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Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

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Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#151

Post by CivBase »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #89
brushfoot wrote: post #47

Even if you agree that Google should have to prop up Canadian news organizations—which I don't, but for the sake of argument—predicating that support specifically on hyperlinks seems like a terrible precedent to set. Any site of any size should be free to link wherever it wants, freely.

"Link tax" is clearly chosen in bad faith, like in other cases where that wording had been used. What's really happening is that Google Search shows previews of large parts of articles such that visitors don't go to origin sites to generate page impressions/ad playouts. Which is especially problematic since Google/Alphabet is either an ad provider on the skipped news site or its competitor.

Are news articles considered intellectual property, like books? If so, wouldn't it already be considered piracy for Google to copy and redistribute significant portions of the articles? If so - and if this law is not actually a "link tax" like you claim - then what is this law really preventing?

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#152

Post by randomdata »

coldpie wrote: post #65
Analemma_ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a bizarre way of thinking that's utterly antithetical to how the internet works. If you publish something publicly on the internet, people can see it and link to it. If you don't want that, gate access behind a paywall or login, or don't publish it all. Publishing it publicly and then demanding conditions on how it is accessed is kind of nonsensical.

Generally the problem is not the link itself, it's the headline and any included blurb/summary/image from the article. The problem being that users see & gain the content solely when viewed from the link aggregator, without ever actually visiting the originating website and participating in its monetization methods. A bare " http:// ..." URL probably would not have raised the same objections, but also no one would ac…

> it's the headline and any included blurb/summary/image from the article.

Why would that be a problem? Open Graph was created by Meta exactly so that these news sites have editorial control over those details. And the Canadian news outlets have adopted Open Graph, so that is not an issue. If they don't like what is shown, they have full control to change it. The headline/blurb/image you see is what they have specified. That is what they want you to see.

The real problem is that reporting the news doesn't pay very well anymore and certain news players were on the hunt for a government subsidy to offset that reality.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#153

Post by CivBase »

nradov wrote: post #108
tannhaeuser wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Link tax" is clearly chosen in bad faith, like in other cases where that wording had been used. What's really happening is that Google Search shows previews of large parts of articles such that visitors don't go to origin sites to generate page impressions/ad playouts. Which is especially problematic since Google/Alphabet is either an ad provider on the skipped news site or its competitor.

How many characters of preview would be reasonable? 50? 100?

How much am I allowed to quote from a book before I'm considered a pirate?

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#154

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

Georgelemental wrote: post #52

Who qualifies as a news organization under this law? Can any random declare themselves a "journalist"? Or do the benefits accrue only to Trusted Sources approved by Your Friend, The Government?

Facebook thought that the Beaverton was a news org and blocked them. They threatened a defamation lawsuit in retaliation:

https://www.thebeaverton.com/2023/08/read-our-letter-threate...

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#155

Post by coldpie »

randomdata wrote: post #152
coldpie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally the problem is not the link itself, it's the headline and any included blurb/summary/image from the article. The problem being that users see & gain the content solely when viewed from the link aggregator, without ever actually visiting the originating website and participating in its monetization methods. A bare " http:// ..." URL probably would not have raised the same objections, but also no one would ac…

> it's the headline and any included blurb/summary/image from the article. Why would that be a problem? Open Graph was created by Meta exactly so that these news sites have editorial control over those details. And the Canadian news outlets have adopted Open Graph, so that is not an issue. If they don't like what is shown, they have full control to change it. The headline/blurb/image you see is what they have specifi…

> If they don't like what is shown, they have full control to change it.

Sure, and then some other news agency that does include more content in their metadata will be shared in the aggregator instead, because it will at least bring in a little revenue. It's a race to the bottom, and the outcome for the original reporter is the same: no payment for their work.

> The real problem is that reporting the news doesn't pay very well anymore

Well, yeah! That is the problem! Google is getting the money that used to go to the news agencies. This is one attempt at a fix.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#156

Post by ars »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #69
Georgelemental wrote: post #52

Who qualifies as a news organization under this law? Can any random declare themselves a "journalist"? Or do the benefits accrue only to Trusted Sources approved by Your Friend, The Government?

If I understand correctly, Google agreed to pay proportional to the number of human journalists an organization employs. If so, that's an awesome detail in this age of AI journalism.

Does the deal say anything about the jurnalist pay? Can a high-school make every single student a "full time journalist" and rake in the cash?

Or some other sort of club instead of a school.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#157

Post by wintogreen74 »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #133
gspencley wrote: post #98

As a Canadian this is disappointing to me. I disagree with the law. Actually, disagree is too soft. I think it is absolutely ridiculous. By Google agreeing to pay even one penny, it removes a large incentive for our politicans and regulations to realize that this was ill-conceived and to come to their senses and repeal.

How does the Canadian law compare to the Australian one? As I understand it, the Australian law had a lot of influence from people like Rupert Murdoch, specifically targeted "big tech" companies like Meta and Google, and didn't benefit small[er]/independent news organizations.

The biggest difference on the surface is the AU law focuses on aggregators providing summaries that remove the need to visit the source, where the CA law targets just references, aka links.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#158

Post by Spivak »

kevingadd wrote: post #150
gspencley wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose I could have included other "relevant" sections of the bill. But there's a reason I linked to the full text. > "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 index, aggregation or ranking of news c…

Indexes don't work without consuming the news content first in order to build the index, right? So it's reasonable to argue that a news search index is a derived work that draws some amount of value from the source news content. Without the news sites offering their news for free to google's spider, google's index would be useless. You could make a similar argument for aggregators since they usually display excerpts…

This line of reasoning is dangerously close to saying that mapmakers need to pay license fees for your land to be shown on a map because "without the land your map wouldn't be very valuable."

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#159

Post by FirmwareBurner »

robocat wrote: post #148
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everything is like that here, the government is ruled by special interests. [...] Everything is like that here, the government is ruled by special interests. Don't wanna sound like a conspiracy nut but it's like that basically everywhere. The rich need to get richer, the poor need to tighten the belt. Democracy needs constant supervision (who watches the watchmen?) and checks and bounds with accountability, otherwis…

> basically everywhere Does one counter-example disprove the rule? I'm likely just naive and my eyes are not sufficiently opened - but I don't see a lot of obviously corrupt activity here in New Zealand. Corruption seems fairly endemic in most other countries I have visited. It isn't just a size thing because the problem seems to be worse in smaller countries and larger countries. 5 million population might be necess…

Sure, there's good examples out there of democratic governments with high transparency and low corruption like Finland and Denmark, but too few of us have the privilege of living there.

Granted, there are worse places to be in the world right now than Canada (most of Africa, certain parts of SE Asia, Russia, Eastern Ukraine, etc), but why I think Canadians are so loud(not Canadian BTW) is that they witnessed a steep drop of their living standards and purchasing power withing a much shorter timespan than most developed countries (the same phenomenon is happening everywhere in the west) so you feel let down and hopeless when you know those from just a few decades ago had it so much better than you, and you're stuck in a cycle of relative poverty by comparison despite busting your ass off, while those in leadership positions are favoring those already financially well off instead of the struggling little guy.

I know the feeling because a lot of Europe is in a similar boat right now, albeit less severe than Canada.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#160

Post by KennyBlanken »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #73
bryanlarsen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google/Meta do more than link, though. They also grab a hero image and an excerpt. Likely fair use, but definitely getting into the grey area. I don't know how the Canadian law is worded, but it would be much more acceptable to me if Google/Meta could get out of paying if they only linked and didn't excerpt images or text.

It is about the link itself, not the image. Meta refused to negotiate, because it doesnt control what links people post.

Bullshit. Facebook as a matter of policy manipulates people's feeds - the chances of something appearing, in what order, etc.

People have found that certain sites, topics, and words will trigger an outright shadowban on that post - your friends never see it.

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