If Canada is trying to make companies pay to link to news articles then they get what they deserve. And why don’t news companies want links to their site?
They want the links, they just want Google/Meta to pay them for that courtesy too.
Their claim is that even just the headlines are beneficial for Google/Meta as it powers their content feed and thus they want to be paid for it. They’re jealous Google/Meta make more money being a link aggregator than the news themselves and they want a share of it.
It’s a weird issue because Google does benefit from it in some way, but that’s also contrary to how it’s always been done and how the Internet works. Google’s still just an index that helps people find what they’re looking for. It’s a value added service.
But the worst of that bill is that it’s basically up to the government’s discretion and aimed specifically at extracting money out of big tech, and it’s inherently unfair. Either you require payment and the entire Internet explodes, or you don’t. Specifically targetting those that can afford to pay is… unfair, despite big tech being an actual problem.
Don’t look to Australia as the example. The laws resulted in just paying Murdoch news to stay in power and our news feeds have turned to shit.
Ugh, who to root for? A country almost as corrupt as the U.S. or a company almost as corrupt as Google?
That’s the goal here too. If Google and Meta have to pay to link to Canadian news content they are only going to do it for a few mainstream media sources like Post Media because handling the payments for all of the smaller independent sources would be an accounting nightmare.
There is also a Microsoft subplot here. One of our senators was just on social media stating that Microsoft won’t have to pay because they fall short of the threshold. He encourages more people to switch to bing so that they will be forced to pay. The whole thing reads like a sponsored post.
Feels like there’s a cold war happening between governments and big tech these days.