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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

#291

Post by GeekyBear »

jeffbee wrote: post #238

Most Canadian media is owned by asset-stripping American private equity firms, just like American newspapers. They just want to get paid, and have figured out a particular way that Canadian, Australian, German, and Californian legislators can be duped into it.

Google would be perfectly free to hire a human being to write headlines in their own words and then link to articles in the press discussing that story.

"Man Bites Dog" More discussion: CBC, National Post, Toronto Star, CTV, etc.

However, Google doesn't want to pay human beings, they want to "borrow' other people's content to make a profit.

People seem to conflate "indexing your story on our search engine" with "borrowing your headline and photo for our own news site".

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

#292

Post by bandrami »

pyrale wrote: post #207
graeme wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While Canada's bill may not be well-tuned, it is a welcome first attempt. The problem is media companies have been pushing this exact blueprint for d years. decades. It is a terrible, terrible template. If countries want to tax big tech and give the money to media organizations, they should be honest about it. Laws like this distort reality. >the current balance between news organizations and internet brokers isn't…

> This doesn't make sense. Newspapers want links to their stories. Newspapers want monetization. There are three ways linking to stories equal monetization: * Newspapers get enough ad money through these link. This mostly doesn't work. * Newspapers cut their costs and deliver shitty clickbait. * Newspapers get funded by "philantropy". This ranges from newspapers independently funded by trust funds to newspapers being…

4: Links bring in readers who then decide to support the journalism.

I personally believe reader support is the only viable option going forward.

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

#293

Post by Manuel_D »

LegitShady wrote: post #38
lordleft wrote: post #12

Surely news publications benefit more from Google/Facebook providing links to their content? It's a mutually beneficial relationship. I'm a bit puzzled as to why this was pushed, I'd love some context for this.

On one hand, yes, it drives traffic. On the other hand, no, because lots of people just read headlines and maybe they can do that without clicking. But realistically this the current Canadian government trying to shake down google and facebook for money to transfer to the ailing news industry in canada. The merits of the position for a link tax are pretty bad, and don’t really matter to the issue at hand. The governm…

> On one hand, yes, it drives traffic. On the other hand, no, because lots of people just read headlines and maybe they can do that without clicking.

Then the solution is to modify your `robots.txt` file to prohibit these snippets.

Of course, no-one actually does this because they're well aware that the headlines are what drives attention and clicks.

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

#294

Post by warning26 »

GeekyBear wrote: post #291
jeffbee wrote: post #238

Most Canadian media is owned by asset-stripping American private equity firms, just like American newspapers. They just want to get paid, and have figured out a particular way that Canadian, Australian, German, and Californian legislators can be duped into it.

Google would be perfectly free to hire a human being to write headlines in their own words and then link to articles in the press discussing that story. "Man Bites Dog" More discussion: CBC, National Post, Toronto Star, CTV, etc. However, Google doesn't want to pay human beings, they want to "borrow' other people's content to make a profit. People seem to conflate "indexing your story on our search engine" with "borr…

Are you proposing that the entire concept of a non-human-curated search engine should be illegal? Seems kind of silly.

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

#295

Post by jurassic »

gremlinunderway wrote: post #274
cornholio wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody denies its their right, but that doesn't mean it's not a very stupid action, motivated by dumb nationalism. You can't handwave circumstances away, as if the legislators don't know it is a cashgrab against foreign corporations and genuinely believe Google and Facebook are Canadian companies.

[flagged]

I don't think it adds anything to the discussion to personify and sexualize these companies.

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

#296

Post by jsnell »

GeekyBear wrote: post #291
jeffbee wrote: post #238

Most Canadian media is owned by asset-stripping American private equity firms, just like American newspapers. They just want to get paid, and have figured out a particular way that Canadian, Australian, German, and Californian legislators can be duped into it.

Google would be perfectly free to hire a human being to write headlines in their own words and then link to articles in the press discussing that story. "Man Bites Dog" More discussion: CBC, National Post, Toronto Star, CTV, etc. However, Google doesn't want to pay human beings, they want to "borrow' other people's content to make a profit. People seem to conflate "indexing your story on our search engine" with "borr…

That's not what the law says at all. You've just made it up. The actual definition for what's in scope is:

> (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 content.

See point b. Simply facilitating access, for example by linking or having the article in a search index, would be enough.

(Also, really smooth move deleting your original toplevel comment and just moving it to a reply under the highest voted thread. Not even any pretense that you're replying to jeffbee, but just cynically trying to get the maximum visibility for your entirely made up claim.)

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

#297

Post by Manuel_D »

reaperducer wrote: post #50
musha68k wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember actual newsstands?

Do you remember actual newsstands? I do. I remember when the newspaper was 10¢. The guy working the stand didn't let you stand in front of it and read all the headlines in every page of every newspaper and magazine for free. "I'm only reading the headlines" would get you a slap upside the head.

Quite the contrary: the news stands would have the front page displayed quite prominently precisely so that you could read the headlines of the main stories to attract the interest of passerbys: https://p.turbosquid.com/ts-thumb/0m/ePJxnz/tlmgVado/news_st...

If outlets don't want the headlines scraped and displayed, then they're free to modify their `robots.txt` file accordingly. But they don't because they're well aware that this would reduce, not improve, their bottom line.

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

#299

Post by Tyr42 »

isykt wrote: post #109
phailhaus wrote: post #105

So these news orgs are getting free advertising, and they want to be paid on top?

Facebook and Google cache their content and display it on their own websites, negating the reason for clicking through to the website where the ad dollars would be generated for the content creators.

The law also include "indexing" and "ranking" under the definition of "makes available". So even crawling the sites requires an agreement now.
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