371–380 of 503 posts
That's an odd sentence. Shouldn't it just say "From the government"? Seems weirdly leading to point that it out as "because of the liberal government". I dunno, I don't read much news.
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…
Yeah, this is exactly the point that such a regulation would bring up. Businesses can't expect Google to both use your data and not use your content in their search results.
If you say "I don't want Google's indexers to read my content and surface it to people that haven't clicked my site", that's fine -- Google won't be able to index your content (as requested), though, so your site won't appear in search results.
This seems like a situation where the cards are much more clearly on the table, and my expectation is that no reasonable business would choose to have Google not index their full content.
The argument is always that these companies are using and benefiting from news for free. Now, they aren't. It's weird to create a new kind of property right and then complain that companies are choosing to simply stop doing the thing that triggers the new right.
Problem with this model is that it's too simplistic. Big tech doesn't sell news. They sell ads. In fact, the main reason why news companies are ailing today is because big tech siphons off much of the ad revenue that they would have sold directly before the Internet. Google or Facebook can take the 5% that news companies might ask for and just... deduct it from their ad revenue somehow. They control the analytics behind this and news companies are in no position to credibly question them. The only way to stop this madness is to ban economic centralization - i.e. enforce antitrust law by breaking up all these companies and forcing them to be sold to different competing owners.
Governments, of course, don't want to do that. This is not because they've suddenly become right-libertarians or ancaps. This is because large monopolies are both legible and corrigible[2]. Google, Facebook, or Reddit is far more likely to pay a 5% link tax than, say, hundreds of individual Fediverse instance operators. This is, of course, a regulatory curse - the bigger you make the organization, the more likely that organization can exert power back upon your government. This is not solely the function of generalized abstract "corruption." Economic power is itself a form of political power and letting companies grow too big is like Congress delegating legislative power to the President.
[0] Legible meaning that the organization can understand it at an institutional level.
[1] As in, if all you have is copyright, everything looks like a nail.
[2] Corrigible meaning that the organization is capable of maintaining regulatory controls over the target organization.
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.
"because of the Liberal government's Online News Act" That's an odd sentence. Shouldn't it just say "From the government"? Seems weirdly leading to point that it out as "because of the liberal government". I dunno, I don't read much news.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
I thought so too, and thought that removing the sites from Google Search was a bit bullyish, but it looks like the bill specifically targets links in (2)(b). "Making available of news content (2) For the purposes of this Act, news content is made available if (a) the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced; or (b) access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an in…
"because of the Liberal government's Online News Act" That's an odd sentence. Shouldn't it just say "From the government"? Seems weirdly leading to point that it out as "because of the liberal government". I dunno, I don't read much news.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Canada
So the (capital-l) Liberals are currently running the government. So Liberal government.
There is also the capital-c Conservatives:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Party_of_Canada
>> 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would like to see the CBC dismantled. The CBC no longer fulfills its mandate of serving the general public. Your comment, "Top Bell Media executive urged CTV to avoid ‘negative spin’ on coverage of parent company" equally applies to CBC and the current government or leading political party.
This doesn't mean it should be dismantled it means additional laws should be put in place to make this type of thing illegal for the politicians to do. The CBC is the only chance left for some sort of even keeled news in Canada. Otherwise maybe some YouTube personalities might make a showing - I'm sure the farmer into the middle of Alberta will watch that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>While Canada's bill may not be well-tuned, it is a welcome first attempt. The problem is media companies have been pushing this exact blueprint for d years. decades. It is a terrible, terrible template. If countries want to tax big tech and give the money to media organizations, they should be honest about it. Laws like this distort reality. >the current balance between news organizations and internet brokers isn't…
>> If countries want to tax big tech and give the money to media organizations, they should be honest about it. Laws like this distort reality. The idea that big tech would pay the appropriate amount of tax to the appropriate country is laughable.
So, if big companies and small companies are being treated differently, the governments are not doing their jobs and have to be replaced by someone who will do it.