The group of people that came up with this bill and it’s wording have no idea how the internet works. The idea that a site needs to pay to provide a link to another site is not well though out. The internet is built on links.
Canadian news companies shot themselves in the foot here. They want social media site to not summarize their news articles (this keeps users on the social media site). At the same time news companies also don’t want social media site to link to the news article (this directs users to the news site).
When news articles are summarized by social media sites it means that a individual can read the news article without going to a news site directly, thus a social media site gains financial with ad revenue directly from “content” it did not create.
What news sites wanted is user come to their sites directly to generate ad revenue on their platform. So a link would help users find this “content” and benefits news sites. Though news companies now also want to double dip and request that social site pay news companies for the link to their site.
In short, Canadian news companies wanted their cake and eat it too.
You actually made the argument for the bill, and then twisted it to justify Facebook and Google’s domination of the ad market.
The specific problem they’re solving is that that there’s a majority of Facebook users who get their news from Facebook, and probably the majority of those users don’t actually click through, so the news organizations get no money. Facebook and their users are benefitting from getting headlines, but the companies incurring all the costs to generate those headlines are getting too little money from that to sustain themselves. This is why this bill has to exist and why it’s necessary to protect Canadian news organizations.
That is a stupid argument. I agree about the summary part, but paying even for just a link is idiotic. If someone asks me for the directions to a restaurant, I don’t have to pay the restaurant for giving directions to it. If they did ask for cash for this, I’d simply stop recommending the restaurant. I have no duty to them, and they have no right to me.
Facebook is doing the same thing. You want payment even if I only point people to you? Then I will simply stop pointing people to you. I owe you nothing. If I didn’t provide a summary but the people still don’t click through, then maybe your content is shit and people aren’t interested. Why should I have to pay to protect you from that?
The analogy makes no sense lol you’re not a content aggregator and people don’t eat directions.
News websites produce content that generates value for social networks. If that value is worth paying for having that content (the link tax) is a matter of accounting only. Facebook seems to believe it’s not for now, that’s all there is to it.
Maybe the internet being built on links is a problem?
You could run the same argument for ads and tracking
I’m not entirely sure how one could create a internet of interconnected computers and servers without links to one another and the webpages they serve.
Short of maybe making one “central hub” controlled by one state/entity. Though this would probably not turn out great.
Short of maybe making one “central hub” controlled by one state/entity. Though this would probably not turn out great
I think public search engines is a good idea though it would be multiple states
I suppose it’s because I’m old so I don’t like how centralized and profit driven the internet has become but I see nothing wrong with profit sharing with websites on pages where their link is used
I’m not entirely sure how one could create a internet of interconnected computers and servers without links to one another
One could always look at the history books, I guess. It is believed that the first real-world use of hyperlinks on the internet took place in 1991. It is also believed that the Internet as we know it was born in 1983. That means we lived through eight actual years of this “unimaginable” internet.
Ah yes what an interesting internet that would be: nothing links to anything, you’re all alone, enjoy the empty internet
