Surely news publications benefit more from Google/Facebook providing links to their content? It's a mutually beneficial relationship. I'm a bit puzzled as to why this was pushed, I'd love some context for this.
Canadian media has always enjoyed some protectionism from the government. It's old, entrenched players wanting, and getting, something for nothing. The people that control our media and telecommunications in Canada could fit in a compact car. This doesn't have anything to do with the average person. It's all business and lobbying.
And now CBC won't be on Google, Twitter (over gov funding label), or Facebook(?)
I won't be surprised if we (the taxpayers) end up having to support them even more. Who knows maybe they'll have to pass more tax subsidies for the other major players too.
But does anyone actually win from this? Has someone behind C-18 run the numbers and found a way that this would increase revenue for Canadian media companies?
I don't see how Meta and Google weren't completely predictable, and I don't see how Canadian media benefits from getting shut out. I am so confused.
its going to do the exact opposite of what they said its going to do. Google and meta will disable linking to canadian news sites, canadian news sites won't receive the revenue from those visits.
Meanwhile american news is still free to share in canada, so linking to american news will be the norm and the act to protect and fund canadian news will create an increase in consumption of US news and will remove money these companies already receive from google traffic.
This is the textbook definition of the "Lucas Critique" in that people/companies adjust their behavior to changing laws, often undercutting the supposed benefits of policy goals.
Asa Canadian, I can safely say that any other country's news coverage would be better than the cesspool of US news would be on the table.
This isn't a one way street either. Entrenched big tech use news and any other carrot to keep people locked into their closed platforms. Google Search, Google News, Facebook etc.. are just that much more ripe for disruption having one less bullet to keep the average person plugged into their walled gardens.
You aren't locked into any news platform at all. They're all totally open and you're free to use any you want. You aren't removing a bullet to keep someone plugged into a walled garden here - as I said there's no restrictions on sharing US news, only canadian news. Google and facebook will continue to share US news and it will be the only news Canadians see from them, in effect reducing the reach of Canadian news and promoting american news consumption in canada.
So this bill does the opposite of what it claims to do - it reduces the reach of canadian news, increases the reach of american news, and reduces the amount of money coming in to canadian journalism. Its literally the opposite of everything it claims.
In Australia, similar laws were implemented and Google and Meta eventually made deals to pay a number of media companies for links. I assume that's the outcome the government is hoping for.
This same thing happened in Spain, several years ago. The government passed a law charging google for linking to Spanish media sites. Google said "gracias, pero no" and stopped linking to those sites. The publishers immediately got upset about the loss of traffic to their websites.
Mike Masnick's schadenfreude alone could have powered a small nation for a week.
> Last November [2021], Spain overturned the 2014 law and instead signed on to a European Union copyright directive that lets publishers negotiate their agreements directly with platforms.
On one hand, yes, it drives traffic. On the other hand, no, because lots of people just read headlines and maybe they can do that without clicking.
But realistically this the current Canadian government trying to shake down google and facebook for money to transfer to the ailing news industry in canada. The merits of the position for a link tax are pretty bad, and don’t really matter to the issue at hand. The government already gives hundreds of millions in grants and tax incentives to make the current journalism landscape in canada possible, without even looking at CBC the national broadcaster.
This is just a shake down job. They see google and facebook have a ton of money and the government thought they could threaten them into parting with some of it. The government doesn’t care about the implications of a link tax on the web, or mutually beneficial relationships, or any of that. It’s a shakedown.
>> because lots of people just read headlines and maybe they can do that without clicking.
I agree; I'd argue you don't have much of a valuable service if all users need is a headline. Print media needs to give up the traditional shallow breadth fueled by advertising and go niche, and go deep. Cable TV should learn this lesson as well.
I think traditional media needs to go deep and needs to go local.
If I open up the local paper and see associated press articles that’s not the right content for them. I can see that anywhere, probably before the newspaper is delivered.
It needs to be local journalism about things that matter. Actual local issues, hard journalism about local politics and city hall and whatnot. That’s what’s missing from the big sites and when it is there its sort of after the fact. They need to be investigating not just repeating press releases.
I don’t know about cable tv - its essentially a syndication not a local thing. I think the internet will kill it off. Now that the lines to the home aren’t a moat around being a cable company every video website is the new cable company. They need to have content you can’t get on the internet and I don’t think that’s going to happen. As old people die who couldn’t adapt to internet tv, so cable will die.
Like the way a starving person's body consumes their own muscles, the local newspapers in Canada have laid off all their journalists. As a kid, I used to deliver the local newspaper to make a bit of money. I remember those Saturdays when the paper was like an inch thick and weighed a ton.
Nowadays, it looks more like a newsletter than a newspaper. My late roommate subscribed to the local paper up until the end of his life. At that point, he was really only interested in the crosswords and sudokus.
Dutch newspapers are back to subscriptions. They're doing better than ever.
If your product is good people will pay for it. And there will always be a class of people who need journalism. Politicians, government officials, bankers.
In hindsight the whole internet bubble looks strange. Nobody cared about monetisation only users!
> Canadian users will still be able to search for news content from international outlets such as BBC, New York Times and Fox News.
This is really the icing on the cake for me. Not only are you losing a lot of search traffic, but now those users are going to be directed to international sources so they won't even be looking for you. What a great way to screw over national media.
> Surely news publications benefit more from Google/Facebook providing links to their content?
Probably depends.
In some cases, Google scrapes the interesting bits and people never click through to the host site. In other cases, Google has provided a way for people to circumvent paywalls.
Some of this was a strategy by news organizations - but it seems it might not work long term. I, for one, click through to far fewer Wikipedia articles now that Google includes the synopsis embedded in search results...
The source would be the organic-traffic and Facebook analytics for all those news publications. Whatever it is now, won't this take it to 0%?
I feel like a similar thing was tried in Europe somewhere a few years ago and then quickly ditched, because all the publications saw their traffic crater.
California gave birth to these companies, and has been, and remains one of our nations’s primary economic engines, despite the shenanigans of a few attention-seeking public figures…
Surely news publications benefit more from Google/Facebook providing links to their content?
Actually, no.
It might be a symbiotic relationship for a small-time blog, but for a major news organization, it isn't. The Toronto Star and Global TV don't need freepub from Google.
One example among many: Most people see the headline – the headline written by a paid headline writer based on an article from a paid journalist on a staff of other professionals with families to feed - and then move on.
Very often a headline is all someone needs or wants. That has value. Without anyone clicking through to the web site, Google is getting the value from the headline, and contributing nothing to the web site in return.
It's like saying that when Google steals content from web sites and presents it as an answer card in search results that the web site somehow gets something out of it. That's completely false. The only one getting anything out of it is Google.
This is the most ridiculous take on this that I've ever seen. Next you're going to say that newspaper stands need to pay a charge to the newspaper each time someone walks by their stall (or buys gum, for example). They have seen the headline, and then moved on.
Very often a headline is all someone needs or wants. That has value. Without anyone buying that newspaper, the newspaper stand has got value from the headline, and contributed nothing to the newspaper publisher in return.
The reality is that headlines are advertisements for articles. That's why there are headline writers in the first place. Make a better advertisement, get more sales.
In the case of Google, publishing links with headlines means publishing free ads for that website. The website most certainly benefits from that relationship, if they didn't, they would just use robots.txt to block Google indexing their website, which someone has always been free to do.
The real problem is that newspapers would just like to take a percentage of Google revenue, because they're a big company.
Yeah, the definition of news content being "news content means content — in any format, including an audio or audiovisual format — that reports on, investigates or explains current issues or events of public interest and includes such content that an Indigenous news outlet makes available by means of Indigenous storytelling. (contenu de nouvelles)" seems overly broad but I doubt they intend for headlines to be included.
I think the bill will lead to further litigation, specifically if a headline counts as reporting or explaining. I doubt a headline can investigate.
It does also seem to put a limit on a platform's ability to negotiate which is worrying. After 3 rounds of negotiations an arbiter can come in and decide what is a fair price and companies are not allowed to treat different news organizations differently. This seems to have room to abuse for me.
Oh no, it's not just Google and Meta. That's how it's being presented, but it's actually whoever the CRTC wants to charge. They can and will change the list at any time, with no need for oversight.
This newspaper stand argument is really, really bad. The headlines of the physical newspaper on the front page are for the purposes of advertising the newspaper.. and the newspaper stand sells the newspapers - that's a big contribution to the newspaper business!
> The Toronto Star and Global TV don't need freepub from Google.
So have those publications opted out of search and Google News? If not, it's pretty clear that they're getting more benefit from those links than they're losing to people "reading the headline and getting all they needed from it".
I assume these news organizations don't even bother writing the article, right? Because your story obviously applies equally well to their own site. Users will open the frontpage of the site, read the expertly crafted headline, and leave.
>Very often a headline is all someone needs or wants. That has value. Without anyone clicking through to the web site, Google is getting the value from the headline, and contributing nothing to the web site in return.
So the solution Google is proposing works out for everyone. Canadian news sites can ensure people go to their site for headlines and Google can no longer show information for those sites. The Canadian news sites should see increased revenue in terms of subscriptions and advertisements.
A headline's job is to provide enough information to encourage someone to read more if the story is relevant to them. If someone doesn't want to read on, no value is lost.
News sites could get rid of their <title> and OpenGraph tags, and people could share the raw story URLs without any context. No-one would click through as they'd have no idea where the URL went, though, so news sites provide these titles willingly and have full control over how they write them or what level of detail they share.
The idea that headlines like "Queen Elizabeth has died", "Madonna discharged from hospital", or "Interest rates go up" replace the need for the rest of the story for any substantial part of the target audience seems far fetched to me, and if the meat of the story is given away in the og:description.. they wrote it!
You might be underestimating the amount of traffic Google sends to publishers through Google News. Anecdotally, I get Android notifications from CBC, Global, etc. through Google News daily and do sometimes click on them.
Well then, maybe the law should be a headline tax rather than a link tax. As currently written, Google/Facebook would be free to continue providing headlines that don't link to the sources.
For those unfamiliar, Pablo Rodriguez is the Minister of Canadian Heritage under whose auspices all these censorship and control schemes are being pushed forward.
Ironically, Pablo Rodriguez is the son of an Argentine Peronista (the far-left populism that cripples Argentina to this day). The family fled the country when the war broke out. Pablo was old enough to see first hands what happens when there is no free independent press, and now he's eagerly fostering those same conditions onto Canada.
Quite the contrary: the news stands would have the front page displayed quite prominently precisely so that you could read the headlines of the main stories to attract the interest of passerbys: https://p.turbosquid.com/ts-thumb/0m/ePJxnz/tlmgVado/news_st...
If outlets don't want the headlines scraped and displayed, then they're free to modify their `robots.txt` file accordingly. But they don't because they're well aware that this would reduce, not improve, their bottom line.
