The Online News Act passed last Thursday and would force platforms like Google and Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, to strike deals with Canadian media publishers for sharing, previewing and directing users to online Canadian news content.
Honestly though, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for free press. Some people say “free internet” when we are really talking about cooperative internet. I’d rather people get news from Lemmy than from Google or Facebook.
If I recall correctly, this is the Online News Act that says that linking to a newspaper’s public web site should require paying that newspaper?
From what I understand, it’s not just linking to the article. It’s when the news is summarized on Google, to the point where you learn everything you need right from the search page rather than clicking the link to the article. So the company that hosts the article is losing as revenue because people are just reading the summary and not looking at the article itself.
@Etnies419 no, if you read the article even linking requires payment. That’s why they’re removing results entirely, rather than just removing summaries like they did in other countries
But to the point, in those countries leaving the links but removing the summaries also resulted in significant reductions in traffic for the news orgs.
It does include just linking.
(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.
Indexing includes showing a basic result in search. Plus you can’t show a normal search results without pulling at least a portion of the news content. I can only assume the author and those that voted for this have literally never searched for a news article online before.
That’s just a horrible decision all around. It’s blatantly obvious that this will hurt the producers of the content far more than help. Why is it that the people making decisions about the internet always seem to have never used it?
In what world does that make sense? Did the author of that bill and everyone who voted on it never use the internet? How is that enforcable in any way?
I mean, you won’t see me shedding any tears for the multinational hundred billion dollar internet based corporations lol
What about the Canadian news companies that now won’t get nearly as many visitors because many people see news through sites like google?
Or what about the Canadians who won’t see as much local news? Even if they go look for it specifically themselves, they can expect to see less of it on social media because other people won’t see as much (and thus won’t share as much).
I’m Canadian, so no need for hypotheticals. I can browse my news sites directly. No trouble for me.
Also, and this is a novel idea, maybe Google et al. should abide by the rules of the states in which they operate without forms of petty protest. This is a battle between a slew of capitalist conglomerates and the Canadian state. I’m virulently anti-capitalist, so I don’t particularly care about the profit incentives of any of these corporations or even of the private for profit news sites. The bill to be clear would ensure the news sites get paid, and that Google and Facebook do not profit off of the content their editors are writing. But Google and Facebook don’t like that, because they’re capitalists who control enough GDP to buy Canada. So they can screw off then, that’s fine. Like I said before, you won’t see my crying for them.
I’m late to the discussion, i’m no fan of giant companies and the billionaires that run them but this isn’t the place to fight them. If you’re summarising the article and depriving the website of clicks and ad revenue then you should definitely pay the news sites, but if you’re linking to them then you’re basically helping direct traffic there. Just like what happened in Spain Google is going to pull out of Canada, the news publishers are going to realise they’re seeing a huge drop in traffic, and a year or two later they’ll be asking Google to come back.
Maybe. Its a nonsense song and dance while Canadians are facing the worst cost of living and housing crisis in our nation’s history. We had the government outright prove that the nation’s largest grocery chains are fixing prices under the guide of inflation and literally nothing happened. Two weeks of groceries for me and my family cost us nearly 350$ when I was there yesterday. The same amount was around 150$ 2 years ago. Wages haven’t increased anywhere near that much. But you get used to liberal democracy doing whatever it can to distract from the crimes of capitalists. So they’re “taking a stand” against news aggregators. It doesn’t matter either way. The working class is one bad day away from homelessness. A dispute between local media capitalists and foreign mega corporations has no impact on anything whatsoever.
For news aggregation and summary, I totally agree with you. For just search indexing and referring, though, I think paying just for a link that is no more than 10 words is not justified. If I post a link in this comment from a Canadian news site, should I pay a fee, too? Because section 2 part b states that access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content.
I don’t disagree with anything you just said, I also couldn’t care less about the business loss it would be for Google/Meta. But I think people’s surprise is not about that, it’s about how this business relationship was potentially actually beneficial for the Canadian news outlets who pushed for this, since a lot of their actual traffic was coming from what Google and Meta had built, whether those Canadian editors like it or not. If that’s the case, then they’re basically shutting down an effort that was providing them free advertising, potentially shooting themselves in the foot.
They also can’t claim that they wouldn’t know it would happen, since that’s what Spain did a while ago, and that’s exactly what happened. If the issue is about reusing copy, some other countries passed laws allowing Google to provide the free advertising by showing users links and titles, but without providing any summary, and Google abided. But the Canadian law here was written to ban even the parts that may be beneficial.
If you personally go straight to news websites, then yeah, there’s no loss for editors from your usage. But the thought here is that a ton of users don’t do it like you do, and the Canadian news outlets that made this law happen are about to suddenly lose all traffic from those users.
Afaik - feel free to correct me - this is charging companies for when they show ppl the news content on their platforms bc when that happens theres no reason for people to go on the news site, so they dont, and those companies just profitted (or at least prevented the news sites from profitting) off info that someone else wrote. Is like if u look up “lemon nutrition facts” and then all the info is just right there, sometimes you can see in the corner or bottom a link to the website that info came from but a lot of people wouldnt even go onto the site because Google already showed them the info. So thats why this was done i think ?? I think something like this was tried in Australia too and Google didnt like it then either. But idk if it went through.
As I’ve read, Google would also have to pay them for the privilege of linking to their articles. You’re not allowed to drive traffic and ad money to news sites without also paying them.
If it’s anything like the dumb law the EU tried to pass (with exemptions in the end luckily, for hyperlinking in particular), you can’t even post a link to a news article on Facebook or Reddit because said companies would get in trouble for it.
I think it’s awful for a free internet. It’s a dumb law written by people who don’t understand the internet.
Yeah, same thing that has happened in several other countries. Google is supposed to pay companies to advertise their news stories through search results, and google refuses to do that meaning they have to block news websites in that country.
@fubo yeah, unfortunately these types of laws try to have their cake and eat it too
A similar law was passed in France, and predictably France news orgs lost significant traffic and cried foul.
It makes no sense to charge a search engine for the privilege of bringing customers to your website, and these types of laws always have predictable outcomes.
Screw google
That may be a good idea, but the situation here was caused by corruption within the Canadian government, not by Google doing shady things.
In other words, the Canadian government tried to impose a link tax, and they’ve just discovered that both Google and Facebook don’t think Canadian media is worth anything.
Usually when google makes headlines, this would be my take, but what they’re doing here is completely reasonable.
Possible solution (for now): Use a different search engine. I recommend DuckDuckGo.
This law should apply to all search engines, should it not?
That’s why I said for now.
Also, the law as written applies “if there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses … [such as] the intermediary occupies a prominent market position” (6: Application). I mean, let’s be realistic, when you think “prominent search engine”, how many search engines come to mind?
The best solution is to stop reading Canadian media. Those companies knew exactly what was going to happen, enough of them supported it, and they deserve to lose their readers.
Sucks for those that didn’t, but I guess this is what will happen.
