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This is a popular myth about the way the law works in Canada. The myth may be based on how the Australian version works, I wouldn't know. But here in Canada, th

This is a popular myth about the way the law works in Canada. The myth may be based on how the Australian version works, I wouldn't know. But here in Canada, this is the relevant text of the bill: > 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 "Making available" includes just links. In other words, there is no qualifier in the bill what-so-ever that requires that previews and snippets be extracted and provided. A single link with no text or any other content whatever qualifies as "making available." Here is the entire text of the bill: 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...

Nextgrid 3y ago
> makes news content [...] available That sounds like a simple link wouldn't count?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gspencley 3y ago
  I suppose I could have included other "relevant" sections of the bill. But there's a reason I linked to the full text. > "Making available of news content (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." So not only is there no qualifier saying that content needs to be reproduced, but (b) specifically says that "facilitating" access BY ANY MEANS counts as "making available."
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    Indexes don't work without consuming the news content first in order to build the index, right? So it's reasonable to argue that a news search index is a derived work that draws some amount of value from the source news content. Without the news sites offering their news for free to google's spider, google's index would be useless. You could make a similar argument for aggregators since they usually display excerpts and thumbnails. Ranking seems harder to justify.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      This line of reasoning is dangerously close to saying that mapmakers need to pay license fees for your land to be shown on a map because "without the land your map wouldn't be very valuable."
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      It does beg the cascading question too. What if I create a search product that directs you to a site, based on information gleaned from another site? Trivial example: a "Top 10 Topics in the News Today" list of Wikipedia links, based on scraping a news site's front page daily On the one hand, "It's free info and scraping should be allowed." On the other hand, if everyone did that, it'd highjack all of the news site's visitors, depriving it of revenue and destroying the very resource it's built on.
  - SiempreViernes 3y ago
    Sure, but the act only applies if you are as powerful as Google (Section 6: Application), and since they are the primary target the scope needs to be broad because Google can be counted on producing the most bad faith reading of any law to try to escape paying for the practice of scraping content from journalists in an effort to keep the traffic on their own pages.
kevingadd 3y ago
The text of the bill says that links are "news content"? A pure hyperlink does not make content available, since if the target server goes down the link is useless. It just directs the user to the content. Unless somebody loses a court case over hyperlinks, it feels extremely disingenuous to claim this law is going after hyperlinks when Google's content was blatantly more than hyperlinks (they provide excerpts).
- SiempreViernes 3y ago
  The definition of "making available" is actually very broad, presumably to head off at the gate whatever technical work-around Google was planning to use to bypass a the more narrow "the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced". Like, I can see Google pivoting to providing custom links and a script that runs in the users browser that will dynamically produce the snippets on the pages without the content technically going trough their servers...
  - gspencley 3y ago
    A couple things of note: 1. Meta was the other "initial target." And so if we're in a mindset where we just dislike Google or "big powerful corporations that will stop at no end to ... whatever" then the application of the bill ALREADY hit a point where we can start to see how loosely the regulators will interpret Section 6. And according to the wording of that section, they just need to consider the "size" of the entity,"strategic advantage", and "prominent market position" in order to determine if they decide that the digital news intermediary has "a significant bargaining power imbalance." 2. With respects to what you think Google might do in order to try and "work around the law" ... I'm not a lawyer, but from what I've heard from lawyers, courts tend to be very intolerant towards people who try and apply a strict interpretation of the wording of a law in order to try and skirt around what it makes illegal. Common law, precedence and judicial interpretation really exists in large part to try and avoid that type of thing. Judges will look at things like the intent of the legislators, past court decisions and the intent of the accused in order to determine whether the accused is in violation. In other words, Section 4 "Purpose", would be considered: > Purpose 4 The purpose of this Act is to regulate digital news intermediaries with a view to enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contributing to its sustainability, including the sustainability of news businesses in Canada, in both the non-profit and for-profits sectors, including independent local ones. As well as Google's intent. If the court were to gather that Google's intent was to try and work around the law, they go back to the Purpose, look at Google's actions and the EFFECT of their actions and will say "Sorry, you don't get to do shit like that to try and weasel your way out of the law. It still applies." And those types of actions can often be used as evidence of an intent to break the law, so any lawyer would likely advise their client to not even consider doing slimy shit like that.

Nextgrid 3y ago

> makes news content [...] available That sounds like a simple link wouldn't count?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gspencley 3y ago
I suppose I could have included other "relevant" sections of the bill. But there's a reason I linked to the full text. > "Making available of news content (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." So not only is there no qualifier saying that content needs to be reproduced, but (b) specifically says that "facilitating" access BY ANY MEANS counts as "making available."
- kevingadd 3y ago
  Indexes don't work without consuming the news content first in order to build the index, right? So it's reasonable to argue that a news search index is a derived work that draws some amount of value from the source news content. Without the news sites offering their news for free to google's spider, google's index would be useless. You could make a similar argument for aggregators since they usually display excerpts and thumbnails. Ranking seems harder to justify.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    This line of reasoning is dangerously close to saying that mapmakers need to pay license fees for your land to be shown on a map because "without the land your map wouldn't be very valuable."
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    It does beg the cascading question too. What if I create a search product that directs you to a site, based on information gleaned from another site? Trivial example: a "Top 10 Topics in the News Today" list of Wikipedia links, based on scraping a news site's front page daily On the one hand, "It's free info and scraping should be allowed." On the other hand, if everyone did that, it'd highjack all of the news site's visitors, depriving it of revenue and destroying the very resource it's built on.
- SiempreViernes 3y ago
  Sure, but the act only applies if you are as powerful as Google (Section 6: Application), and since they are the primary target the scope needs to be broad because Google can be counted on producing the most bad faith reading of any law to try to escape paying for the practice of scraping content from journalists in an effort to keep the traffic on their own pages.

kevingadd 3y ago

The text of the bill says that links are "news content"? A pure hyperlink does not make content available, since if the target server goes down the link is useless. It just directs the user to the content. Unless somebody loses a court case over hyperlinks, it feels extremely disingenuous to claim this law is going after hyperlinks when Google's content was blatantly more than hyperlinks (they provide excerpts).

SiempreViernes 3y ago
The definition of "making available" is actually very broad, presumably to head off at the gate whatever technical work-around Google was planning to use to bypass a the more narrow "the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced". Like, I can see Google pivoting to providing custom links and a script that runs in the users browser that will dynamically produce the snippets on the pages without the content technically going trough their servers...
- gspencley 3y ago
  A couple things of note: 1. Meta was the other "initial target." And so if we're in a mindset where we just dislike Google or "big powerful corporations that will stop at no end to ... whatever" then the application of the bill ALREADY hit a point where we can start to see how loosely the regulators will interpret Section 6. And according to the wording of that section, they just need to consider the "size" of the entity,"strategic advantage", and "prominent market position" in order to determine if they decide that the digital news intermediary has "a significant bargaining power imbalance." 2. With respects to what you think Google might do in order to try and "work around the law" ... I'm not a lawyer, but from what I've heard from lawyers, courts tend to be very intolerant towards people who try and apply a strict interpretation of the wording of a law in order to try and skirt around what it makes illegal. Common law, precedence and judicial interpretation really exists in large part to try and avoid that type of thing. Judges will look at things like the intent of the legislators, past court decisions and the intent of the accused in order to determine whether the accused is in violation. In other words, Section 4 "Purpose", would be considered: > Purpose 4 The purpose of this Act is to regulate digital news intermediaries with a view to enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contributing to its sustainability, including the sustainability of news businesses in Canada, in both the non-profit and for-profits sectors, including independent local ones. As well as Google's intent. If the court were to gather that Google's intent was to try and work around the law, they go back to the Purpose, look at Google's actions and the EFFECT of their actions and will say "Sorry, you don't get to do shit like that to try and weasel your way out of the law. It still applies." And those types of actions can often be used as evidence of an intent to break the law, so any lawyer would likely advise their client to not even consider doing slimy shit like that.