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Meta starts process to end news access in Canada over law on paying publishers

reuters.com

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Re: Meta starts process to end news access in Canada over law on paying publishers

#11

Post by dsir »

Gunax wrote: post #10

I have skim read a bunch of articles on this, and I still cannot understand what is actually being charged for and what this law mandates. I am trying to understand whether this charges for copying of news, or just linking to it. It seems to be implied that the content is being copied. But news is already copyrightable. Why were existing copyright protections not sufficient? Or does this law actually change for links…

This law is a link tax. It means the government wants Meta and Google to pay every single time a link to a Canadian news source is shared on their platform (from what I understand, including even in private messages to friends). As far as I'm aware, it will also apply to Google in that they will also need to pay to index/show links to Canadian news in their search results like you described.

Re: Meta starts process to end news access in Canada over law on paying publishers

#12

Post by toomuchtodo »

dsir wrote: post #4

People in support of this need to consider how this type of legislation affects the integrity of the internet. This bill is not about supporting independent media like they claim. This is first and foremost a link tax, and the result of it is damaging to free press. Independent media sources depend on traffic from social media platforms to function. They themselves are often the ones sharing the links to their own co…

Newspapers existed before social media. They will exist after social media deplatforms them. Big Tech should not be able to hold the integrity of the Internet hostage.

Re: Meta starts process to end news access in Canada over law on paying publishers

#13

Post by soultrees »

dsir wrote: post #11
Gunax wrote: post #10

I have skim read a bunch of articles on this, and I still cannot understand what is actually being charged for and what this law mandates. I am trying to understand whether this charges for copying of news, or just linking to it. It seems to be implied that the content is being copied. But news is already copyrightable. Why were existing copyright protections not sufficient? Or does this law actually change for links…

This law is a link tax. It means the government wants Meta and Google to pay every single time a link to a Canadian news source is shared on their platform (from what I understand, including even in private messages to friends). As far as I'm aware, it will also apply to Google in that they will also need to pay to index/show links to Canadian news in their search results like you described.

Which is hilarious because imagine a news site not being able to publish on google or Facebook. Short-sighted at best. Goodbye news site.

Re: Meta starts process to end news access in Canada over law on paying publishers

#14

Post by reaperducer »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #12
dsir wrote: post #4

People in support of this need to consider how this type of legislation affects the integrity of the internet. This bill is not about supporting independent media like they claim. This is first and foremost a link tax, and the result of it is damaging to free press. Independent media sources depend on traffic from social media platforms to function. They themselves are often the ones sharing the links to their own co…

Newspapers existed before social media. They will exist after social media deplatforms them. Big Tech should not be able to hold the integrity of the Internet hostage.

News, even if it's only headlines, has value. Google knows this. If the news headlines had no value, Google wouldn't have launched Google News in the first place.

Try scraping Google's content as a trillion-dollar company and see how long that lasts.

Re: Meta starts process to end news access in Canada over law on paying publishers

#15

Post by reaperducer »

soultrees wrote: post #13
dsir wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This law is a link tax. It means the government wants Meta and Google to pay every single time a link to a Canadian news source is shared on their platform (from what I understand, including even in private messages to friends). As far as I'm aware, it will also apply to Google in that they will also need to pay to index/show links to Canadian news in their search results like you described.

Which is hilarious because imagine a news site not being able to publish on google or Facebook. Short-sighted at best. Goodbye news site.

Short-sighted at best. Goodbye news site.

The news sites already tried it Google's way for more than a decade, and it isn't working for them. It only works for Google.

As someone clearly entrenched in the tech echo chamber, it will come as a surprise for you to learn that there are many news organizations that do not give their content away for free on the internet.

Some have paywalls. Some require paid apps. Some are -shudder- only available as dead trees.

Many of them are thriving.

My wife pays upwards of $2,000/year for a publication that is not available in any form on the internet. It has offices and reporters in a dozen cities around the world, and continues to grow.

It, and others like it, don't need to suckle at the teat of Google for pennies.

Re: Meta starts process to end news access in Canada over law on paying publishers

#17

Post by ulrashida »

soultrees wrote: post #13
dsir wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This law is a link tax. It means the government wants Meta and Google to pay every single time a link to a Canadian news source is shared on their platform (from what I understand, including even in private messages to friends). As far as I'm aware, it will also apply to Google in that they will also need to pay to index/show links to Canadian news in their search results like you described.

Which is hilarious because imagine a news site not being able to publish on google or Facebook. Short-sighted at best. Goodbye news site.

Will be curious to see how this comment ages in a year.

I'm of the view that it's Google and Meta that are in trouble here. If they don't want to pay for quality news sources their content continues to noticeably degrade and become less attractive for use. They're likely trying to play hard ball with Canada and Australia because the markets are comparatively small. If the EU or the US see merit in this approach the tech companies are really going to struggle.

Re: Meta starts process to end news access in Canada over law on paying publishers

#18

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #9
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure what your purpose here is To illustrate that a platform that withdraws from republishing news content doesn't end our news access. > but when you share an article on facebook, you usually get "the title", a leading picture, and occasionally a summary. Now you'll just get an unprocessed URL This doesn't seem transformative to my point. Could you expound a bit?

They aren't inserting the bodies of the articles into the feed. It is like when I hit a paywall site and they tell me what I could get if I just paid for the subscription. If they were scraping complete articles and re-publishing those, that would be a totally different thing.

>when you share an article on facebook, you usually get "the title", a leading picture, and occasionally a summary.

That's the content of news articles. They were scraping content for republication and now they're not.

From Meta: in order to comply with Bill C-18, passed today in Parliament, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada

> Now you'll just get an unprocessed URL. They aren't inserting the bodies of the articles into the feed.

That's how links are supposed to be and reflects what a well functioning internet looks like. I'm not saying that to be a techno-purist. I'm saying it's the most normal, usual and predicable way to handle a link. There's not a thing wrong with it.

> It is like when I hit a paywall site and they tell me what I could get if I just paid for the subscription.

I can't agree. Having 2% less choices isn't similar to having no choice at all.

If Facebook doesn't offer the 50th copy of a news story, you still have 49 other sites that do (as well as the source). If the story is paywalled, your options are ~none.

Re: Meta starts process to end news access in Canada over law on paying publishers

#19

Post by ulrashida »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #16

Mediocre Canada once again focusing on the wrong things. Solve your housing and healthcare crisis instead of focusing on nonsense.

Or, you know, function as a government that can tackle multiple issues simultaneously.

With previous comment gems like "Canada's healthcare is so bad that if you are not immediately dying, you get no healthcare whatsoever" it's clear that you're not intending to be taken seriously.

Re: Meta starts process to end news access in Canada over law on paying publishers

#20

Post by falcor84 »

reaperducer wrote: post #14
toomuchtodo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers existed before social media. They will exist after social media deplatforms them. Big Tech should not be able to hold the integrity of the Internet hostage.

News, even if it's only headlines, has value. Google knows this. If the news headlines had no value, Google wouldn't have launched Google News in the first place. Try scraping Google's content as a trillion-dollar company and see how long that lasts.

What's "Google's content" in this context?
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