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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

#281

Post by sroussey »

Majromax wrote: post #239
duringmath wrote: post #94

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…

The can post a robots.txt file to say not to index.

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

#282

Post by gostsamo »

gwright wrote: post #275
tensor wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every company tries to earn money, that's not a problem. The problem is when a company tries to legislate themselves to be owed money, or eliminate competition via various means, that it becomes a problem. Companies should earn my by building good competitive products.

One reason to advocate for a government with minimal power is to avoid the temptation to legislate preferential treatment. If the government has been granted more expansive powers, it is inevitable, and arguably rational, for those affected to try to steer regulations in a way that benefits them.

There is no vacuum in power. If it is not the government enforcing one mechanism, it will be another player leveraging another. The fantasy that if it wasn't for the government, everything would be sunshine and roses should be brought behind the barn and finished for good.

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

#283

Post by jsnell »

josefx wrote: post #259
bastawhiz wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mo…

> 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.

AFAIK Google doesn't show ads on Google News, they don't show ads on news queries, and they send the users to the news site via the link. There is no revenue to share, and the users are being shared to the extent that is possible given they're humans who have free will and will decide themselves which articles to read and which not.

> Google can index the articles independently of serving their entirety to visitors

I don't know what you're referring to here. AMP? The news site has to do extra work to enable AMP, and the entire point of AMP was always the cache. (But the revenue from the ads on the AMP page goes to the publication, not to Google). The search cache? The news site can opt out. The snippet? They can opt out. Images? I'm pretty sure they actually have to opt in for that, by emitting specific meta tags. The title? That is mandatory, but for the simple reason that you have to give the searcher something or they won't click through.

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

#285

Post by tomComb »

cornholio wrote: post #264
devsda wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nobody denies its their right, but that doesn't mean it's not a very stupid action, motivated by dumb nationalism. You can't handwave circumstances away, as if the legislators don't know it is a cashgrab against foreign corporations and genuinely believe Google and Facebook are Canadian companies.

It’s not dumb nationalism, it’s typical lobbying, sold as nationalism.

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

#286

Post by tomComb »

barbazoo wrote: post #67
paddw wrote: 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.

> 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. Would this prevent embedding links into your posts? I thought it's about platforms displaying enough information discouraging the person to visit the news site. I get that they want people to stay on their platforms 24/7 but I also g…

No, the issue in this case is linking.

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

#287

Post by GeekyBear »

sroussey wrote: post #281
Majromax wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The can post a robots.txt file to say not to index.

How do they say "You can index the story in your search engine, but you cannot borrow the text or images of our content for use on your own news site or info panels"?

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

#288

Post by hotsauceror »

lordleft wrote: post #12

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.

This same thing happened in Spain, several years ago. The government passed a law charging google for linking to Spanish media sites. Google said "gracias, pero no" and stopped linking to those sites. The publishers immediately got upset about the loss of traffic to their websites.

Mike Masnick's schadenfreude alone could have powered a small nation for a week.

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

#289

Post by robryan »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #187
TekMol wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, laws are human constructs. But what is the situation in Canada now? Did they really put a law into place which says "When you link to a page with a short excerpt to show what the link is about, this is now a copyright violation"? Wouldn't that also make search engines illegal?

> Wouldn't that also make search engines illegal? Seems like yes. From the article: "The tech giant plans to remove news links from its search engine, Google News and Google Discover for only Canadian publishers and readers."

Seems like this will be much worse for the media companies. It isn't like most people who clicked on news while casually scrolling their feed are suddenly going to start going to all these news sites direct.

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

#290

Post by chroma »

golem14 wrote: post #194
kccqzy wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there really needs to be a micro-transaction mechanism on the web, but unfortunately it was needed ten years ago and there still isn't one.

Yes but the crypto folks didn't do that, they were busy chasing nfts.

There have been a lot of ridiculous things in cryptocurrency land, but what's wrong with Basic Attention Token? It has been around for six years and seems to solve the problem of paying content creators via microtransactions. The only wrinkle is that finance laws force everyone to verify their identity with a government-issued ID before transacting BAT.[1] This is a problem for all microtransactions, not just cryptocurrency.

1. https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032158891-Wha...

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