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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

#321

Post by swader999 »

gwright wrote: post #68
swader999 wrote: post #49

As a Canadian, I don't really care about this. The informed citizen model is already broken by censorship, cancel culture, corporate influence, paywalls, monopolies and a soon to be flood of AI content. Burn it all down imo and let something else take its place. I only use google news now to see what agenda/narrative is being pushed at the moment or maybe to check the weather.

> Burn it all down imo and let something else take its place. Probably hyperbole, but catastrophic failure of our economy/institutions/society isn't something I would choose to experience. This nihilistic attitude is dangerous, IMHO. In the extreme, it is a self-fulfilling approach with severe consequences. Seems like we should be able to do better than that as a society.

It really has nothing to do with my attitude. Reality is the majority of the electorate doesn't know/believe/care that this is an issue.

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

#322

Post by GeekyBear »

warning26 wrote: post #294
GeekyBear wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google would be perfectly free to hire a human being to write headlines in their own words and then link to articles in the press discussing that story. "Man Bites Dog" More discussion: CBC, National Post, Toronto Star, CTV, etc. However, Google doesn't want to pay human beings, they want to "borrow' other people's content to make a profit. People seem to conflate "indexing your story on our search engine" with "borr…

Are you proposing that the entire concept of a non-human-curated search engine should be illegal? Seems kind of silly.

Did you miss the part where I said people are conflating indexing a story on a search engine with "borrowing" other people's content for your own news site?

The first can be fixed with a simple robots.txt file.

How do you tell Google they may index your story, but may not "borrow" your headline or photos for their own news site?

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

#323

Post by wintogreen74 »

>> Walker said he wrote a letter to Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez early Thursday morning to inform him and his team of the decision.

The fact that this is being lead by the Minister of Heritage should tell you how little this has to do with actual business and technology justifications.

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

#324

Post by akira2501 »

chongli wrote: post #126
akira2501 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The problem with this is there's no direct relationship between the two. So Google and Facebook can arbitrarily decide to "punish" a paper by demoting or flat out filtering their content. These platforms aren't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.…

The news sites in Canada are owned by billion dollar media and telecom companies. Nowhere near the scale of Google & Facebook, but among the largest companies in Canada. Speaking as a Canadian, this is very much a protectionist law trying to prop up an old media business the public no longer has much interest in.

Right.. so the post I'm replying to suggests that Google and Facebook should just drop these larger publishers and instead abuse smaller publishers who "would just be happy for the exposure."

So.. your argument is, because you don't like some media companies and are willing to speak on behalf of all Canadians, the market really isn't worth protecting at all?

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

#325

Post by veddan »

GeekyBear wrote: post #287
sroussey wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

I think you can do this with

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

#327

Post by basisword »

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.

Governments are there to serve their citizens, not the interests of foreign multinational companies. If this is good for Canadian businesses and the citizens running them and working for them then good for them.

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

#328

Post by jefftk »

GeekyBear wrote: post #318
jefftk wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that would exempt them under the law? Have a look: https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-a...

There's a ton of international case law saying that a mere link is not illegal.

We're talking about a new Canadian law. How would case law be relevant?

(Laws can make previously legal things illegal.)

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

#329

Post by ix-ix »

LegitShady wrote: post #203
palijer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You have it backwards. Thats the way they justify what they already had planned. That didn’t drive this, that’s the post-decision excuse. “We consulted with stakeholders and press decided they really wanted that money”

Meh, as a Canadian, this might not be perfect, but I am happy whenever the government attempts to revitalize Canadian heritage and remove American influences.

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

#330

Post by basisword »

kittiepryde wrote: post #230
tyingq wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little more nuanced than "many people...rationalize...because it's specifically targeting Google" . It wasn't that long ago that Google was forcing AMP onto the same publishers by making it a requirement to appear in the news carousel. That forced a lot of unwanted intrusion into content that wasn't Google's to mess with. Including a forced banner in the most valuable space, hijacking right/left swipes to navi…

AMP made the internet on my phone work. Most sites seem to dedicate 50% or more of the screen space to advertisements and load very slowly -- AMP sites were just crazy more performant -- I'm not saying AMP was the right move to make, but, it was trying to solve a real problem (similar to this bill also likely being the wrong move)

AMP worked like shit for me. Any time I had weird behavioural issues with a site, I’d look to the address bar and spot AMP. Using an extensions to prevent AMP stealing my clicks has made my phones browser work much better.
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