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

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

#91

Deeply shameful, as a Canadian. I did not ask for this.

Yeah, it doesn't look like they asked every single individual Canadian what they wanted. But here are the details for what was driving this.

https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/fair-re...

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

#92

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.

If I'm not willing to pay for a paywall then the "best" content is not behind a paywall, because I won't read it.

My definition of "best" includes my ability to actually read the content under my terms.

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

#93
As a Canadian, I feel like this is terrible news. From a web publisher point of view, I do agree that Google is going to far sometimes by embeding the content directly in the SERP. They take it so far that most of the time you don’t even need to click on the article to get the summary.

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

#94
post #64
post #36

Many people who would otherwise be appalled at laws like this seem to want to rationalize this because its specifically targeting Google and Meta. Sometimes taking the simple view is correct: It's a bad thing to prevent sites from linking to one another. It's a bad thing to interfere with the ability to access information on the Internet for reasons of nationalist politics.

> Many people who would otherwise be appalled at laws like this seem to want to rationalize this because its specifically targeting Google and Meta. It's not just a matter of the targeted companies being Google and Meta, even though these two especially deserve it. It's the simple realization that good journalism requires good money, and that the current balance between news organizations and internet brokers isn't u…

There's no imbalance here: newspapers produce content, search engines/social networks surface and link to it.

What's happening here is that publishers and their owners somehow figured these pesky internet wiz kids owe them more money.

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

#95

Surely news publications benefit more from Google/Facebook providing links to their content? It's a mutually beneficial relationship. I'm a bit puzzled as to why this was pushed, I'd love some context for this.

Canadian media has always enjoyed some protectionism from the government. It's old, entrenched players wanting, and getting, something for nothing. The people that control our media and telecommunications in Canada could fit in a compact car. This doesn't have anything to do with the average person. It's all business and lobbying.

> The people that control our media and telecommunications in Canada could fit in a compact car.

Spot on. In Canada it's about the handful of the oligarchs who have control over almost everything. It has nothing to do with the average plebs

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberal politicians will pass any law seen as harmful to US tech companies consequences be damned. It's like California but on a national level, still not quite as insane thankfully.

Which state are these big US tech companies based in again? I may have missed it.

They wanted to move to Texas, but unfortunately Texas hates electricity.

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

#97
post #81

Disclaimer: Am Canadian. The way i see it, it's a clear case of "we tried nothing and we're out of ideas" on BOTH sides. The canadian medias are boring and are mostly opinions and a few Reuters/AFP articles. On the other hand, GOOG and Meta are not even acknowledging that they're trying to bully nations around while providing a slowly worse service as time goes by and profiteering from work they acquire for free. I d…

I don't see the problem. News outlets can now negotiate individually with Google if they still want the free traffic. Google will be paying $0 to them. Other outlets who don't want the free traffic from Google can choose to not receive it, as they can right now via robots.txt.

Traffic is generated by the content which is not free (most of the time) to produce. Google without content is what except an empty library?

I'm not sure why people here are defending GOOG so much.

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

#98
post #32

The solution to this problem is for Google, Facebook and other web sites that link to news to limit links to web sites that agree that the free traffic they're receiving from extremely popular web sites is sufficient compensation for linking to them. In other words, block links to any web site that feels entitled to be paid for being linked to. There are plenty of web sites that will be happy to take the free traffic…

They cannot do that. The law forbids discriminating against any Canadian news business. If they link to news sites that don't demand payment but won't link to ones that want to be paid, it'd be viewed as retaliation.

The only options are to accept the rigged negotiation process and pay all news business vastly inflated rates, or to link to none of them.

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

#99
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most ridiculous take on this that I've ever seen. Next you're going to say that newspaper stands need to pay a charge to the newspaper each time someone walks by their stall (or buys gum, for example). They have seen the headline, and then moved on. Very often a headline is all someone needs or wants. That has value. Without anyone buying that newspaper, the newspaper stand has got value from the headline…

The real problem is that newspapers would just like to take a percentage of Google revenue, because they're a big company. If that's the case, let Google do its own reporting and write its own headlines. It's not like it doesn't have the money. Problem solved.

Then Google would probably get antitrust complaints from including their own news but not competitors' news sites.

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

#100

Surely news publications benefit more from Google/Facebook providing links to their content? It's a mutually beneficial relationship. I'm a bit puzzled as to why this was pushed, I'd love some context for this.

Liberal politicians will pass any law seen as harmful to US tech companies consequences be damned. It's like California but on a national level, still not quite as insane thankfully.

California gave birth to these companies, and has been, and remains one of our nations’s primary economic engines, despite the shenanigans of a few attention-seeking public figures…
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