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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

#251
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.

I've always considered linking perfectly fine, but what to me is shady when platforms start to summarize or preview content of the link to the point where that functions as a substitute for the site.

There needs to be a distinction between reference to content and the content itself. When platforms start to profit from other people's work without their consent that shouldn't fly. Google search's primary purpose is to make links discoverable and I don't think anyone ever took offense to that. But in recent years companies have started to deliberately blur that line by showing more content upfront, essentially to turn themselves into a middleman and choke content producers. It's perfectly legitimate to not allow this.

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

#252
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkbox, unchecked by default: [ ] I want to see results from sites I'd have to pay to access

The obvious problem to this armchair expert "solution" is that Google doesn't know what I am already paying. I pay NYT for a subscription, but Google doesn't know that. For obvious privacy reasons users don't want to tell Google what sites they already have subscriptions with. And I don't even log in to Google to do a search so there's no place to store that information even if I actively wanted to provide that to Go…

I wasn't presenting it as a perfect solution. I was observing that many people don't want to see paywalled results, some may want to see all of them because they may choose to pay, some may want to see them because they plan to use a paywall bypass, and some as you pointed out may want to see the subset they already pay for but not others. As a first pass, a binary approach seems better than nothing, and is simpler to provide than a more complex user-subscription-specific solution.

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

#253
post #52
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…

I agree with this take-- and this is probably why Google and Meta were the only companies included. What about Reddit, Twitter, (and even HN)? The counterpoint here is that this bill is very protectionist in nature and aims to give something to the Canadian news & media industry.

Oh no, it's not just Google and Meta. That's how it's being presented, but it's actually whoever the CRTC wants to charge. They can and will change the list at any time, with no need for oversight.

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

#254

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

> The internet should be "open,"

Which RFC is that?

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

#255
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What leverage do they have? Companies can always pull out of the country entirely.

Well, the leverage is that some profit is better than no profit, in theory.

Assuming that you don't then become locked into mandatory "agreements" (and I use the term loosely given the inability to refuse) with rates that keep going up. Leaving aside that sometimes the principle outweighs the profits; a link tax, or any other restriction on linking, is an abhorrent constraint on the Internet.

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

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There's no imbalance here: newspapers produce content, search engines/social networks surface and link to it. The imbalance is that as platforms , newspapers cross-subsidize content. Interesting headlines attract readers to the newspaper, but once in hand readers are likely to continue reading the other, less unique articles. (See also why newspapers carry sports scores and comics). An investigative report is by it…

Personally I'd be happy to see the ad driven model die. It used to be that people bought newspapers or didn't read them. They still had some ads, granted, but far less intrusive than today's web ads with their colours and animations.

I'm huge into supporting good journalism, and think we need some sort of intervention here. But I'm very very strongly opposed to this new law. If news sites want to charge for their content they should put it behind a pay gate.

I pay for news, but insultingly they STILL feed me ads. There is no tier that I can pay for that will eliminate the ads. I really don't have much sympathy for them given their refusal to somehow adapt to the times and offer service that users feel valuable enough to pay for.

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

#257
post #204
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.

I don't see how we can call this nationalistic politics. I'm sure if a (hypothetical) Canadian big-tech impacted news organizations similarly, they would also have been a target of this law. Many of the biggest tech have origins in US and any country trying to make a law regulating businesses and technology within its borders is bound to impact American companies one way or the other. We can take the easy route and c…

> I'm sure if a (hypothetical) Canadian big-tech impacted news organizations similarly, they would also have been a target of this law.

Very unlikely, IMHO. The CRTC isn't in the habit of making decisions that harm large Canadian companies.

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

At a certain point, if you want a subscription service, why wouldn't you just do something like suscribe to Bloomberg News, then get all your news by going directly to their site rather than going through a search engine or aggregator. If you're looking at an aggregator, inherently you want to see many possible sources, including ones you may only read once a year. Nobody is going to subscribe to hundreds of separate…

1. There is much paywalled information online that is not in the form of a subscription, but instead one-time fees.

2. Just because you paid at the paywall, doesn't mean you have to subscribe for life. You can pay to get the information you need and then instantly cancel any subscription.

> If someone out there offered a $20 a month service that granted access to Bloomberg, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, WaPost, Financial Times, all in one, I'd gladly buy that.

PressReader is pretty much this, although the price is $30 and not $20.

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

#259

My read on this is that news organizations are upset that Google/Facebook are taking profits by providing cached content that makes people not want to actually click their links. If this is the primary concern, though, then wouldn't it make more sense to draft a law regulating content caching, rather than the pay-per-click approach? It seems like a law that said "Sites that serve any content which wasn't part of a 'y…

> It seems like a law that said "Sites that serve any content which wasn't part of a 'you can cache me' section need to pay for that content" would address the concerns of both parties here. Because you can't have your cake and eat it too. If Google can't cache the whole article, they can't provide search for the article. That's why publishers are serving the full, unpaywalled article to Google: how do you index an a…

> If Google can't cache the whole article, they can't provide search for the article.

Google can index the articles independently of serving their entirety to visitors. Might as well claim that wikipedia can't have articles covering movies without acting as the worlds largest piracy site.

> but then want Google to pay for the privilege.

On the other hand Google wants all the articles for free, but doesn't have any motivation to share the users or ad impressions they attract.

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

#260

Most Canadian media is owned by asset-stripping American private equity firms, just like American newspapers. They just want to get paid, and have figured out a particular way that Canadian, Australian, German, and Californian legislators can be duped into it.

I don't see how this gets them paid, more like wiped from the internet entirely?
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