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

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

#311

Post by munk-a »

moffkalast wrote: post #260
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.

I don't see how this gets them paid, more like wiped from the internet entirely?

A fair number of people search on google specifically to get news on recent events - Google currently captures a decent portion of those users and keeps them from ever actually visiting the original sources. Users want that information though, so unless Google can tell me why the building two blocks down is currently throwing out a huge plume of smoke I'll eventually land on the actual content creator to read the information.

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

#312

Post by _aavaa_ »

bratao wrote: post #5

Brazil is currently considering a similar law that would require social networks to compensate content creators for each republication [1]. However, unlike the situation in Canada, the Brazilian lawmakers have taken into account this scenario. The law mandates that social networks cannot cease publishing the content and must negotiate compensation in "fair terms." Personally, I find this approach to be quite perplexi…

> “fair terms”

The scare quotes are actually warranted here. I’d love to see how you can come to fair terms when the other side know that you cannot walk away.

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

#313

Post by chongli »

carlosjobim wrote: post #229
chongli wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are millions of websites out there that are free for anyone to read, including this one! Restaurants that serve free meals are not the norm, so this analogy doesn't make a lot of sense. If every website was paywalled and required a subscription, like cable TV channels, then you might have a point.

People use search engines professionally and not only for entertainment. There is an icebergs worth of important and valuable information online behind paywalls, not only articles or news. Information workers use a search engine to find the information they need, pay the cost if it's paywalled, and then cancel any subscription after getting what they needed. Long gone are the days of "surfing the web", when most of u…

I don't see why there couldn't also be a professional search engine. Academics have Google Scholar which is an amazing resource for them. A search engine that brought up high quality resources for professionals would seem to be pretty useful. It could potentially even have a single subscription to unlock all of the sites in a network, rather than individual paywalls at every site.

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

#314

Post by timbit42 »

photochemsyn wrote: post #209

Not a problem. Go to ChatGPT and ask it to tell you the top ten Canadian media outlets. You can also ask for the top ten left-leaning, right-leaning, and tech/sci/engineering outlets. Then go to Wikipedia to get the urls for each. Bookmark all the sites and write a little Python scraper to get all the headlines each day. Then, say goodbye to Alphabet and Meta.

Why not just use RSS/Atom?

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

#315

Post by cscurmudgeon »

pyrale wrote: post #64
paddw wrote: post #36

Many people who would otherwise be appalled at laws like this seem to want to rationalize this because its specifically targeting Google and Meta. Sometimes taking the simple view is correct: It's a bad thing to prevent sites from linking to one another. It's a bad thing to interfere with the ability to access information on the Internet for reasons of nationalist politics.

> Many people who would otherwise be appalled at laws like this seem to want to rationalize this because its specifically targeting Google and Meta. It's not just a matter of the targeted companies being Google and Meta, even though these two especially deserve it. It's the simple realization that good journalism requires good money, and that the current balance between news organizations and internet brokers isn't u…

> It's the simple realization that good journalism requires good money, and that the current balance between news organizations and internet brokers isn't up to the task. It is also true of other type of content creators, by the way: there is a structural imbalance between content creators and content brokers. This is even more true with Google's zero-click efforts.

Let's go 100%. Will journalists then pay people who they report on?

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

#316

Post by tomComb »

quitit wrote: post #76
ortusdux wrote: post #28

They went to great lengths to no mention Meta. Bill C-18 changes the rules for linking by requiring two companies, including Google, to pay Canadian news publishers simply for linking to their sites.

Although I disagree with this kind of law: Was it just linking? Or was it providing a useful summary that essentially renders no need to click the provided link? + the link Otherwise I can see why Google and Meta got the law, while Reddit, Apple news and others don't.

It’s just linking

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

#318

Post by GeekyBear »

jefftk wrote: post #301
GeekyBear wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that would exempt them under the law? Have a look: https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-a...

There's a ton of international case law saying that a mere link is not illegal.

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

#319

Post by version_five »

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.

Globe and Mail is apparently owned by a Thompson (one of Canada's wealthiest families), and the CBC is run by the government. CTV is owned by Bell Media, part of Canada's telecom oligopoly. Global news is owned by Corus, a Canadian company. National Post is owned by Postmedia which is a publicly traded Canadian company, with majority ownership from an American PE firm. Is that what you mean?

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

#320

Post by agnosticmantis »

agnosticmantis wrote: post #84

I’m guessing if/when this takes effect, the publishers will have to buy ads on Google and FB to attract readers that would previously find the content in the said platforms? Seems like a win for the two companies.

Also it seems like a business opportunity to start a newspaper outside Canada that does journalism for Canada. Then you’d appear in search results for free, while your Canadian counterparts would have to pay for ads to show up on the first page.
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