico doesn't have the same problem largely because of language.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Not sure why the miss match is a problem. If Canadian demand for Canadian media is too low to support it, why should that be the problem of Google.
- udev 3y ago
  What is the service? Indexing and aggregating news? This is commodity now. Do you find this more valuable than the act of actually researching, writing, editing, and publishing the articles themselves?
  - wvenable 3y ago
hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
We just need a piece of action...let's be honest here, a bit of your $$$ to grant you...to persuade the public to grant you access.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
This is just shameful
- barbazoo 3y ago
  why?
clwg 3y ago
"The new regulations will allow Google to negotiate with a single group that would represent all media, allowing the company to limit its arbitration risk." - I'm sure this will be a large and diverse group representing the growing diversity of media in Canada, either that or it will be Rogers, Bell and Postmedia doing what they usually do, which is really nothing of value.
k0stas 3y ago
I always thought the intention was to get the same deal as Australia: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-56163550 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-56163550. It's not a surprise that Canada's media industry wanted the same deal and the government was willing to go to bat for it. The BBC article from 2021 linked above even says "The law is seen as a test case for similar regulation around the world."
PoignardAzur 3y ago
FAANG company pays the Danegeld to yet another country's entrenched media interests, episode 4562.
none_to_remain 3y ago
So what the Canadian government and journalists are telling me is that they'd like any outlet that doesn't loudly opt out to be considered government shills.
lilsoso 3y ago
(lol i have to edit this mistake I've seen before)
- coumbaya 3y ago
  That 38 million times 1 million $ is more than 100 million $ ?
  - lilsoso 3y ago
    thanks, egregious error I made in haste =)
6510 3y ago
I think the only thing that matters is getting the news to readers one way or the other. The biggest problem here is that most news outlets publish underfunded garbage if not click bait. An even weirder perspective: What if they didn't kill reader?
maxglute 3y ago
14m daily fb users in canada, $6 per head. I don't know if that's too much or too little.
vivekd 3y ago
This looks like a capitulation for the Canadian government to save face. The goal was to provide continuous money for Canadian media (based on clicks not a 100 mill lump sum to an organization representing all media) and more importantly to give legacy media clicks - privilege their content over other content. Google and facebook refused, and I think this is Canada's government and their media lobbyists bowing to a watered down money payment to save face after not getting what they actually sought for
o11c 3y ago
So apparently it is plausible to require, then.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Always was. Never believe the talking points and attempts at shaping the narrative. It’s “impossible” until it’s done.
  - SllX 3y ago
    It was never a matter of “could” only “should”. It’s still a bad law, and Google shouldn’t have capitulated.
- graeme 3y ago
  Meta is still out. No news media in Canada can share their articles there anymore. And Google has been exempted from the law - that's how the govt and google reached an agreement. The law called for google to bargain individually with each publisher, but instead google negotiated a $100 million payment with the government in order to have them not apply the law.
brushfoot 3y ago
Even if you agree that Google should have to prop up Canadian news organizations—which I don't, but for the sake of argument—predicating that support specifically on hyperlinks seems like a terrible precedent to set. Any site of any size should be free to link wherever it wants, freely.
- whythre 3y ago
  Yes. Adding more walls to the increasingly walled gardens of the internet is terrible.
- randomdata 3y ago
  Especially when the news organization is free to deny the request referred by a linking party who has not offered the expected compensation. It is not clear why a new law is needed here when existing contract law already sufficiently covers the issue.
  - wubrr 3y ago
    How would news organizations deny the request referred by a linking party? Are you talking about a technical denial - as in reject the HTTP request? I guess technically they can base something like this on HTTP referer header, but you can have links without referer info as well.
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      Referrer is exactly how you would do it. The idiocy here is that most of these publishers are likely customers of Google's ad networks anyways, and the clicks through to the articles are yielding ad revenue to them, and they likely are getting analytics and tracking that identifies exactly where the inbound traffic is coming from. It feels like a shakedown by people who are in other parts of the business totally disconnected from the web content / publishing arms, who likely know better?
      - wubrr 3y ago
whythre 3y ago
Where does this end? Can’t any country squat on links and require (not just google, but whoever) pay?
- onion2k 3y ago
  Yes. Most of the time it's not worthwhile though because few companies will pay, and at some point breaking the web starts losing you votes so politicians will back down first. Except when it's Google..
- deleted 3y ago
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nolist_policy 3y ago
I wonder if this makes it harder for competition to enter the search engine market.
- ksherlock 3y ago
  From the horse's mouth: --- This Act applies in respect of a digital news intermediary if, having regard to the following factors, there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses: (a) the size of the intermediary or the operator; (b) whether the market for the intermediary gives the operator a strategic advantage over news businesses; and (c) whether the intermediary occupies a prominent market position. --- So a new search engine most likely won't initially have the size and market position necessary for the law to apply.
Georgelemental 3y ago
Who qualifies as a news organization under this law? Can any random declare themselves a "journalist"? Or do the benefits accrue only to Trusted Sources approved by Your Friend, The Government?
- deleted 3y ago
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- dghughes 3y ago
  It's Bill C-18 here it is if you want to read it. https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-assent https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-a...
  - graeme 3y ago
    The govt is actually not applying C-18 to google. That's the deal that was signed: google makes an annual payment, and the govt doesn't designate them as a news provider. So just like in Australia, the applies to nobody. The text of the law isn't very relevant, the whole thing is intended as an elaborate shakedown.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  If I understand correctly, Google agreed to pay proportional to the number of human journalists an organization employs. If so, that's an awesome detail in this age of AI journalism.
  - ars 3y ago
    Does the deal say anything about the jurnalist pay? Can a high-school make every single student a "full time journalist" and rake in the cash? Or some other sort of club instead of a school.
- jpollock 3y ago
  This seems to be the definitions. There are some exclusions for foreign owned outlets. news business means an individual or entity that operates a news outlet in Canada. (entreprise de nouvelles) news content means content — in any format, including an audio or audiovisual format — that reports on, investigates or explains current issues or events of public interest and includes such content that an Indigenous news outlet makes available by means of Indigenous storytelling. (contenu de nouvelles) news outlet means an undertaking or any distinct part of an undertaking whose primary purpose is to produce news content and includes an Indigenous news outlet or an official language minority community news outlet. (média d’information) Eligible news businesses — designation 27 (1) At the request of a news business, the Commission must, by order, designate the business as eligible if it (a) is a qualified Canadian journalism organization as defined in subsection 248(1) of the Income Tax Act, or is licensed by the Commission under paragraph 9(1) (b) of the Broadcasting Act as a campus station, community station or native station as those terms are defined in regulations made under that Act or other categories of licensees established by the Commission with a similar community mandate; (b) produces news content of public interest that is primarily focused on matters of general interest and reports of current events, including coverage of democratic institutions and processes, and (i) regularly employs two or more journalists in Canada, which journalists may include journalists who own or are a partner in the news business and journalists who do not deal at arm’s length with the business, (ii) operates in Canada, including having content edited and designed in Canada, (iii) produces news content that is not primarily focused on a particular topic such as industry-specific news, sports, recreation, arts, lifestyle or entertainment, and (iv) is either a member of a recognized journalistic association and follows the code of ethics of a recognized journalistic association or has its own code of ethics whose standards of professional conduct require adherence to the recognized processes and principles of the journalism profession, including fairness, independence and rigour in reporting news and handling sources; or (c) operates an Indigenous news outlet in Canada and produces news content that includes matters of general interest, including coverage of matters relating to the rights of Indigenous peoples, including the right of self-government and treaty rights. Public list 29 (1) The Commission must maintain a list of eligible news businesses and publish that list on its website. An eligible news business is only included on the list if it gives its consent.
xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
I'm glad Canada stayed relatively firm on this. The prior art in Australia made this a no brainer.
- luuurker 3y ago
  Is this a good thing though? Paying to link to a website?
- graeme 3y ago
  Meta left news in Canada and isn't set to return - no news media can post to Meta platforms. Now media outlets have lost a good chunk of their organic business model and are reduced to begging. The government implemented a large media tax subsidy as a result of how much C-18 cost the media so far. And all pre-existing Meta and Google deals have been cancelled. This $100 million is all there is.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    > no news media can post to Meta platforms The local CTV outlet still does (not sure about their wider brand, I only look for local news). They just can't link back to CTV's website anymore.
NorwegianDude 3y ago
I think search engines should be opt-in, not opt-out. Just linking to something is fine, but search engines also takes content and uses it to earn money. One example is the cards on Google where they extract content and shows it alongside ads. Nothing else I can think of works like this. Generally if you take the work of others without being allowed and use it to make money you'll end up in trouble. Now, for most people the trade-off is worth it, but it should not be the default. It should be a quick opt-in using robots.txt.
- Analemma_ 3y ago
  This is such a bizarre way of thinking that's utterly antithetical to how the internet works. If you publish something publicly on the internet, people can see it and link to it. If you don't want that, gate access behind a paywall or login, or don't publish it all. Publishing it publicly and then demanding conditions on how it is accessed is kind of nonsensical.
  - coldpie 3y ago
    Generally the problem is not the link itself, it's the headline and any included blurb/summary/image from the article. The problem being that users see & gain the content solely when viewed from the link aggregator, without ever actually visiting the originating website and participating in its monetization methods. A bare "http:// http://..." URL probably would not have raised the same objections, but also no one would actually use a link aggregator that is just bare URLs. Both sides have a point here. I'm not sure where I end up on the issue myself.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      > it's the headline and any included blurb/summary/image from the article. Why would that be a problem? Open Graph was created by Meta exactly so that these news sites have editorial control over those details. And the Canadian news outlets have adopted Open Graph, so that is not an issue. If they don't like what is shown, they have full control to change it. The headline/blurb/image you see is what they have specified. That is what they want you to see. The real problem is that reporting the news doesn't pay very well anymore and certain news players were on the hunt for a government subsidy to offset that reality.
granzymes 3y ago
Respect to Meta for having the courage to stand up to the media lobby in Canada and turn off news in response to this law. I'm happy that Google wrung concessions out of the government, but it would've been better for the open internet had they stuck to their guns and removed news links as well.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Respect to Meta for having the courage to stand up to the media lobby in Canada I'm not sure what's going on in Canada for Meta to be seen as the "good guy". Feels like rooting for Hitler to defeat Stalin.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Indeed, and the funny thing is that FB itself became a more pleasant place after people stopped being able to post rage-links to news articles anymore. Though I've since de-activated my account, so I can't say if that's still the case.
  - vivekd 3y ago
    There's a huge portion of people here that really hate our government. I'm one of them. This whole law was a result of legacy media lobbying for that law, a lot of smaller Canadian media outlets and small content creators opposed it. Everything is like that here, the government is ruled by special interests. Even this law, the government abused parliamentary process and the COVID situation to avoid having this law debated in parliament before it was passed. They don't care about democracy, they don't care about the rule of law, they don't care about anything, they just do what benefits them and their friends. I hate Canada's politically connected elite, and honestly prefer facebook
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >Everything is like that here, the government is ruled by special interests. [...] Everything is like that here, the government is ruled by special interests. Don't wanna sound like a conspiracy nut but it's like that basically everywhere. The rich need to get richer, the poor need to tighten the belt. Democracy needs constant supervision (who watches the watchmen?) and checks and bounds with accountability, otherwise, leaders left unaccountable and democracy left unchecked slowly devolves into a kleptocracy.
monkeynotes 3y ago
What I find incredible about this overall controversy is how Canadian news outlets begged for this law, and now they are all butthurt that they have no traffic. I have no idea why they thought they had leverage.
Karawebnetwork 3y ago
One side effect of this whole ordeal that I hate is the fact that fake news sites and conspiracy theory sites that masquerade as "news sites" are not blocked. The result is that platforms are filled with bad content that some people find hard to differentiate from the truth.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  So disinformation sites will be effectively free from competition on Facebook Canada … this will end well.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Really? I don't use Meta enough to notice, but I've seen several non-news websites complain that Meta is categorizing them as news websites so I imagine that most fake news sites are also being blocked.
theLiminator 3y ago
I think this is horrible for the internet. Sets a terrible precedent.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
olalonde 3y ago
Poilievre pledged to repeal Bill C-18 (the "link tax") and is leading in the polls, so there's that.
- mh8h 3y ago
  Well... now that Google is starting to pay, and I expect Meta to follow suit, I don't think he will have much to argue for repealing the law.
deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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gspencley 3y ago
As a Canadian this is disappointing to me. I disagree with the law. Actually, disagree is too soft. I think it is absolutely ridiculous. By Google agreeing to pay even one penny, it removes a large incentive for our politicans and regulations to realize that this was ill-conceived and to come to their senses and repeal.
- oofta-boofta 3y ago
  [dead]
- laweijfmvo 3y ago
  How does the Canadian law compare to the Australian one? As I understand it, the Australian law had a lot of influence from people like Rupert Murdoch, specifically targeted "big tech" companies like Meta and Google, and didn't benefit small[er]/independent news organizations.
  - wintogreen74 3y ago
    The biggest difference on the surface is the AU law focuses on aggregators providing summaries that remove the need to visit the source, where the CA law targets just references, aka links.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I'm not Canadian but have many friends and family there having worked and lived there in the past. I couldn't agree more. The current gov went way overboard with this, and by Google caving they have just guaranteed more of the same. There's no incentive from everyday people anymore for politicians to care about this. I'm usually pretty in-the-middle on issues, but in this case it seems ridiculous. Google is giving them a valuable service for free by sending traffic their way. If it wouldn't violate neutrality, they should pay Google not the other way around[1]. A quick logic check helps reinforce this: If appearing in the search results were a bad thing for them, then why would these companies hire SEO experts to bolster their search rankings? [1]: Note this is regarding the "tax" for serving a link, not talking about a full preview or AI summary or something, on which I'm much more sympathetic to the site owners and think they have a legitimate case worthy of debate
sna1l 3y ago
Gotta love the regulatory capture that will come with this for that one single news collective. They'll extract a nice little rent for not really providing a ton of benefit
- lainga 3y ago
  Somewhere, far away, the founders of the HBC are tearing up a little
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  This Is The Way with Canada. Always has been. Regulatory capture, privileged monopoly state that simply replaced its British colonial masters with local ones. From the Hudson's Bay Company to Bell/Rogers or Suncor or Postmedia today. Doug Ford in the pocket of housing developers, Daniel Smith & PP in the pocket of the O&G sector, Trudeau in the pocket of Bay St. The two major parties are just warring clans over which sector will get to dominate us at any particular moment. I think the US is f'd up, and I don't want to be a part of it. But I also don't want to be a part of the gross kleptocratic mediocracy that's been built here.
deleted 3y ago
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LAC-Tech 3y ago
Sad for google to fold like this. Though very true to form.
crazymoka 3y ago
So if I just put a link on my blog to a source news article I have to pay for the pleasure?
- idle_zealot 3y ago
  Only if your blog is big enough to have bargaining power with news sites. Not that this makes the law just, but it is specifically targeted at large traffic sources.
barelysapient 3y ago
A big win for Canadian media company shareholders.
robocat 3y ago
I wonder what SEO that decision will lead to. $100 million a year can incentivise some awful outcomes.
inlined 3y ago
Taken in the context of Google as a whole, this seems like pretty good evidence that Google does not consider itself to benefit from monopoly power like the DOJ claims. If Google did have a monopolistic advantage, they could refuse to pay the link tax. Clearly they're worried about losing market share to other search engines. [usual disclaimer: I work at Google but on nothing related to search or policy]
- cool_dude85 3y ago
  >If Google did have a monopolistic advantage, they could refuse to pay the link tax. Or maybe they think the engineering work to maintain a whole separate search page, and revenue loss from not including links, is less than the amount they stand to pay.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I'm not sure I agree. I'm not sure I disagree either though. But it seems like it might be a false dichotomy. For example, with a current gov like Canada, I think they'd be more worried about government action than competitors, and that's plenty of an incentive to get them to pay the money.
- beej71 3y ago
  I thought they did it because they figured paying the tax was maximizing revenue. But I hadn't considered the antitrust advantages.
xeckr 3y ago
Next up: Canadian news agencies forcing their employees to click on their links a thousand times per day to prop up this new and lucrative revenue stream.
latenightcoding 3y ago
This is terrible, it will only encourage the Canadian gov to regulate more tech related things. They absolutely suck at tech.
stalfosknight 3y ago
I'm no fan of Google whatsoever but I really don't agree with this premise that just because they're successful and their competitors haven't figured out how to compete yet that Google should then be forced to be sugar daddy to legacy businesses. The solution is unleashing your tech industry not more nanny laws.
hulitu 3y ago
> Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act Canada: the best democracy, money can buy. /s

71 points by Corvus 3y ago

“The agreement would see Canadian news continue to be shared on Google's platforms in return for the company making annual payments to news companies in the range of $100 million, a source with knowledge of the negotiations told CBC News.”

KingLancelot 3y ago
Countries are now extorting American tech companies, that’s what’s really going on here.
- chongli 3y ago
  Yeah it’s a shakedown. I don’t see them getting any money out of Facebook though. I actually think Facebook is a better experience for users without news.
  - darrylb42 3y ago
    Facebook, all Meta properties no longer allow sharing anything considered news in Canada. If you put in a link to a news site it will be blocked. At one point they were event blocking news satire. People sharing news now will drop in an image instead of a link. Much less useful.
    - chongli 3y ago
      I think news sharing on Facebook mainly leads to outrage spirals and toxic engagement. That’s why I say the platform is better off without it. I’m disappointed that people have been able to circumvent the block with screenshots though.
  - pmontra 3y ago
    I'm not sure if this is what you meant but just in case, from the article: "Meta [...] ended its talks with the government last summer and stopped distributing Canadian news on Facebook and Instagram".
- bensecure 3y ago
  If you're doing business in a country, naturally you need to deal with the regulatory environment of that country. Its surprising to see such explicit american chauvinism when discussing this issue.
  - PoignardAzur 3y ago
    I'm as much against american hegemony as the next frenchman, and I still consider this wave of "we'll make google pay for the traffic they send our way" regulations to be bullshit. It's carriage drivers making the automobile industry pay them a fine for the crime of making them obsolete.
    - polishdude20 3y ago
      I'm just disappointed that it seems the only way our government can make money is by pulling it from American companies.
    - bensecure 3y ago
      > It's carriage drivers making the automobile industry pay them a fine for the crime of making them obsolete. That's utter nonsense. If google is sending traffic to a site, then naturally they consider that site valuable in some way. Nothing about google makes news "obsolete", and in fact google is basically just a website for finding news articles (and other content). The Canadian implementation of this law, unlike the Australian one for example, gives google the option of excluding these news sites from search results entirely if they consider them unnecessary. That google has chosen to negotiate a deal instead demonstrates that google recognizes the value these sites provide.
      - PoignardAzur 3y ago
        Fair, that's on me for reacting to the headline without reading the article, and "obsolete" is too strong a word. I was mostly thinking of the lobbying groups in europe which very much didn't want to allow the "exclude from search results" opt-out.
    - 3y ago
- morbicer 3y ago
  Well it's a shitty way to operate but since these companies pay close to zero taxes I kinda support it

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[deleted]

ratsmack 3y ago

I'm no fan of Google, but if it was me making the decision I would have told them to pack sand. Google is providing them with a service, not the other way around.

Ajay-p 3y ago
Agree completely. What's in it for Google? Will they really make that much more money providing news, versus just cutting Canada off?
- deskamess 3y ago
  They should not have settled. Probably ran the numbers and for ad+search revenue and noticed it was worth it for $100m. If/Maybe you are making 300m then it's okay to give up that 100 to keep 200. And who gets to distribute the revenue?
tharmas 3y ago
I'm not taking sides but the issue is Canadian content. Because both countries share the same language, but there is a huge mismatch in economic might, Canadian content finds it hard to compete with American content. Mexico doesn't have the same problem largely because of language.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Not sure why the miss match is a problem. If Canadian demand for Canadian media is too low to support it, why should that be the problem of Google.
udev 3y ago
What is the service? Indexing and aggregating news? This is commodity now. Do you find this more valuable than the act of actually researching, writing, editing, and publishing the articles themselves?
- wvenable 3y ago

hnthrowaway0328 3y ago

We just need a piece of action...let's be honest here, a bit of your $$$ to grant you...to persuade the public to grant you access.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

This is just shameful

barbazoo 3y ago
why?

clwg 3y ago

"The new regulations will allow Google to negotiate with a single group that would represent all media, allowing the company to limit its arbitration risk." - I'm sure this will be a large and diverse group representing the growing diversity of media in Canada, either that or it will be Rogers, Bell and Postmedia doing what they usually do, which is really nothing of value.

k0stas 3y ago

I always thought the intention was to get the same deal as Australia: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-56163550 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-56163550. It's not a surprise that Canada's media industry wanted the same deal and the government was willing to go to bat for it. The BBC article from 2021 linked above even says "The law is seen as a test case for similar regulation around the world."

PoignardAzur 3y ago

FAANG company pays the Danegeld to yet another country's entrenched media interests, episode 4562.

none_to_remain 3y ago

So what the Canadian government and journalists are telling me is that they'd like any outlet that doesn't loudly opt out to be considered government shills.

lilsoso 3y ago

(lol i have to edit this mistake I've seen before)

coumbaya 3y ago
That 38 million times 1 million $ is more than 100 million $ ?
- lilsoso 3y ago
  thanks, egregious error I made in haste =)

6510 3y ago

I think the only thing that matters is getting the news to readers one way or the other. The biggest problem here is that most news outlets publish underfunded garbage if not click bait. An even weirder perspective: What if they didn't kill reader?

maxglute 3y ago

14m daily fb users in canada, $6 per head. I don't know if that's too much or too little.

vivekd 3y ago

This looks like a capitulation for the Canadian government to save face. The goal was to provide continuous money for Canadian media (based on clicks not a 100 mill lump sum to an organization representing all media) and more importantly to give legacy media clicks - privilege their content over other content. Google and facebook refused, and I think this is Canada's government and their media lobbyists bowing to a watered down money payment to save face after not getting what they actually sought for

o11c 3y ago

So apparently it is plausible to require, then.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Always was. Never believe the talking points and attempts at shaping the narrative. It’s “impossible” until it’s done.
- SllX 3y ago
  It was never a matter of “could” only “should”. It’s still a bad law, and Google shouldn’t have capitulated.
graeme 3y ago
Meta is still out. No news media in Canada can share their articles there anymore. And Google has been exempted from the law - that's how the govt and google reached an agreement. The law called for google to bargain individually with each publisher, but instead google negotiated a $100 million payment with the government in order to have them not apply the law.

brushfoot 3y ago

Even if you agree that Google should have to prop up Canadian news organizations—which I don't, but for the sake of argument—predicating that support specifically on hyperlinks seems like a terrible precedent to set. Any site of any size should be free to link wherever it wants, freely.

whythre 3y ago
Yes. Adding more walls to the increasingly walled gardens of the internet is terrible.
randomdata 3y ago
Especially when the news organization is free to deny the request referred by a linking party who has not offered the expected compensation. It is not clear why a new law is needed here when existing contract law already sufficiently covers the issue.
- wubrr 3y ago
  How would news organizations deny the request referred by a linking party? Are you talking about a technical denial - as in reject the HTTP request? I guess technically they can base something like this on HTTP referer header, but you can have links without referer info as well.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Referrer is exactly how you would do it. The idiocy here is that most of these publishers are likely customers of Google's ad networks anyways, and the clicks through to the articles are yielding ad revenue to them, and they likely are getting analytics and tracking that identifies exactly where the inbound traffic is coming from. It feels like a shakedown by people who are in other parts of the business totally disconnected from the web content / publishing arms, who likely know better?
    - wubrr 3y ago

whythre 3y ago

Where does this end? Can’t any country squat on links and require (not just google, but whoever) pay?

onion2k 3y ago
Yes. Most of the time it's not worthwhile though because few companies will pay, and at some point breaking the web starts losing you votes so politicians will back down first. Except when it's Google..
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nolist_policy 3y ago

I wonder if this makes it harder for competition to enter the search engine market.

ksherlock 3y ago
From the horse's mouth: --- This Act applies in respect of a digital news intermediary if, having regard to the following factors, there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses: (a) the size of the intermediary or the operator; (b) whether the market for the intermediary gives the operator a strategic advantage over news businesses; and (c) whether the intermediary occupies a prominent market position. --- So a new search engine most likely won't initially have the size and market position necessary for the law to apply.

Georgelemental 3y ago

Who qualifies as a news organization under this law? Can any random declare themselves a "journalist"? Or do the benefits accrue only to Trusted Sources approved by Your Friend, The Government?

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dghughes 3y ago
It's Bill C-18 here it is if you want to read it. https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-assent https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-a...
- graeme 3y ago
  The govt is actually not applying C-18 to google. That's the deal that was signed: google makes an annual payment, and the govt doesn't designate them as a news provider. So just like in Australia, the applies to nobody. The text of the law isn't very relevant, the whole thing is intended as an elaborate shakedown.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
If I understand correctly, Google agreed to pay proportional to the number of human journalists an organization employs. If so, that's an awesome detail in this age of AI journalism.
- ars 3y ago
  Does the deal say anything about the jurnalist pay? Can a high-school make every single student a "full time journalist" and rake in the cash? Or some other sort of club instead of a school.
jpollock 3y ago
This seems to be the definitions. There are some exclusions for foreign owned outlets. news business means an individual or entity that operates a news outlet in Canada. (entreprise de nouvelles) news content means content — in any format, including an audio or audiovisual format — that reports on, investigates or explains current issues or events of public interest and includes such content that an Indigenous news outlet makes available by means of Indigenous storytelling. (contenu de nouvelles) news outlet means an undertaking or any distinct part of an undertaking whose primary purpose is to produce news content and includes an Indigenous news outlet or an official language minority community news outlet. (média d’information) Eligible news businesses — designation 27 (1) At the request of a news business, the Commission must, by order, designate the business as eligible if it (a) is a qualified Canadian journalism organization as defined in subsection 248(1) of the Income Tax Act, or is licensed by the Commission under paragraph 9(1) (b) of the Broadcasting Act as a campus station, community station or native station as those terms are defined in regulations made under that Act or other categories of licensees established by the Commission with a similar community mandate; (b) produces news content of public interest that is primarily focused on matters of general interest and reports of current events, including coverage of democratic institutions and processes, and (i) regularly employs two or more journalists in Canada, which journalists may include journalists who own or are a partner in the news business and journalists who do not deal at arm’s length with the business, (ii) operates in Canada, including having content edited and designed in Canada, (iii) produces news content that is not primarily focused on a particular topic such as industry-specific news, sports, recreation, arts, lifestyle or entertainment, and (iv) is either a member of a recognized journalistic association and follows the code of ethics of a recognized journalistic association or has its own code of ethics whose standards of professional conduct require adherence to the recognized processes and principles of the journalism profession, including fairness, independence and rigour in reporting news and handling sources; or (c) operates an Indigenous news outlet in Canada and produces news content that includes matters of general interest, including coverage of matters relating to the rights of Indigenous peoples, including the right of self-government and treaty rights. Public list 29 (1) The Commission must maintain a list of eligible news businesses and publish that list on its website. An eligible news business is only included on the list if it gives its consent.

xyzzy_plugh 3y ago

I'm glad Canada stayed relatively firm on this. The prior art in Australia made this a no brainer.

luuurker 3y ago
Is this a good thing though? Paying to link to a website?
graeme 3y ago
Meta left news in Canada and isn't set to return - no news media can post to Meta platforms. Now media outlets have lost a good chunk of their organic business model and are reduced to begging. The government implemented a large media tax subsidy as a result of how much C-18 cost the media so far. And all pre-existing Meta and Google deals have been cancelled. This $100 million is all there is.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > no news media can post to Meta platforms The local CTV outlet still does (not sure about their wider brand, I only look for local news). They just can't link back to CTV's website anymore.

NorwegianDude 3y ago

I think search engines should be opt-in, not opt-out. Just linking to something is fine, but search engines also takes content and uses it to earn money. One example is the cards on Google where they extract content and shows it alongside ads. Nothing else I can think of works like this. Generally if you take the work of others without being allowed and use it to make money you'll end up in trouble. Now, for most people the trade-off is worth it, but it should not be the default. It should be a quick opt-in using robots.txt.

Analemma_ 3y ago
This is such a bizarre way of thinking that's utterly antithetical to how the internet works. If you publish something publicly on the internet, people can see it and link to it. If you don't want that, gate access behind a paywall or login, or don't publish it all. Publishing it publicly and then demanding conditions on how it is accessed is kind of nonsensical.
- coldpie 3y ago
  Generally the problem is not the link itself, it's the headline and any included blurb/summary/image from the article. The problem being that users see & gain the content solely when viewed from the link aggregator, without ever actually visiting the originating website and participating in its monetization methods. A bare "http:// http://..." URL probably would not have raised the same objections, but also no one would actually use a link aggregator that is just bare URLs. Both sides have a point here. I'm not sure where I end up on the issue myself.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    > it's the headline and any included blurb/summary/image from the article. Why would that be a problem? Open Graph was created by Meta exactly so that these news sites have editorial control over those details. And the Canadian news outlets have adopted Open Graph, so that is not an issue. If they don't like what is shown, they have full control to change it. The headline/blurb/image you see is what they have specified. That is what they want you to see. The real problem is that reporting the news doesn't pay very well anymore and certain news players were on the hunt for a government subsidy to offset that reality.

granzymes 3y ago

Respect to Meta for having the courage to stand up to the media lobby in Canada and turn off news in response to this law. I'm happy that Google wrung concessions out of the government, but it would've been better for the open internet had they stuck to their guns and removed news links as well.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Respect to Meta for having the courage to stand up to the media lobby in Canada I'm not sure what's going on in Canada for Meta to be seen as the "good guy". Feels like rooting for Hitler to defeat Stalin.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Indeed, and the funny thing is that FB itself became a more pleasant place after people stopped being able to post rage-links to news articles anymore. Though I've since de-activated my account, so I can't say if that's still the case.
- vivekd 3y ago
  There's a huge portion of people here that really hate our government. I'm one of them. This whole law was a result of legacy media lobbying for that law, a lot of smaller Canadian media outlets and small content creators opposed it. Everything is like that here, the government is ruled by special interests. Even this law, the government abused parliamentary process and the COVID situation to avoid having this law debated in parliament before it was passed. They don't care about democracy, they don't care about the rule of law, they don't care about anything, they just do what benefits them and their friends. I hate Canada's politically connected elite, and honestly prefer facebook
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Everything is like that here, the government is ruled by special interests. [...] Everything is like that here, the government is ruled by special interests. Don't wanna sound like a conspiracy nut but it's like that basically everywhere. The rich need to get richer, the poor need to tighten the belt. Democracy needs constant supervision (who watches the watchmen?) and checks and bounds with accountability, otherwise, leaders left unaccountable and democracy left unchecked slowly devolves into a kleptocracy.

monkeynotes 3y ago

What I find incredible about this overall controversy is how Canadian news outlets begged for this law, and now they are all butthurt that they have no traffic. I have no idea why they thought they had leverage.

Karawebnetwork 3y ago

One side effect of this whole ordeal that I hate is the fact that fake news sites and conspiracy theory sites that masquerade as "news sites" are not blocked. The result is that platforms are filled with bad content that some people find hard to differentiate from the truth.

TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
So disinformation sites will be effectively free from competition on Facebook Canada … this will end well.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Really? I don't use Meta enough to notice, but I've seen several non-news websites complain that Meta is categorizing them as news websites so I imagine that most fake news sites are also being blocked.

theLiminator 3y ago

I think this is horrible for the internet. Sets a terrible precedent.

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olalonde 3y ago

Poilievre pledged to repeal Bill C-18 (the "link tax") and is leading in the polls, so there's that.

mh8h 3y ago
Well... now that Google is starting to pay, and I expect Meta to follow suit, I don't think he will have much to argue for repealing the law.

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gspencley 3y ago

As a Canadian this is disappointing to me. I disagree with the law. Actually, disagree is too soft. I think it is absolutely ridiculous. By Google agreeing to pay even one penny, it removes a large incentive for our politicans and regulations to realize that this was ill-conceived and to come to their senses and repeal.

oofta-boofta 3y ago
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laweijfmvo 3y ago
How does the Canadian law compare to the Australian one? As I understand it, the Australian law had a lot of influence from people like Rupert Murdoch, specifically targeted "big tech" companies like Meta and Google, and didn't benefit small[er]/independent news organizations.
- wintogreen74 3y ago
  The biggest difference on the surface is the AU law focuses on aggregators providing summaries that remove the need to visit the source, where the CA law targets just references, aka links.
freedomben 3y ago
I'm not Canadian but have many friends and family there having worked and lived there in the past. I couldn't agree more. The current gov went way overboard with this, and by Google caving they have just guaranteed more of the same. There's no incentive from everyday people anymore for politicians to care about this. I'm usually pretty in-the-middle on issues, but in this case it seems ridiculous. Google is giving them a valuable service for free by sending traffic their way. If it wouldn't violate neutrality, they should pay Google not the other way around[1]. A quick logic check helps reinforce this: If appearing in the search results were a bad thing for them, then why would these companies hire SEO experts to bolster their search rankings? [1]: Note this is regarding the "tax" for serving a link, not talking about a full preview or AI summary or something, on which I'm much more sympathetic to the site owners and think they have a legitimate case worthy of debate

sna1l 3y ago

Gotta love the regulatory capture that will come with this for that one single news collective. They'll extract a nice little rent for not really providing a ton of benefit

lainga 3y ago
Somewhere, far away, the founders of the HBC are tearing up a little
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
This Is The Way with Canada. Always has been. Regulatory capture, privileged monopoly state that simply replaced its British colonial masters with local ones. From the Hudson's Bay Company to Bell/Rogers or Suncor or Postmedia today. Doug Ford in the pocket of housing developers, Daniel Smith & PP in the pocket of the O&G sector, Trudeau in the pocket of Bay St. The two major parties are just warring clans over which sector will get to dominate us at any particular moment. I think the US is f'd up, and I don't want to be a part of it. But I also don't want to be a part of the gross kleptocratic mediocracy that's been built here.

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LAC-Tech 3y ago

Sad for google to fold like this. Though very true to form.

crazymoka 3y ago

So if I just put a link on my blog to a source news article I have to pay for the pleasure?

idle_zealot 3y ago
Only if your blog is big enough to have bargaining power with news sites. Not that this makes the law just, but it is specifically targeted at large traffic sources.

barelysapient 3y ago

A big win for Canadian media company shareholders.

robocat 3y ago

I wonder what SEO that decision will lead to. $100 million a year can incentivise some awful outcomes.

inlined 3y ago

Taken in the context of Google as a whole, this seems like pretty good evidence that Google does not consider itself to benefit from monopoly power like the DOJ claims. If Google did have a monopolistic advantage, they could refuse to pay the link tax. Clearly they're worried about losing market share to other search engines. [usual disclaimer: I work at Google but on nothing related to search or policy]

cool_dude85 3y ago
>If Google did have a monopolistic advantage, they could refuse to pay the link tax. Or maybe they think the engineering work to maintain a whole separate search page, and revenue loss from not including links, is less than the amount they stand to pay.
freedomben 3y ago
I'm not sure I agree. I'm not sure I disagree either though. But it seems like it might be a false dichotomy. For example, with a current gov like Canada, I think they'd be more worried about government action than competitors, and that's plenty of an incentive to get them to pay the money.
beej71 3y ago
I thought they did it because they figured paying the tax was maximizing revenue. But I hadn't considered the antitrust advantages.

xeckr 3y ago

Next up: Canadian news agencies forcing their employees to click on their links a thousand times per day to prop up this new and lucrative revenue stream.

latenightcoding 3y ago

This is terrible, it will only encourage the Canadian gov to regulate more tech related things. They absolutely suck at tech.

stalfosknight 3y ago

I'm no fan of Google whatsoever but I really don't agree with this premise that just because they're successful and their competitors haven't figured out how to compete yet that Google should then be forced to be sugar daddy to legacy businesses. The solution is unleashing your tech industry not more nanny laws.

hulitu 3y ago

> Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act Canada: the best democracy, money can buy. /s