The Online News Act passed last Thursday and would force platforms like Google and Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, to strike deals with Canadian media publishers for sharing, previewing and directing users to online Canadian news content.
If I recall correctly, this is the Online News Act that says that linking to a newspaper’s public web site should require paying that newspaper?
From what I understand, it’s not just linking to the article. It’s when the news is summarized on Google, to the point where you learn everything you need right from the search page rather than clicking the link to the article. So the company that hosts the article is losing as revenue because people are just reading the summary and not looking at the article itself.
It does include just linking.
(2) For the purposes of this Act, news content is made available if
(a) the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced; or
(b) access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content.
Indexing includes showing a basic result in search. Plus you can’t show a normal search results without pulling at least a portion of the news content. I can only assume the author and those that voted for this have literally never searched for a news article online before.
That’s just a horrible decision all around. It’s blatantly obvious that this will hurt the producers of the content far more than help. Why is it that the people making decisions about the internet always seem to have never used it?
@Etnies419 no, if you read the article even linking requires payment. That’s why they’re removing results entirely, rather than just removing summaries like they did in other countries
But to the point, in those countries leaving the links but removing the summaries also resulted in significant reductions in traffic for the news orgs.
In what world does that make sense? Did the author of that bill and everyone who voted on it never use the internet? How is that enforcable in any way?
I mean, you won’t see me shedding any tears for the multinational hundred billion dollar internet based corporations lol
What about the Canadian news companies that now won’t get nearly as many visitors because many people see news through sites like google?
Or what about the Canadians who won’t see as much local news? Even if they go look for it specifically themselves, they can expect to see less of it on social media because other people won’t see as much (and thus won’t share as much).
Afaik - feel free to correct me - this is charging companies for when they show ppl the news content on their platforms bc when that happens theres no reason for people to go on the news site, so they dont, and those companies just profitted (or at least prevented the news sites from profitting) off info that someone else wrote. Is like if u look up “lemon nutrition facts” and then all the info is just right there, sometimes you can see in the corner or bottom a link to the website that info came from but a lot of people wouldnt even go onto the site because Google already showed them the info. So thats why this was done i think ?? I think something like this was tried in Australia too and Google didnt like it then either. But idk if it went through.
As I’ve read, Google would also have to pay them for the privilege of linking to their articles. You’re not allowed to drive traffic and ad money to news sites without also paying them.
If it’s anything like the dumb law the EU tried to pass (it did get passed, but with exemptions in the end luckily, for hyperlinking in particular), you can’t even post a link to a news article on Facebook or Reddit because said companies would get in trouble for it.
I think it’s awful for a free internet. It’s a dumb law written by people who don’t understand the internet.
And a lot of people are so blinded by their desire to hurt meta/google that they don’t see how dumb of a law it is.
I’m not sure why so many people seem to be under the misconception that it’s about copying entire stories or something. It quite literally and prominently says it includes linking to them. I cannot understand anyone thinking this is a good thing.
@fubo yeah, unfortunately these types of laws try to have their cake and eat it too
A similar law was passed in France, and predictably France news orgs lost significant traffic and cried foul.
It makes no sense to charge a search engine for the privilege of bringing customers to your website, and these types of laws always have predictable outcomes.
Honestly though, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for free press. Some people say “free internet” when we are really talking about cooperative internet. I’d rather people get news from Lemmy than from Google or Facebook.
Screw google
That may be a good idea, but the situation here was caused by corruption within the Canadian government, not by Google doing shady things.
In other words, the Canadian government tried to impose a link tax, and they’ve just discovered that both Google and Facebook don’t think Canadian media is worth anything.
Possible solution (for now): Use a different search engine. I recommend DuckDuckGo.
That’s why I said for now.
Also, the law as written applies “if there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses … [such as] the intermediary occupies a prominent market position” (6: Application). I mean, let’s be realistic, when you think “prominent search engine”, how many search engines come to mind?
The best solution is to stop reading Canadian media. Those companies knew exactly what was going to happen, enough of them supported it, and they deserve to lose their readers.
