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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

#161

Post by SiempreViernes »

gspencley wrote: post #136
Nextgrid wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> makes news content [...] available That sounds like a simple link wouldn't count?

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…

Sure, but the act only applies if you are as powerful as Google (Section 6: Application), and since they are the primary target the scope needs to be broad because Google can be counted on producing the most bad faith reading of any law to try to escape paying for the practice of scraping content from journalists in an effort to keep the traffic on their own pages.

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

#162

Post by ipaddr »

llm_nerd wrote: post #142
jsnell wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the actual text of the law does not match your claim. It's about "facilitating access to news content by any means " including an "index" or "aggregation". Not about reproducing large chunks of the original content. And it should be pretty obvious that this is the case. If your interpretation was correct, Meta would not have removed Canadian news sources entirely. They'd just have removed the previews (he…

>If your interpretation was correct, Meta would not have removed Canadian news sources entirely. Meta's actions prove absolutely nothing. I could similarly say that Google didn't remove any news, therefore the law has zero effect? Meta has, for months in advance of anything coming into force, embargoed Canadian news and replaced it with an appeal to the reader. That is political action, and it seems to have failed gi…

I welcome it for the opposite reason. The few powerful families that control the news cartel in Canada need less reach.

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

#164

Post by wubrr »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #90
wubrr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would news organizations deny the request referred by a linking party? Are you talking about a technical denial - as in reject the HTTP request? I guess technically they can base something like this on HTTP referer header, but you can have links without referer info as well.

Referrer is exactly how you would do it. The idiocy here is that most of these publishers are likely customers of Google's ad networks anyways, and the clicks through to the articles are yielding ad revenue to them, and they likely are getting analytics and tracking that identifies exactly where the inbound traffic is coming from. It feels like a shakedown by people who are in other parts of the business totally disc…

Referrer is basically optional though, you can specify a link to have no referrer : `link` , among other ways.

It's true that the links only increase the revenue/traffic to their website though, so they should really be supporting the referrers rather than blocking them.

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

#165

Post by ipaddr »

babypuncher wrote: post #132
bryanlarsen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian journalists could have done this without the government by adapting tactics similar to unions. A union strikes not because they want to withhold work from their company, but because even though both the company and the union members want to work, the strike shifts the power balance. Similarly, Canadian journalists could have gotten together to withhold links from Google & Meta until they got a better deal. T…

I feel like that could backfire since "scabbing" would be really easy, especially for less scrupulous news organizations more strongly tied to corporate or political interests than actual news reporting. Basically while Reuters or AP are "on strike", Drudge Report, Jacobin, or Fox News would step in and become the de facto news sources across all of social media.

But smaller news outlets are not part of this cartel.

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

#166

Post by SiempreViernes »

kevingadd wrote: post #149
gspencley wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a popular myth about the way the law works in Canada. The myth may be based on how the Australian version works, I wouldn't know. But here in Canada, this is the relevant text of the bill: > digital news intermediary means an online communications platform, including a search engine or social media service, that is subject to the legislative authority of Parliament and that makes news content produced by news…

The text of the bill says that links are "news content"? A pure hyperlink does not make content available, since if the target server goes down the link is useless. It just directs the user to the content. Unless somebody loses a court case over hyperlinks, it feels extremely disingenuous to claim this law is going after hyperlinks when Google's content was blatantly more than hyperlinks (they provide excerpts).

The definition of "making available" is actually very broad, presumably to head off at the gate whatever technical work-around Google was planning to use to bypass a the more narrow "the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced".

Like, I can see Google pivoting to providing custom links and a script that runs in the users browser that will dynamically produce the snippets on the pages without the content technically going trough their servers...

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

#167

Post by SiempreViernes »

ipaddr wrote: post #162
llm_nerd wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your interpretation was correct, Meta would not have removed Canadian news sources entirely. Meta's actions prove absolutely nothing. I could similarly say that Google didn't remove any news, therefore the law has zero effect? Meta has, for months in advance of anything coming into force, embargoed Canadian news and replaced it with an appeal to the reader. That is political action, and it seems to have failed gi…

I welcome it for the opposite reason. The few powerful families that control the news cartel in Canada need less reach.

You "welcome" media control going from a "few families" to a single person?

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

#168

Post by SiempreViernes »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #107
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.

I'm pretty sure I've seen multiple critiques that this specific law is in fact a link tax, and doesn't care if there are previews or not. Is that wrong? Sure, google currently has previews, and a law could be written to target previews, but I don't think this law targets previews.

It does target previews very explicitly, but it also has a much broader condition that I imagine is there to prevent Google and others from making previews something technically not provided by them but instead created by some payload they give the users of their website.

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

#169

Post by randomdata »

coldpie wrote: post #155
randomdata wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> and the outcome for the original reporter is the same: no payment for their work.

What provisions are in this bill to ensure that the money ends up in the reporters' hands, and not the media agencies' hands? Without that then you still have the exact same "race to the bottom" scenario – with the reporter seeing no payment for their work.

What provisions are in this bill to ensure that the reporters are able to create their own brand to break free of the media agencies? If the intent is to see Google/Meta drive the traffic and also pay the reporters, the middleman agency serves no purpose.

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

#170

Post by gspencley »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #166
kevingadd wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The text of the bill says that links are "news content"? A pure hyperlink does not make content available, since if the target server goes down the link is useless. It just directs the user to the content. Unless somebody loses a court case over hyperlinks, it feels extremely disingenuous to claim this law is going after hyperlinks when Google's content was blatantly more than hyperlinks (they provide excerpts).

The definition of "making available" is actually very broad, presumably to head off at the gate whatever technical work-around Google was planning to use to bypass a the more narrow "the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced". Like, I can see Google pivoting to providing custom links and a script that runs in the users browser that will dynamically produce the snippets on the pages without the content tec…

A couple things of note:

1. Meta was the other "initial target." And so if we're in a mindset where we just dislike Google or "big powerful corporations that will stop at no end to ... whatever" then the application of the bill ALREADY hit a point where we can start to see how loosely the regulators will interpret Section 6. And according to the wording of that section, they just need to consider the "size" of the entity,"strategic advantage", and "prominent market position" in order to determine if they decide that the digital news intermediary has "a significant bargaining power imbalance."

2. With respects to what you think Google might do in order to try and "work around the law" ... I'm not a lawyer, but from what I've heard from lawyers, courts tend to be very intolerant towards people who try and apply a strict interpretation of the wording of a law in order to try and skirt around what it makes illegal. Common law, precedence and judicial interpretation really exists in large part to try and avoid that type of thing. Judges will look at things like the intent of the legislators, past court decisions and the intent of the accused in order to determine whether the accused is in violation.

In other words, Section 4 "Purpose", would be considered:

> Purpose 4 The purpose of this Act is to regulate digital news intermediaries with a view to enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contributing to its sustainability, including the sustainability of news businesses in Canada, in both the non-profit and for-profits sectors, including independent local ones.

As well as Google's intent. If the court were to gather that Google's intent was to try and work around the law, they go back to the Purpose, look at Google's actions and the EFFECT of their actions and will say "Sorry, you don't get to do shit like that to try and weasel your way out of the law. It still applies." And those types of actions can often be used as evidence of an intent to break the law, so any lawyer would likely advise their client to not even consider doing slimy shit like that.

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