Canada Considers Law Requiring Online Giants To Compensate News Outlets (www.cbc.ca) 71
The federal Liberal government introduced legislation Tuesday to force digital giants to compensate news publishers for the use of their content. CBC News reports: The new regulatory regime would require companies like Google and the Meta Platforms-owned Facebook -- and other major online platforms that reproduce or facilitate access to news content -- to either pay up or go through a binding arbitration process led by an arms-length regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The compensation extracted from these digital giants must be used, in large part, to fund the creation of news content to protect the "sustainability of the Canadian news ecosystem," according to a government backgrounder distributed to reporters. The government is pitching the arrangement as a way to prop up an industry that has seen a steady decline since the emergence of the internet.
To preserve access to Canadian news, the federal government has adopted much of the so-called "Australian model," named after the country that first forced digital companies to pay for the use of news content. According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, more than $190 million has been paid already to Australian media companies since the model was enacted last year. The big winners have been legacy media and larger media outlets.
The new Canadian scheme would require that Facebook, Google and other digital platforms that have "a bargaining imbalance with news businesses" make "fair commercial deals" with newspapers, news magazines, online news businesses, private and public broadcasters and certain non-Canadian news media that meet specific criteria. The goal is to have these digital platforms negotiate deals with publishers without the need for government intervention. [T]he amount of money each news business gets from these digital giants will be decided by those negotiations -- there's no preset formula. In the absence of some sort of voluntary arrangement, news businesses can initiate a mandatory bargaining process and go to a CRTC arbitration panel for a binding decision.
To preserve access to Canadian news, the federal government has adopted much of the so-called "Australian model," named after the country that first forced digital companies to pay for the use of news content. According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, more than $190 million has been paid already to Australian media companies since the model was enacted last year. The big winners have been legacy media and larger media outlets.
The new Canadian scheme would require that Facebook, Google and other digital platforms that have "a bargaining imbalance with news businesses" make "fair commercial deals" with newspapers, news magazines, online news businesses, private and public broadcasters and certain non-Canadian news media that meet specific criteria. The goal is to have these digital platforms negotiate deals with publishers without the need for government intervention. [T]he amount of money each news business gets from these digital giants will be decided by those negotiations -- there's no preset formula. In the absence of some sort of voluntary arrangement, news businesses can initiate a mandatory bargaining process and go to a CRTC arbitration panel for a binding decision.
News corp undo undo! (Score:2)
News corp undo undo!
Requiring Payments for propaganda? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Anyone can call themselves a journalist or a news organization.
Sure. But you don't get paid just for calling yourself a news organization. You need to convince Google to link to your content from their news page. Good luck.
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Re:Requiring Payments for propaganda? (Score:5, Insightful)
they've had that for a long time early 2000's at least.
Not the first time this has come up too, it's a fairly regular lunch money shakedown. These news companies could just put up a robots.txt if they don't want to be linked like everyone else.
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Requiring payments from people profiting off of whatever form of content you create to entertain or inform people seems pretty fair
Re: Requiring Payments for propaganda? (Score:1)
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I do see some value in a compulsory licensing agreement. The link is a unique article ID with a standard title so users canâ(TM)t be tricked. Pay mybe a penny per thousand hits. Which means robots
Re:Requiring Payments for propaganda? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Requiring Payments for propaganda? (Score:1)
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That's what they want you to do - doubt everything. Then you end up only believing the stuff you want to believe, the populist rhetoric that is oh so comfortable.
What is this ... (Score:2)
I hope the law passes and google stops using CBC (Score:5, Insightful)
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We don't need any new laws for this. If Google isn't violating existing copyright, then it's fair use and should be usable. Why do we need this?
Re:I hope the law passes and google stops using CB (Score:5, Insightful)
It actually fails fair use pretty seriously. One of the criteria for fair use (fair dealing in Canada) is whether or not the derivative work will have a negative impact on the commercial value of the original. News aggregators allow the reader to skim the headlines without ever actually visiting the news site, making it impossible for the news outlets to collect advertising revenue—all while Google and Facebook are free to slap their own ads on the page. Charging social media companies is completely consistent with the principles of copyright law.
Perhaps more importantly, though, Facebook and Google can absolutely afford this, and most news outlets can't afford to put up a paywall. I'm kinda stunned that the default attitude on Slashdot is so libertarian as to favour incumbent monopolies over local newspapers and medium-sized regional journalism. It's certainly true that News Corp's fingerprints are all over the idea, and that in the US NewsMax has heavily corroded the idea of independent local media, but this sort of protectionism has real potential to turn back the clock on one of the many deleterious effects of commodification. It is largely a good thing. (Until it becomes a race to the bottom to write the most eyeball-grabbing, profitable headlines, anyway, but that's always been a problem for journalism.)
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It actually fails fair use pretty seriously. One of the criteria for fair use (fair dealing in Canada) is whether or not the derivative work will have a negative impact on the commercial value of the original. News aggregators allow the reader to skim the headlines without ever actually visiting the news site, making it impossible for the news outlets to collect advertising revenue—all while Google and Facebook are free to slap their own ads on the page. Charging social media companies is completely consistent with the principles of copyright law.
CBC provides a mechanism for news aggregators to get the content (https://www.cbc.ca/rss/ [www.cbc.ca]) as does Global (https://globalnews.ca/pages/feeds/ [globalnews.ca]) and CTV (https://www.ctvnews.ca/more/rss-feeds-for-ctv-news [ctvnews.ca]) so I'm not sure how there's a negative commercial impact, if they gave it away for free in the first place.
I do however feel that Facebook and Google should not be allowed to profit from that.
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You've posted a comment on Slashdot, a news aggregator that exploits the work of journalists and provides a conversation forum comparable to that of a Facebook thread. Think of how often people just read article summaries or headlines and don't RTFA. The convenience of the aggregator occludes the news source from targeting readers with their own advertising, regardless of how possible it is to click through to the original story, yet the aggregator would not function without that content.
Even without this a
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It actually fails fair use pretty seriously. One of the criteria for fair use (fair dealing in Canada) is whether or not the derivative work will have a negative impact on the commercial value of the original
You are contradicting your own arguments. If that is the case, then new law is completely not required, now is it? If it fails current fair use guidelines, then news outlets can simply sue under current law.
Perhaps more importantly, though, Facebook and Google can absolutely afford this, and most news outlets can't afford to put up a paywall
And here we have it, the crux of the matter. Google is flush.
I actively despise Google, and work daily to rid myself of them and their influence. But you know who I despise more? Ambulance chasers.
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No, there is nothing contradictory about my arguments. Based on fair use/dealing arguments, it would be entirely possible within the current legal framework in Canada or the US to force Google and other aggregators to de-list content from a media outlet. (Robots.txt and other automated solutions are certainly a quicker remedy with Google, but let us not forget Facebook sharing is entirely human-driven and would not be affected by such.)
An ambulance chaser is a lawyer who seeks out an injured party and offer
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But CBC radio is the best place to hear about gay natives.
Re: I hope the law passes and google stops using C (Score:2)
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I'm curious here... if you think that parties are the problem, what do you see as a solution?
Monarchy? Dictatorship?
Also, I'm honestly surprised that anyone could actually hate all parties entirely equally, as more often than not there is at least one party in existence that more closely aligns with a person's ideals than other parties.
That party might not stand any chance of winning an elec
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Dangerous Bribe (Score:2)
When governments start directing large streams of money toward media those media are no longer truly independent and have a strong motivation not to criticize the government or the large corporations paying them. If media companies cannot make en
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Care to elaborate? How are they telling you how to interpret them? Canadian here as well, and I don't see exactly what you are talking about.
I'm not going to say you're wrong, because I don't know for sure exactly what you are referring to, but I've been pondering your remarks for some 5 minutes now before posting this, and I honestly don't understand what you could be referring to here.
There ar
churnalism (Score:2)
Y'know.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember hyperlinks? In my eyes that was best, it wasn't intended to pull data without permission from third party hosts. Inline frames and crap should just be banished from the html standards or whatever the w3c calls their standards now.
Re: Y'know.. (Score:2)
How do you see credit card/paypal checkout working without frames?
The federal Liberal government? (Score:2)
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Does Canada have more than one federal government?
Canada is currently governed by a coalition between the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party.
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Canada is currently governed by a coalition between the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party.
No it isn't. It's a Liberal government, there is no coalition government. The NDP is supporting it because nobody wants Conservatives.
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It makes no difference why the NDP is supporting the Liberals. If one party is unable to govern without the support of another party, it's a coalition government.
Canada certainly has a minority government, and you are correct that they are unable to pass legislation without at least some support of MLAs outside of their party. I think this is generally not referred to as a "coalition government" as there is not a formal agreement. According to Wikipedia, Canada has not had a coalition government since the late 1800s, though there have been many minority governments since then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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If "nobody wants conservatives" there wouldn't be much need for a coalition, would there?
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Then the Liberals should resign (again) and hold an election (again) so they can get a majority (or fail again)
Why on Earth would they do that? The Libs and NDP had virtually identical platforms last election. Together they received 50.44% of the popular vote. They have a VERY strong mandate to move forward on these policies that the MAJORITY of Canadians voted for.
Sour grapes suck. I know, I watched our economy sputter for a decade under Harper's austerity. Nothing outside of Alberta mattered. Today we're back to record low unemployment, steady job growth, wages going up. The chicken little CPC party keeps
Do they fill a need? (Score:3)
If nobody is watching the CBC in the first place (or Global or City or...) money isn't the problem. If they were filling a need they would have the views and the revenue to support their operations.
It's sometimes hard to tell if the CBC's web site is for real or if it's a parody.
...laura
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Fair enough... (Score:2)
...If news outlets that get these payments would stop paywalling.
Just. Tax. Them. (Score:5, Interesting)
This weird rigamarole makes no sense. Tax them like a normal corporation. Distribute the money through a normal government program if you want to support Canadian news media. The Australian model is terrible. It takes money out of Zuck's pocket but puts it right in Rupert Murdoch's. The same thing will happen here. Some already rich dipshit will line their pockets and (large) Canadian media companies will still collapse under their own incompetence.
...sounds like Just. Bribe. Them. (Score:3)
Distribute the money through a normal government program if you want to support Canadian news media.
Given the amount of control that would give the government over the media, I'm surprised they did not come up with this idea too! Although, I have to say that I think your plan looks like it is just replacing one "rich dipshit" for another, Trudeau, and given the latter's involvement with dodgy Charity deals, suppressing legal action against large corporations and shutting down parliamentary committees investigating him using undemocratic processes like proroguing parliament I don't think this particular "
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I think we can honestly leave Trudeau out of this. I'm no fan of his either, but he's honestly kind of irrelevant to the real discussion of the problems that Canadian news media are having.
But I do think there's a place for government programs run by a non-partisan bureaucracy. We have all sorts of institutions that run on that basis and keep things ticking along regardless of the priorities of the government of the day.
I'm not convinced that Canadian newspapers need a bailout at all. If Postmedia can't tur
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You seem to underestimate the amount of lobbying power BCE and Rogers have in Canada.
This legislation is bought and paid for by them. Just like C-10 was last year, and C-11 is this year.
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I'm just saying the legislation is stupid, not that it isn't already bought and paid for. Nobody with any sense would come up with this scheme, it's all rich people shuffling tokens around to make sure they're fractionally richer, of course.
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They already got bailout funding.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politi... [www.cbc.ca]
Let's just say, the result has been questionable objectivity of news media.
Personally, I don't think news media has done enough to warrant federal bailout. They haven't even really tried as far as I can tell. For one, where is the 'Netflix' for Canadian news. I'll gladly pay $5/month for access to all Canadian news (Thestar, globe, national post, mcleans...). They haven't even provided that as an option.
Danegeld (Score:1)
As Kipling wrote [wikipedia.org]:
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: –
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
Will more reporters get hired? (Score:2)
The top comment on the CBC story says, "News is most often the same, as if coordinated propaganda."
No, the news is all the same because most news organizations have been completely hollowed out, so their only choice is to reprint news stories from the handful of remaining news organizations who still have actual investigative reporters.
Now there's no guarantee that this law will lead to any more actual reporters being hired, since the trend of the Canadian news industry for the past 30 years has been la
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News Outlets Already Benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
Google honors Robots.txt files that tell Google not to index the page/site. Any news organization that truly felt they were being ripped off by Google can simply add a no-index Robots.txt file and Google will skip it. The fact that the news sites don't do this is an implicit request that they want and benefit from Google. Apparently they now want Google to also pay them for helping to get them paid. Sadly, too many people, and especially the law critters, don't understand enough of how the technology works that they are buying into this charade.
This is extremely unfortunate. (Score:2)
Give an eye on this!!! (Score:1)
Michael Geist's commentary (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes, he sums it up neatly. A hyperlink is like any other reference, there's not only no justification in charging for it, they actually literally spend money to get people to visit their links. If anyone "should" be paying (no one should) it's the news orgs, not the social media companies. They're the ones deriving the most benefit. Without hyperlinks from social media companies, most of them would not even exist.
Austrilian model.... (Score:2)
..which means the big tech companies pay the big news companies and nobody else ...
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Canada is not a free country (Score:2)
Canada will go after people who give you money if they don't like your political views.
I met a person two Sundays ago who relocated here to the US from Canada because it's no longer a free country.
Do not go to Canada or have anything to do with it.
What about door number 3? (Score:2)
"require companies like Google and the Meta Platforms-owned Facebook -- and other major online platforms that reproduce or facilitate access to news content -- to either pay up or go through a binding arbitration process led by an arms-length regulator"
Door number 3 is they stop using feeds from Canadian sources.