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Is Canada About to Crack Down on Google and Facebook? (thestar.com) 90

The Minister of Canadian heritage has a message for Google and Facebook, reports the Toronto Star: "The Canadian government stands with our Australian partners and denounces any form of threats," Steven Guilbeault said in an emailed statement to the Star's Susan Delacourt. The "threats" Guilbeault referred to involved some of the world's richest and most influential corporations, Facebook and Google, which have separately warned Canada's friends down under that they will suspend services in Australia or block media organizations from using their platforms if Canberra follows through with a law they don't like. That law would force these giants of the digital age — companies that rake in tens of billions of dollars each year and control the infrastructure of the internet's most-trafficked venues — to negotiate payments to the journalism organizations that create the news content hosted on their platforms...

Google did not respond to a request for comment from the Star this week. Facebook, however, signalled in a background conversation with the Star that it is willing to pay more taxes in Canada.

But taxation isn't the only government intervention that companies might face, according to Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor and Canada Research Chair in internet and E-Commerce Law: The second area where Geist sees potential for federal action is in response to calls for foreign digital players to pay for Canadian content. Here, Geist said "it's pretty clear (the government is) going to do something," given how Trudeau assigned Guilbeault to bring in legislation to modernize Canada's laws on broadcasting and telecommunications before the end of the year.

In his office's statement to the Star, Guilbeault said the government is committed to a "more equitable digital regulatory framework" in Canada. "It is about levelling the playing field," he said. "Those who benefit from the Canadian ecosystem must also contribute to it, through the Canadian broadcasting sector or the fair remuneration for the use of news content."

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Is Canada About to Crack Down on Google and Facebook?

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  • Threat (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Monday September 07, 2020 @12:09AM (#60481058)

    If they force Google and Facebook to pay for news links, they won't host news links. They've done it in other countries already. The article makes it sound as if the news organizations have a right to be hosted on Google, Facebook, or any other site, and then force those sites to pay them.

    Not sure why people keep using the term "threat." According to the news organization's logic, they are being harmed now by Facebook and Google freeloading off of them. If Google and Facebook are forced to pay for linking to news articles, then decide to not pay and not host their links, that is what the news sites are angling for, isn't it?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Jarwulf ( 530523 )
      Thats right. If anything, news orgs depend on g00gle not the other way around. What they really want is a kickback, a slice of the pie, like a mafia protection racket or a brigand's toll. But its impolite to phrase it that way.
      • Re: Threat (Score:1, Funny)

        by fod_dzug ( 6598790 )
        If Google and Facebook don't like the Canadian laws, they are free to do business elsewhere. We believe in democracy here, hopefully they won't be able to buy our politicians like they do south of the border.
      • Well if you did the work don't you want to get paid and not having your neighbour hand out your stuff for free? Seems to me MAFIA and Hollywood also opposes anyone handing out their stuff for free so i don't really see a problem here.
        • If I did the work, I want to get paid. The problem here is that you seem to imagine we have a true definition of fair price for that work. "There is a free market, therefore the value of work must be exact." Is there a free market though? Who makes the ownership laws, who controls the justice system, who controls the government spending? The only free market is complete anarchy, but I'm not sure an economy resembling the drug lords' paradise would be beneficial for most people. The value of your work is
          • A free market depends on competition. Monopolies are not a free market.

            That's why you need market regulation to have the maximum free market.

            • Monopolies are an inherent part of the free market. If you add regulations to combat toxic effects of the free market (e.g. monopolies, competitors communication, deceitfulness, theft, ...), the ones influencing those regulation will have an advantage on this new regulated market. Does Apple have a monopoly for the software on iOS? Well, our friendly lobbyists tell us that is very fair and our electoral funding depends on this situation not being declared a monopoly. We rule it isn't a monopoly.
              • A free market depends on competition. Monopolies are not a free market.

                Monopolies are an inherent part of the free market.

                Right, that's why you need rules limiting their power. If they weren't an inherent part of a free market, you wouldn't have to do anything about them.

                If you add regulations to combat toxic effects of the free market (e.g. monopolies, competitors communication, deceitfulness, theft, ...), the ones influencing those regulation will have an advantage on this new regulated market.

                Yes, that's why government is not "hands off". You have to stay involved for it to function correctly.

              • Monopolies are an inherent part of the free market.

                If you have a monopoly that part of the market by DEFINITION is not free. The end result of a free market is monopoly and the destruction of the free market. Regulate the market to avoid monopolies and the market may not be totally free but isn't totally unfree either.

            • Libertarians seem to start from the premise that you need some arbitrary basic laws to have a free market: material property, contract enforcement and usually intellectual property. These laws are curiously very in favor of those who already have the control of society. Free market: I have stuff and you can't have my stuff.
      • I disagree, google is the freeloader. What the news orgs want is to be indexed but not pirated.

        This is not an idle question of "fairness." The status quo has taken all the money out of covering news, and I think really harmed investigative journalism as a result.

      • If they force Google and Facebook to pay for news links, they won't host newS

        So what? Facebook and Google search will become even more spammy and full of shit than they are now?

        They'll pay up or die.

    • Re:Threat (Score:4, Funny)

      by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Monday September 07, 2020 @01:26AM (#60481186)
      So? Canadians don't want American news. The US Presidential Circus is irrelevant to Canadians and we don't want to know about Pelosi's bad hair days either.
    • The FLAW in this assumption is once Google has your data, It is joined to other data they have on you. Secondly people who read the news are intent on reading the news, and probably unresponsive to click to buy this useless item while in the news mode. The profit kicks in when the user moves on to 'free time' or social media sites - where the curated commercial popups are delivered. After 3 months of news association mining, Google has all it needs and the marginal value of fresh news is not so valuable. Th
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If Facebook stops allowing links to news sites it will harm Facebook. A lot of the bullshit people post on there is links to news. Obviously the news sites hope that it will hurt Facebook more than them and Facebook will relent.

      They might not even be wrong, if people can't post links but instead say "I just read on Clickbait News that..." it could drive some traffic to their site, maybe as much as the links did. I bet the click rate for links is extremely low, especially as people usually copy/paste some of

      • People will just do like I do - have a few local news sites that are always open, and refresh them when they want the news. I don't bother with the apps because they suck up bandwidth for useless stock photos that have nothing to do with the story, and videos I don't want to watch, so they're all blocked - which means I also don't see the ads.

        I still watch their regular local broadcasts, so they still get ad revenue, but neither Google nor Facebook get anything from me - no searches, no posts, no social

    • And if Google cannot post news links, people will stop going to Google for news. It sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Google can be a search engine for dry facts, and of course for shopping.

      Google being shut out of 'News' sounds like a good thing.

      • If you're looking for facts, Wikipedia is quicker than going through a search engine. And if you don't count spammy links, the first "real" link is often Wikipedia anyway â¦
    • by jbr439 ( 214107 )

      Totally correct, assuming we're just talking about linking (I've found the news stories on this to be infuriatingly vague on *precisely* what is being targetted).

      Linking to news articles drives people to the content hosters' sites. I.e., it is a good thing for content hosters and their content providers. Additionally, if they don't want to be linked to, they can prevent it with robots.txt, no? Google even has web pages devoted to testing your robots.txt file to verify it's blocking Google's web crawlers.

      As

  • Nobody stops GAFA, before you know it your downstairs neighbour Democrat president will start ripping up all your trade agreements.

  • It's complicated (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dwywit ( 1109409 ) on Monday September 07, 2020 @01:15AM (#60481162)

    In Oz, the Murdoch media (and others) are asking for more than money - they want access to the search algorithm/s, and access to user data collected by Google/Facebook.

    I can understand why they'd want money for anything beyond a headline and a link, that's fair enough (leaving aside the validity of that content, we're talking about Newscorp here). But what they're demanding are insights into gaming the system, so Murdoch et al can fuck right off.

    If they get what they're demanding, it'll be VPN only for me, and doing what I can to poison any data that might end up in Newscorp's hands.

  • by Hmmmmmm ( 6216892 ) on Monday September 07, 2020 @01:36AM (#60481214)

    The inability to regulate corporations have really been the downfall of the west. As shown by the previous Facebook article, corporations have gained way too much power, and now expect governments to cower before them.

    Funny that Trump trying to ban Wechat and Tiktok has caused other nations to realize that they too can ban US social media, or at least attempt to regulate their actions.

  • The fig leaf of "Canadian Content" is really about Canadian-government-regulated-content. Here's a link to an archived article from almost a quarter-century ago (1996). The CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television Commission) is our analog to the FCC. http://www.efc.ca/pages/media/... [www.efc.ca]

    > In a TV interview last week, Francoise Bertrand, the new
    > chairwoman of the CRTC, made some disturbing remarks
    > about the Internet that obviously shows her lack of
    > understanding of it.
    >
    > In a nutshell, she wishe

  • Maaaaaaybe they should crack down on Trudeau and his bullshit before they turn into a liberal SJW hellhole pseudo-PC nanny state. Correction: more of one.
  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday September 07, 2020 @02:56AM (#60481314)

    It's a fairly sane business decision to decide to not incur an additional cost. Just because the outcome of that decision is known up front doesn't make it a threat.

  • by Baki ( 72515 ) on Monday September 07, 2020 @03:32AM (#60481370)

    I am all for reigning in Facebook, Google and the likes. They have become too powerful in the world, and as corporations are not democracies, this automatically subverts democracy and will lead to bad outcomes (we're already seeing that).

    But actions will be ineffective in the long run, and even cause more collateral damage, if linking and reusing information would become (too) regulated.

    Instead, the actual issue is that customers are paying for products with their personal data, which leads to targeted advertisements, incentives to generate clicks, algorithms that amplify bad emotions and fake news etc. etc. Most of the customers think they do so willingly, but are not aware of the devastating consequences for society as a whole, and for them personally if they have a bit of bad luck.

    That is the issue that should be resolved. Advertisement must be limited by law, in one form of the other. Even those that have a religious belief in the sanctity of free markets and expression, will have to see sooner or later that the freedom they are trying to protect, will be wiped away be the consequences of this.

    Free services with hidden cost should be banned, and the whole business model that underpins Facebook, Google and some others must go away.

    I guess, Facebook and Google, now fighting these illogical laws, would be very happy if the counter forces would be only this, instead of what is actually needed, the end of a large part of their business model.

  • Well if you did the work don't you want to get paid and not having your neighbour hand out your stuff for free on the other side of your fence? Seems to me MAFIA and Hollywood also opposes anyone handing out their stuff for free so i don't really see a problem here.
  • by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Monday September 07, 2020 @05:15AM (#60481504)

    It's not a threat, it's the future.

  • by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 ) <vincent@jan@goh.gmail@com> on Monday September 07, 2020 @08:23AM (#60481752) Homepage

    I'm no particular fan of Facebook or Google, but Canadian media is failing on its own merits.

    There are several things at play here. First of all, Postmedia owns most of the newspapers in Canada. They've cut costs across the country, but still hemorrhage money, because they no longer provide the media that people want. 'Local' news is written centrally, and then distributed to the paper in the region. So the Edmonton Journal, a newspaper that used to be so rich and beloved that it was part-owner of the Edmonton Oilers hockey team and considered a local institution, has much of its content written outside of Edmonton. There's no real reason to buy or subscribe to the paper because frankly, you can get international and national news better from other sources, and local news is non-existent.

    Small news organizations are actually doing pretty well. Canadaland is a podcast that mostly covers the Canadian media, but they pay for everything through Patreon and advertisers. They're not getting rich, but they manage okay. I've just heard recently about a 'newsletter' in Victoria that only covers local news, but people pay for it, and they have 40,000 subscribers. It's not that you can't make a viable news organization in Canada anymore, it's just that you probably can't be a huge newspaper and expect to rake in the bucks.

    But all of these stupid funds and taxes and ploys by the Canadian government only give money to the big newspapers. They're the only ones considered important enough to give money to. The Liberals want to cultivate this air of even-handedness, because the conservatives here like to pretend that they don't get enough play in the media. So the government is propping up a rightfully dying segment of the industry and ignoring where all the good journalism is being done.

    Sure, tax Facebook and Google or whatever, and give money to industries that need to change (still? I mean, c'mon, the internet isn't new, adapt or die already), but fuck the National Post grubbing for handouts after decades of bleating about how capitalism is so wonderful and how taxes are too high and how poor people get too much.

  • Facebook and Google has no place doing news, they already way too powerful to also have control over news.
    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      These services are news aggregators. They don't actually 'do the news'. Trudeau is just upset that some of his unilateral edicts have bitten him in the ass. And he can't keep the lid on the public's reaction.

      How do you say 'Pravda' in Canadian?

  • Australia thought they could bully Google and Facebook into paying their extortion fees, and when Google and Facebook claimed they were going to call Australia's bluff, Canada decided to join them, hoping I suppose, that if enough countries join their racket, they can bring the tech giants to their knees. They are mistaken. The fact is, the news media outlets need Google more than Google needs them. They are bargaining from a weak position. I hope the Canadian voters make this clear to their government.
  • Right now Facebook and Google are free to crawl, read feeds, and have users post links. While they then rank, regulate, replicate, and censor this speech and information. Media companies work for them right now for exposure, ie. free.

    The moment that those distribution powers are decoupled from their monopolies and eyeballs have a set price, they lose their dominance in the middle. The content producers can have say on how, what, and when links are shared and find and participate in the real worth of thei

  • Facebook and Google will just not link to them. Sure, it will hurt Facebook and Google but not as badly as those news sites. Right now, I can scroll through google and click through to a wide variety of news places. If the site's worth visiting, I'll find more news there. Eventually I run out of good links on the site and go back to the Google feed.

    If that stops happening, I'll probably just visit BBC, Fox, CNN and call it a day. I'm sure between those three sources I can find enough information to get a de

  • Sounds like Australia and Canada want to go back to stone age, like in the 90s when I used to go to a specific news site to read news like a neanderthal. Since those long gone days people have been using aggregate sites (slashdot is one of them). Like a place where I can read headline and then click on article if I'm interested instead of wading through dozens of BS websites.

    Google and Facebook should make a special deal with those countries, any media from Australia and Canada that wants to be linked has t

  • Both companies are fundamentally opposed to the idea of pay-to-link. The ability to embed links in stories is at the root of what made the WWW a success. And the links are useless unless you can include enough information about the target so people know whether it is of interest to them. I think the tech companies are on the right side of this one and that the proposed law is misguided. We could perhaps argue that Google and Facebook are including too much information, eliminating the need to click through

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