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.
"Link tax" is clearly chosen in bad faith, like in other cases where that wording had been used. What's really happening is that Google Search shows previews of large parts of articles such that visitors don't go to origin sites to generate page impressions/ad playouts. Which is especially problematic since Google/Alphabet is either an ad provider on the skipped news site or its competitor.
It is amazing the web-illiterate/ignorant way this is being reported in Canada, too. Lots of mention of Google "posting" or "publishing" content, when all it's doing is linking to the publisher's own site.
I'm no fan of Google these days, but I wish they had played hard ball on this. This is a total joke.
Google/Meta do more than link, though. They also grab a hero image and an excerpt. Likely fair use, but definitely getting into the grey area. I don't know how the Canadian law is worded, but it would be much more acceptable to me if Google/Meta could get out of paying if they only linked and didn't excerpt images or text.
It's not at all clear what these payments are predicated on, the deal structure is obviously very different from what the bill originally required. All that's being annouced is that Google is paying $70M/year for something, but it might not be for links.
That's what happened in Australia's law from a couple of years ago. The law was ratified, but doesn't actually apply to any company, so what the law said was totally irrelevant.
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.
>Any site of any size should be free to link wherever it wants, freely.
Maybe that was true in the days before big tech, venture capital and advertising monetized the internet, but the internet has been vastly changed by those three groups, and not always for the better. They certainly do make a bunch of money though!
The law explicitly requires a power differential and $1B in revenue, so almost any other site won’t be affected.
I do wish there was more distinction between a link and content display. I think there’s a very real concern that summaries lower click-through rates, which Google has been pushing for years and will be turbo-charged with LLMs summarizing content in the future. It would be interesting to see if there might be some future nuance around that.
Is it based on hyperlinks? I ctrl-f'd on the c-18 bill and there was no reference to "link". I would imagine the law is more about using the blurbs from the news outlet, not the link itself.
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.
I rarely support Meta, but in this case I do. I think it was a total dick move on the Canadian govt's side. Poorly understood their position, poorly understood the implications, poorly understood the problem space overall.
The law literally only applies to Google and Meta, both of which make billions from the Canadian marketplace. Trying to cast this as some big open internet thing is not convincing.
Holding Meta as the good guys is pretty tenuous as well. Long, long before Meta had to do anything, like a crying, gnashing baby they blocked every source of news, across all of their properties, with a callout to Canadians declaring why. I pray that they stick with it, but I'm going to tell you the reality that Meta is going to make a similar deal, probably within days.
Because they make enormous sums on the Canadian market. And they have always pulled (or been pushed), aggregated and summarized news because it makes them money. The frequent claims on here that it's some incidental thing, if not some grand benevolence, is rather detached from reality.
And with every passing day more Canadians are just turning away from Meta properties because of their embargo. Again, I pray they actually stick with it and become irrelevant here (it is a toxic company that can be trusted with nothing), but they won't.
To play off what the other guy said, it's a pretty bizarre position to hold Meta as the good guys. If they have a position on something, it's an extremely good indication that that position is not a good one.
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.
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
> As a Canadian this is disappointing to me. I disagree with the law.
As a Canadian, this is exciting to me. I agree strongly with the goals of the law (while holding nitpicks about the actual wording). I think the fact that Google came to an agreement shows that they don't have a fundamental issue with the law either (or they could've just withdrawn from our market, like Meta). It's a win for independent media in Canada, and thereby, for all Canadians.
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.
"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.
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
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.
I always thought the intention was to get the same deal as Australia: 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."
“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.”
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]
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
> I think search engines should be opt-in, not opt-out
If you put your site on the public internet, you are effectively opting in. In addition, robots.txt is trivially easy to configure if you really don't want your site to be crawled by specific parties' crawlers.
The news corporations absolutely want their sites crawled, to the point that if Google unilaterally stopped crawling their sites they would run to the courts to file lawsuits.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> Trusted Sources approved by Your Friend, The Government
This. From the C-18 bill:
Requires the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (the “Commission”) to maintain a list of digital news intermediaries in respect of which the enactment applies.
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.
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..
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|2 years ago
tannhaeuser|2 years ago
cmrdporcupine|2 years ago
I'm no fan of Google these days, but I wish they had played hard ball on this. This is a total joke.
bryanlarsen|2 years ago
whythre|2 years ago
jsnell|2 years ago
That's what happened in Australia's law from a couple of years ago. The law was ratified, but doesn't actually apply to any company, so what the law said was totally irrelevant.
randomdata|2 years ago
drawkward|2 years ago
Maybe that was true in the days before big tech, venture capital and advertising monetized the internet, but the internet has been vastly changed by those three groups, and not always for the better. They certainly do make a bunch of money though!
acdha|2 years ago
I do wish there was more distinction between a link and content display. I think there’s a very real concern that summaries lower click-through rates, which Google has been pushing for years and will be turbo-charged with LLMs summarizing content in the future. It would be interesting to see if there might be some future nuance around that.
oh_sigh|2 years ago
granzymes|2 years ago
monkeynotes|2 years ago
llm_nerd|2 years ago
Holding Meta as the good guys is pretty tenuous as well. Long, long before Meta had to do anything, like a crying, gnashing baby they blocked every source of news, across all of their properties, with a callout to Canadians declaring why. I pray that they stick with it, but I'm going to tell you the reality that Meta is going to make a similar deal, probably within days.
Because they make enormous sums on the Canadian market. And they have always pulled (or been pushed), aggregated and summarized news because it makes them money. The frequent claims on here that it's some incidental thing, if not some grand benevolence, is rather detached from reality.
And with every passing day more Canadians are just turning away from Meta properties because of their embargo. Again, I pray they actually stick with it and become irrelevant here (it is a toxic company that can be trusted with nothing), but they won't.
To play off what the other guy said, it's a pretty bizarre position to hold Meta as the good guys. If they have a position on something, it's an extremely good indication that that position is not a good one.
FirmwareBurner|2 years ago
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.
gspencley|2 years ago
freedomben|2 years ago
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
SECProto|2 years ago
As a Canadian, this is exciting to me. I agree strongly with the goals of the law (while holding nitpicks about the actual wording). I think the fact that Google came to an agreement shows that they don't have a fundamental issue with the law either (or they could've just withdrawn from our market, like Meta). It's a win for independent media in Canada, and thereby, for all Canadians.
laweijfmvo|2 years ago
oofta-boofta|2 years ago
[deleted]
clwg|2 years ago
sna1l|2 years ago
cmrdporcupine|2 years ago
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.
lainga|2 years ago
k0stas|2 years ago
The BBC article from 2021 linked above even says "The law is seen as a test case for similar regulation around the world."
Corvus|2 years ago
KingLancelot|2 years ago
inlined|2 years ago
[usual disclaimer: I work at Google but on nothing related to search or policy]
freedomben|2 years ago
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.
cool_dude85|2 years ago
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.
beej71|2 years ago
stalfosknight|2 years ago
nolist_policy|2 years ago
ksherlock|2 years ago
---
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.
olalonde|2 years ago
mh8h|2 years ago
PoignardAzur|2 years ago
vivekd|2 years ago
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
LAC-Tech|2 years ago
ratsmack|2 years ago
tharmas|2 years ago
pupppet|2 years ago
udev|2 years ago
Do you find this more valuable than the act of actually researching, writing, editing, and publishing the articles themselves?
Ajay-p|2 years ago
ilrwbwrkhv|2 years ago
barbazoo|2 years ago
NorwegianDude|2 years ago
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.
mullingitover|2 years ago
If you put your site on the public internet, you are effectively opting in. In addition, robots.txt is trivially easy to configure if you really don't want your site to be crawled by specific parties' crawlers.
The news corporations absolutely want their sites crawled, to the point that if Google unilaterally stopped crawling their sites they would run to the courts to file lawsuits.
Dylan16807|2 years ago
Analemma_|2 years ago
Karawebnetwork|2 years ago
bryanlarsen|2 years ago
TerrifiedMouse|2 years ago
xeckr|2 years ago
barelysapient|2 years ago
hnthrowaway0328|2 years ago
latenightcoding|2 years ago
crazymoka|2 years ago
idle_zealot|2 years ago
6510|2 years ago
An even weirder perspective: What if they didn't kill reader?
robocat|2 years ago
$100 million a year can incentivise some awful outcomes.
none_to_remain|2 years ago
xyzzy_plugh|2 years ago
graeme|2 years ago
And all pre-existing Meta and Google deals have been cancelled. This $100 million is all there is.
luuurker|2 years ago
maxglute|2 years ago
monkeynotes|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
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unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
lilsoso|2 years ago
coumbaya|2 years ago
Georgelemental|2 years ago
bryanlarsen|2 years ago
dghughes|2 years ago
https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-a...
_whiteCaps_|2 years ago
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2023/08/read-our-letter-threate...
olalonde|2 years ago
This. From the C-18 bill:
Requires the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (the “Commission”) to maintain a list of digital news intermediaries in respect of which the enactment applies.
jpollock|2 years ago
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.
unknown|2 years ago
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theLiminator|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
whythre|2 years ago
onion2k|2 years ago
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..
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
hulitu|2 years ago
Canada: the best democracy, money can buy. /s
unknown|2 years ago
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unknown|2 years ago
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o11c|2 years ago
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graeme|2 years ago