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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

#181

Post by wvenable »

llm_nerd wrote: post #178
wvenable wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very poor argument. Laws and actions are good or bad based on their own merits and and not because of which parties support it or not. This link tax is a bad law. It's bad for the Internet. And thus it is also bad for Meta. > And they have always pulled, aggregated and summarized news because it makes them money. Not even accurate as news companies actively provide this content in their meta data explicitly…

The "link" tax is a tax on mega American tech companies, and was written to target literally only two companies on the planet. It has nothing to do with the internet at large. Anyone who claims otherwise is either poorly informed, or a bad faith actor. The histrionics on this topic are not useful. >This is a very poor argument What do you even think the argument was? I said that Meta's position is an indicator . Don'…

> The "link" tax is a tax on mega American tech companies, and was written to target literally only two companies on the planet.

And you consider that a good thing? Laws that target companies by name? Your argument is that the ends justify the means. But in this case the ends is one set of large companies (some with large American ownership) lobbying the government to force other large companies to pay them for nothing. It's a gross abuse of power. Utterly unnecessary and entirely the Canadian way. This is the kind of thing that keeps the oligarchy alive in Canada.

> Again, my greatest hope is that Meta sticks with it. No news on FB, Threads, Instagram or elsewhere. A total embargo. That'll show em!

In this we absolutely agree. I also wish Google didn't cave. Of course, they didn't really cave though, they just did a side deal so this law wouldn't apply to them. This whole thing is just stupid and wrong.

> Facebook basically became the "go to" back when they absolutely did scrape news, similar to Google.

If any of these companies violated copyright then by all means let the media companies sue them.

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

#182

Post by SECProto »

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.

> As a Canadian this is disappointing to me. I disagree with the law.

As a Canadian, this is exciting to me. I agree strongly with the goals of the law (while holding nitpicks about the actual wording). I think the fact that Google came to an agreement shows that they don't have a fundamental issue with the law either (or they could've just withdrawn from our market, like Meta). It's a win for independent media in Canada, and thereby, for all Canadians.

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

#184

Post by stalfosknight »

I'm no fan of Google whatsoever but I really don't agree with this premise that just because they're successful and their competitors haven't figured out how to compete yet that Google should then be forced to be sugar daddy to legacy businesses. The solution is unleashing your tech industry not more nanny laws.

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

#185

Post by wepple »

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…

> Does one counter-example disprove the rule?

No, NZ is an outlier. Regularly rated the least corrupt country on earth. “Basically everywhere” still holds.

Also, whilst NZ may not have explicit corruption such as bribing police directly, the grandparent post suggesting that special interests affect govt is still true. Jacinda was supposed to be the one shining hope that many believed would bring in CGT and she admitted it would never happen. The wealthy property owners (including most MPs) wouldn’t let that happen.

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

#186

Post by randomdata »

wubrr wrote: post #164
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> you can specify a link to have no referrer : `link` , among other ways.

But you wouldn't do that if you want the link to resolve. If you don't want it to work, why would you go to all of the trouble of creating the link in the first place?

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

#187

Post by gspencley »

SECProto wrote: post #182
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.

> As a Canadian this is disappointing to me. I disagree with the law. As a Canadian, this is exciting to me. I agree strongly with the goals of the law (while holding nitpicks about the actual wording). I think the fact that Google came to an agreement shows that they don't have a fundamental issue with the law either (or they could've just withdrawn from our market, like Meta). It's a win for independent media in Ca…

> I think the fact that Google came to an agreement shows that they don't have a fundamental issue with the law either (or they could've just withdrawn from our market, like Meta).

Or they calculated that the agreement is the less expensive option. We're both speculating, of course, but it's possible that they figure that not linking to news in Canada would put them at a [even greater] competitive disadvantage which could potentially cost them more in lost business as Canadian users and customers seek alternatives.

Alternatives, I might add, that are not unfairly targeted by a law granting regulators arbitrary powers to target and penalize some companies over others.

I also want to point out that the conclusion that Google has no issue with the bill because of the agreement reached is another reason I'm disappointed... because of course that's how it will be interpreted by supporters of the bill, and they will hammer that message home with a very heavy hand: "Look! Even our victims support what we're doing to them!"

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

#188

Post by acdha »

randomdata wrote: post #116
acdha wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when they set a referrer policy no-referrer? I’m sure Google and Meta would say that’s to protect user privacy. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Re...

The simplest option is to treat it as a rejection. Users aren't going to be dreaming up (choosing a recent article at random) URIs like /politics/federal/chiefs-of-ontario-says-trudeau-s-carbon-price-is-discriminatory-and-demand-a-review/article_9c995f63-1e26-56c6-9048-79781a9b649c.html in order to get there without some referring party. Negotiations between Google/Meta and the news organization when defining the ser…

Users are going to be opening links from emails, SMS/MMS/RCS, other apps, and sites which do care about their users' privacy so, yes, this would be a problem for many people.

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

#189

Post by randomdata »

acdha wrote: post #188
randomdata wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest option is to treat it as a rejection. Users aren't going to be dreaming up (choosing a recent article at random) URIs like /politics/federal/chiefs-of-ontario-says-trudeau-s-carbon-price-is-discriminatory-and-demand-a-review/article_9c995f63-1e26-56c6-9048-79781a9b649c.html in order to get there without some referring party. Negotiations between Google/Meta and the news organization when defining the ser…

Users are going to be opening links from emails, SMS/MMS/RCS, other apps, and sites which do care about their users' privacy so, yes, this would be a problem for many people.

It can only be a problem for the news agencies – and only if those users are a significant number to impact profitability. If those users don't matter, restricting their access doesn't matter. Who cares if someone who isn't helping your bottom line can't access the content you expect payment for? That’s the whole point of this – to keep out those who are not helping the news business.

Now, each successful entrance into an article via allowable referrer would come with an access token to allow future access absent of referral. When sharing in the small scale, the news agency can simply allow these links to be shared. But if the reach grows wide, suggesting that a major tech source has picked up the link and should be using their contractually settled upon authentication mechanism instead, then the token can be invalidated.

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

#190

Post by Dylan16807 »

randomdata wrote: post #186
wubrr wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> you can specify a link to have no referrer : ` link ` , among other ways. But you wouldn't do that if you want the link to resolve. If you don't want it to work, why would you go to all of the trouble of creating the link in the first place?

And block people that use a bookmark or share the link via chat programs? I think almost no sites would do that.
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