Live data from Hacker News

Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

ctvnews.ca

11–20 of 503 posts

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#11

Just need the US and EU to follow suit now and the giants can get back to paying for what they use!

And in Australia it was pushed by Rupert Murdoch.

But fair is fair. If publishers want to force social media to pay for news content. Social Media has every right to refuse to pay and refuse to redistribute.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#13
The eff had an interesting article[1] about this issue (and others) as well as some alternative ways solve the issue, not that I agree with all of them.

Ultimately, this is the wrong approach. The internet should be "open," and people or companies should be free to link to whatever they want without penalty.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#14
post #6

News outlets usually provide RSS feeds. Don't they allow to show the contents of those feeds on websites? And isn't showing the content of the RSS feed "fair use" anyhow? When I look at the content of the Toronto Star for example: https://www.thestar.com/content/thestar/feed.RSSManagerServl... My gut feeling is that showing those short snippets with a link to the articles should be fair use. Am I wrong?

> And isn't showing the content of the RSS feed "fair use" anyhow?

Fair use and copyright are 'artificial' legal constructs, so if they were defined in an 'arbitrary' way to begin with, they can be redefined to add or remove provisions. These online publishing laws could tweak those provisions.

Also: when an RSS/Atom feed is published, it is still copyrighted, and the terms and conditions would/could perhaps be defined what "fair use" is by copyright holder (maybe?).

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#15

Going a step further, I think google should stop crawling websites that are paywalled. When I search for something, I want to see results that I can click on. Not some snippets from NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg and others which are heavily paywalled.

When I search for something I want the best results for the query, and sometimes those are behind a paywall.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#16

Going a step further, I think google should stop crawling websites that are paywalled. When I search for something, I want to see results that I can click on. Not some snippets from NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg and others which are heavily paywalled.

At least the "archive" workaround still works

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#17
post #5

Brazil is currently considering a similar law that would require social networks to compensate content creators for each republication [1]. However, unlike the situation in Canada, the Brazilian lawmakers have taken into account this scenario. The law mandates that social networks cannot cease publishing the content and must negotiate compensation in "fair terms." Personally, I find this approach to be quite perplexi…

So if I understand correctly, those companies are now going to be forced into paying for products that they cannot just stop using?

Or fighting a legal battle (which they will hopefully fight and win), or leaving the jurisdiction and then saying "good luck with that, let's find out how much of your companies' revenue we were driving".

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#19
post #5

Brazil is currently considering a similar law that would require social networks to compensate content creators for each republication [1]. However, unlike the situation in Canada, the Brazilian lawmakers have taken into account this scenario. The law mandates that social networks cannot cease publishing the content and must negotiate compensation in "fair terms." Personally, I find this approach to be quite perplexi…

So if I understand correctly, those companies are now going to be forced into paying for products that they cannot just stop using?

Someone might correct me, but I believe that’s what France did.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#20
post #6

News outlets usually provide RSS feeds. Don't they allow to show the contents of those feeds on websites? And isn't showing the content of the RSS feed "fair use" anyhow? When I look at the content of the Toronto Star for example: https://www.thestar.com/content/thestar/feed.RSSManagerServl... My gut feeling is that showing those short snippets with a link to the articles should be fair use. Am I wrong?

My understanding was that the complaints was against using larger excerpts. I haven't used neither Googles nor Metas offerings, but the objection that I read in a different article was about users reading the news on Facebook, rather than letting the users click through to the newspapers.

If Google and Meta just generate free traffic for the news site, then I'm not really sure why they're complaining. If their write is straight up reproduced without permission then I understand.

Post reply on HN