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

ctvnews.ca

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

#481

Post by rekabis »

Just like how it was tried (and quickly repealed) in Australia, news orgs in Canada will see their traffic plummet massively and significantly, and then scream bloody murder to have this law rolled back.

Google and Facebook (along with other social media sites) are the primary method by which news orgs have their individual articles percolate through the population. This law cuts that exposure off at the knees, and by proxy, any revenue gained from having readers pulled into these articles.

Most people don’t go directly to a news org website to read news. I don’t. No-one I know does. We just see interesting articles as they pop up in our social media.

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

#482

Post by AYBABTME »

robertlagrant wrote: post #457
AYBABTME wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google the search engine is critical internet infrastructure, and innovation into it is stagnant from a user's perspective.

It is not internet infrastructure at all. It's a consumer tool, potentially about to be replaced by AI. Another thing about utilities: water or electricity are fungible goods, easily measured. Search is rather trickier to decide what a good outcome is, and the thought of paying for politicians and administrators to debate search rank orders for eternity seems a terrible use of money. Finally, things like water supply…

The average consumer's experience of the Internet would be drastically altered if Google didn't exist. From the functional standpoint of a user, Google is internet infrastructure. Whether it's a utility or not is a different question, but I argue that it is definitely internet infrastructure since people's life and usage of the web would very disrupted without Google. It may end up replaced, like the phone was. That's not relevant as to whether people use and rely on it like infrastructure.

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

#483

Post by bawolff »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #446
bawolff wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the simple realization that good journalism requires good money, and that the current balance between news organizations and internet brokers isn't up to the task. Nobody owes anyone else a business model.

> Nobody owes anyone else a business model But there is public interest in having newspapers. (A tax on large digital ad platforms to subsidise newspapers makes much more sense.)

Canada does have a bunch of subsidies for news already (not to mention cbc is gov funded)

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

#484

Post by Drblessing »

whitewingjek wrote: post #13

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

What a bad take from the EFF!

> Break up the ad-tech sector, open up app stores, end-to-end delivery

I thought they stood for freedom, and now they want to pass laws on how software can work?!

Their literally saying this software code can't be this way, you need to submit a PR to change how it works to match this law. If this isn't the antithesis of freedom I don't know what is.

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

#485

Post by carlosjobim »

pipo234 wrote: post #445
carlosjobim wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But after 30 years we're still missing the infrastructure for micro payments. Sad but true. The closest we have to a solution right now is PressReader, which is just too expensive in my opinion at $30 per month.

Micro payments only make sense if the intrinsic transaction costs are (near) zero. Like reaching for your wallet to pick a coin to give to a homeless person. With trusted third parties or block chains, the transaction costs are unfortunately much, much higher, especially initially without proper scales economics.

It could be as simple for the user as a button in your web browser to donate or pay for the site currently open in your tab. And a third party intermediary that once a month collects payment/donations and distributes. The problem with Visa/MC is the minimum transaction fee of 10-25c

But a lot of work and planning would be needed to get anywhere with such an idea.

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

#486

Post by ix-ix »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #461
LegitShady wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a canadian, this is a disaster of legislation, and I don't celebrate attempts at anything that are so bad for the internet. The precedent this sort of legislation sets will break the internet and also make companies leave canada in fear of having legislation targeted at them. And for no gain at all. No Canadian heritage will be saved, and this doesn't remove american influences because google and meta were going t…

Also Canadian, and I agree. But I also think their recently passed legislation concerning online streaming services was a bad move.

I am super happy with that law.

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

#487

Post by gbear605 »

revelio wrote: post #466
HDThoreaun wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one pays. Journalism is a public good that will not exist if the current status quo continues. It’s in societies interest to ensure that doesn’t happen but everyone wants to free ride

There are plenty of news websites with paywalls, it's common amongst conservative media. It's primarily the left wing media that thinks the government should tax tech firms instead of newspapers being required to charge customers.

…what? I’m not familiar with Canadian papers, but at least with American news sources most of the national newspapers have paywalls regardless of ideology (NYT, Washington Post, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal), while television news (CNN, Fox, NBC, ABC) and right-wing sources tend to be ad supported (Breitbart, New York Post), and more left-wing sources usually tend to be some form of donation funded (Jacobin, Mother Jones). If this were passed in the US, the big winners would be right-wing sources and the television news networks.

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

#488

Post by dirtyid »

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.

> bad thing to interfere with the ability to access information on the Internet for reasons of nationalist politics

Or after 20 years, non Americans recognize information control should be more nationalized instead of under perview of US companies.

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

#489

Post by LegitShady »

ix-ix wrote: post #486
pcthrowaway wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Canadian, and I agree. But I also think their recently passed legislation concerning online streaming services was a bad move.

I am super happy with that law.

Everyone is allowed to have bad opinions, but if you can't even provide logical reasoning for them, then they don't matter at all because its not persuasive. Your support for this link tax law was poor reasoning and its likely your support canadian content laws are similarly flawed.

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

#490

Post by pschuegr »

osigurdson wrote: post #478
pschuegr wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Everything is fine" is a position taken by nobody afaict. But if someone is going to make brash claims they better have more than just bluster otherwise they're actively worsening discourse IMO.

What claims can be made with current information in your opinion? Is the Trudeau regime , just another run of the mill Canadian government or possibly something more sinister (or at least more corrupt).

I don't claim to be super-knowledgeable on this topic but IMO the current government is marginally competent and so far I'd say they seem about as corrupt as the Liberals normally are, which is to say: unacceptably. I'm not sure they're any worse than previous iterations, but history will decide. The emergency measures act stuff seems like it was mishandled to me. I find the leadership to be heavy-handed with the virtue signalling, but they're playing to the crowd in the same way that the Conservatives play to the anti-woke crowd - I despise it on both sides. They're doing a whole pile of nothing about healthcare and the housing situation, and I think it'll cost them the next election.

In a world with better options I'd never vote Liberal, but since the Conservatives can't seem to come up with a coherent environmental plan to save their lives (and have abandoned what was originally their carbon tax plan because "The Liberals like it so it must be bad"), and the best leader they can come up with was encouraging people to buy crypto right before it crashed, they still seem like the better option. And I say this with a sour taste in my mouth.

What's your take?

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