Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

Many people who would otherwise be appalled at laws like this seem to want to rationalize this because its specifically targeting Google and Meta.<p>Sometimes taking the simple view is correct: It&#x27;s a bad thing to prevent sites from linking to one another. It&#x27;s a bad thing to interfere with the ability to access information on the Internet for reasons of nationalist politics.

The eff had an interesting article[1] about this issue (and others) as well as some alternative ways solve the issue, not that I agree with all of them.<p>Ultimately, this is the wrong approach. The internet should be &quot;open,&quot; and people or companies should be free to link to whatever they want without penalty.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;deeplinks&#x2F;2023&#x2F;04&#x2F;saving-news-big-tech" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;deeplinks&#x2F;2023&#x2F;04&#x2F;saving-news-big-tech</a>

Surely news publications benefit more from Google&#x2F;Facebook providing links to their content? It&#x27;s a mutually beneficial relationship. I&#x27;m a bit puzzled as to why this was pushed, I&#x27;d love some context for this.

I was curious how link taxes panned out in other places they were tried and found this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;06&#x2F;21&#x2F;as-predicted-smaller-media-outlets-are-getting-screwed-australias-link-tax&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;06&#x2F;21&#x2F;as-predicted-smaller-med...</a><p>I honestly figured it would not even help the big sites - users would have to start deliberately going to those sites directly without first arriving there through an aggregator&#x2F;search. Apparently that’s incorrect for major news organizations though still true for smaller ones (which I guess have not enough brand awareness for users to directly go to the site). I guess as it long as link taxes appear beneficial for major news organizations that can afford to lobby for them, we can sadly expect this to happen in more and more countries.<p>IANAL but I understand that most Anglosphere countries outside the US have very different interpretations&#x2F;not as strong guarantees of freedom of expression as in the US and some other Western countries. In countries with stronger protections I can’t imagine a link tax having legs. Given that a link itself is not IP&#x2F;content (I think), what would be the legal basis for displaying it on a website requiring compensation to the linked site? Though I suppose there is some precedent for requiring link removal from eg Google through DMCA, it seems different because in that case it’s driving traffic to “stolen” content.

The solution to this problem is for Google, Facebook and other web sites that link to news to limit links to web sites that agree that the free traffic they&#x27;re receiving from extremely popular web sites is sufficient compensation for linking to them. In other words, block links to any web site that feels entitled to be paid for being linked to.<p>There are plenty of web sites that will be happy to take the free traffic and it isn&#x27;t like it matters to Facebook&#x27;s bottom line if their mostly elderly users are arguing over some article from Fox News (which supports the journalism cartel bill in the US) or some article from Breitbart (which opposes the journalism cartel bill). I imagine it won&#x27;t take long for Murdoch to change his mind and stop trying to shake down tech companies for the privilege of sending his media outlets free traffic.

I was at Facebook working on ranking when a similar thing happened with Australia.<p>Showing news is a net negative for Facebook and probably not very positive for Google. Facebook&#x27;s short and long term metrics were better without news. Facebook and Google are basically doing charity when they link to local news sites. These laws make absolutely no sense when you think about that.

Brazil is currently considering a similar law that would require social networks to compensate content creators for each republication [1]. However, unlike the situation in Canada, the Brazilian lawmakers have taken into account this scenario. The law mandates that social networks cannot cease publishing the content and must negotiate compensation in &quot;fair terms.&quot; Personally, I find this approach to be quite perplexing.<p>[1] Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.correiobraziliense.com.br&#x2F;politica&#x2F;2023&#x2F;04&#x2F;5089930-pl-das-fake-news-deputados-querem-obrigar-remuneracao-de-criadores-de-conteudo.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.correiobraziliense.com.br&#x2F;politica&#x2F;2023&#x2F;04&#x2F;50899...</a>

So these news orgs are getting free advertising, and they want to be paid on top?

I’m guessing if&#x2F;when this takes effect, the publishers will have to buy ads on Google and FB to attract readers that would previously find the content in the said platforms? Seems like a win for the two companies.

As a Canadian, I feel like this is terrible news. From a web publisher point of view, I do agree that Google is going to far sometimes by embeding the content directly in the SERP. They take it so far that most of the time you don’t even need to click on the article to get the summary.

This is only going to kill Canadian news outlets more than they&#x27;re already dead.<p>If you&#x27;re not on Google, you don&#x27;t exist to 99% of the world.<p>I expect their readership to fall at least 50% overnight.

Suggested workaround <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tt-rss.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tt-rss.org&#x2F;</a><p>Most news outlets have rss feeds<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thestar.com&#x2F;about&#x2F;rssfeeds.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thestar.com&#x2F;about&#x2F;rssfeeds.html</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbc.ca&#x2F;rss&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbc.ca&#x2F;rss&#x2F;</a>

News outlets usually provide RSS feeds.<p>Don&#x27;t they allow to show the contents of those feeds on websites?<p>And isn&#x27;t showing the content of the RSS feed &quot;fair use&quot; anyhow?<p>When I look at the content of the Toronto Star for example:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thestar.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;thestar&#x2F;feed.RSSManagerServlet.articles.topstories.rss" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thestar.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;thestar&#x2F;feed.RSSManagerServl...</a><p>My gut feeling is that showing those short snippets with a link to the articles should be fair use. Am I wrong?

Rip canadian news sites.<p>This seems like an incredible self-own. News aggregators drive traffic and relavence. If anything news sites were getting the better end of the bargin<p>Luckily the beaverton is unaffected: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thebeaverton.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;editorial-with-news-blocked-on-facebook-we-the-beaverton-are-now-the-sole-arbiters-of-truth&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thebeaverton.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;editorial-with-news-blo...</a>

This bill was a pretty naked shakedown for money and it was obvious to everyone who read it. Even the intentional targeting of specific companies rather than trying to make a general policy raises lots of questions. If linking news is actually harmful and needs to be compensated it needs to be compensated when Apple, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter or such do it to. Everyone knows this wasn’t really because anyone believes linking is harmful to news media. If the news media wanted to they could set their robots.txt to prevent any scraping of the content but they don’t because they want the links. We even see from Google’s own blog that they were participating in the political process and were open to solutions that compensated Canadian News Media by for example creating a pool of money to distribute. But that both a link tax and uncapped liabilities were a non-starter and a potential existential threat to the business. It’s no surprise that Google and Meta delinked the news. I just hope the taxpayers don’t have to continue funding Trudeau’s idiocy until the next election. But there is no real hope of the NDP flipping on this so that hope is probably in vain.

Deeply shameful, as a Canadian. I did not ask for this.

Media in Canada is in pretty dire straits right now. It looks like one of the last left-ish leaning papers (Toronto Star) is about to be gobbled up by post media. A huge swath of broadcast news media is owned by just one company, Bell which predictably leads to stories like &quot;Top Bell Media executive urged CTV to avoid ‘negative spin’ on coverage of parent company&quot;. Plus the current batch of conservative leaders (PP, Danielle Smith, Ford..) all have an axe to grind with what they portray as leftist and woke media. Particularly the CBC, they&#x27;d love to see that dismantled. Then there&#x27;s all the wonderful personalities involved like Conrad Black.

Between legacy news organizations complaining about links and the censorship of news coming from blacklisted areas of the world, what will social media and news aggregators be left with?<p>Also, I have to believe that some of these outlets will go under without social media traffic. You can get Canadian wire service content from any US website that decides to publish it.

My understanding is that Australia created a similar law and both FB&#x2F;Google came to the bargaining table.<p>Does anyone know what’s different this time? Is the law different? Is Canada a less valuable market?

Like weather reporting, journalism (in the &#x27;what happened&#x27; sense, not all of this &#x27;analysis&#x27; crap) should be funded by the public. The independence of the journalism department must be enshrined in law, but further I imagine a system where anyone can apply to become a journalist assuming they meet minimum requirements. You submit your accounts, and if they pass quality checks (including rejecting editorial content and passing basic fact checking) they get published and you get paid. Multiple accounts of the same event may (and should) be posted, and so then the reader can build a picture from those varied sources. This is citizen journalism, funded by the government and lightly edited, its purity spelled out to the literal letter by law. It&#x27;s the only way out.

Can someone ELI5 the argument for the bill?<p>My impression is it&#x27;s something like &quot;news websites provide content that creates engagement which drives ad revenue, and the news websites want a piece of that revenue.&quot;<p>Is my understanding correct? Also, I can see how it applies for Facebook, how does it apply to Google?

The argument is always that these companies are using and benefiting from news for free. Now, they aren&#x27;t. It&#x27;s weird to create a new kind of property right and then complain that companies are choosing to simply stop doing the thing that triggers the new right.

My read on this is that news organizations are upset that Google&#x2F;Facebook are taking profits by providing cached content that makes people not want to actually click their links.<p>If this is the primary concern, though, then wouldn&#x27;t it make more sense to draft a law regulating content caching, rather than the pay-per-click approach? It seems like a law that said &quot;Sites that serve any content which wasn&#x27;t part of a &#x27;you can cache me&#x27; section need to pay for that content&quot; would address the concerns of both parties here.<p>This would solve the alleged issue that news organizations are bringing up, while also making it totally clear what the consequences are. If you don&#x27;t want Google to be able to use your content within search results that&#x27;s totally fine, but you can&#x27;t then <i>also</i> be mad that they don&#x27;t <i>surface</i> your content in search results.<p>Seems like letting news site determine what content Google can cache for its results, and then letting Google determine ranking based <i>only</i> on that data would be a completely reasonable compromise. As it stands now, though, Google is directly incentivized to just never surface these websites, which hurts everyone involved.

How long till they will beg to be re-linked?

Startup idea: Canadian news, but based on US based website.

I guess news outlets are realizing late that what they sold to the masses is largely the headline feed which is something the internet can re-aggregate for free. On the internet they can’t rely on gatekeeping the distribution to be their moat so they need regulation.<p>If it wasn’t Canadian outlet favouring, a generalized form of this bill would be like saying, aggregate feeds shouldn’t aggregate their competitor aggregate feeds for free.<p>I guess this could potentially make the ecosystem less organized around a few big sharing platforms, but I don’t feel like this helps a lot of the smaller outlets. It feels like it maybe just works for the big ones who already have a lot of mind share and can worry less about being linked to in a feed.

Just like how it was tried (and quickly repealed) in Australia, news orgs in Canada will see their traffic plummet massively and significantly, and then scream bloody murder to have this law rolled back.<p>Google and Facebook (along with other social media sites) are the primary method by which news orgs have their individual articles percolate through the population. This law cuts that exposure off at the knees, and by proxy, any revenue gained from having readers pulled into these articles.<p>Most people don’t go directly to a news org website to read news. I don’t. No-one I know does. We just see interesting articles as they pop up in our social media.

They went to great lengths to no mention Meta.<p><i>Bill C-18 changes the rules for linking by requiring two companies, including Google, to pay Canadian news publishers simply for linking to their sites.</i>

Now that I&#x27;m weaning myself off of reddit, my favorite &quot;toilet reading&quot; is news.google.com<p>But since I&#x27;m in Canada, I suppose I&#x27;ll go back to RSS or maybe AP news.

Am I the only one who won&#x27;t notice this change? I have never used google news. When I want to read news I <i>go to the news sources</i>. I&#x27;ll read BBC or whatever other news outlet I choose. I do not want or need google to decide what I should or should not read. But maybe I am just old. Maybe people want a little robot picking and choosing content for them. Maybe websites are as dead as printed paper.

Undeniable truth remains: This is such a bad regulation

Not a problem. Go to ChatGPT and ask it to tell you the top ten Canadian media outlets. You can also ask for the top ten left-leaning, right-leaning, and tech&#x2F;sci&#x2F;engineering outlets. Then go to Wikipedia to get the urls for each. Bookmark all the sites and write a little Python scraper to get all the headlines each day. Then, say goodbye to Alphabet and Meta.

Loss of news in Canada via Google won&#x27;t really happen. Google and the news outlets will negotiate new agreements in line with the law. Same with Facebook. It&#x27;s in all parties interest to find an acceptable compromise. Unless Google or Facebook decide to get out of one side of online ad business entirely.

Canada is a tight oligopoly and they don&#x27;t like when you can read anything other than they want you too.

&quot;because of the Liberal government&#x27;s Online News Act&quot;<p>That&#x27;s an odd sentence. Shouldn&#x27;t it just say &quot;From the government&quot;? Seems weirdly leading to point that it out as &quot;because of the liberal government&quot;. I dunno, I don&#x27;t read much news.

Forget about Google and Meta, they&#x27;ll be fine, but those poor local news sites are screwed.

If i read this correctly they will also be delisted from google search, which is almost equivalent to being erased from the internet nowadays. The newspaper business model seems to be broken but i don&#x27;t think this is the way to fix it.

I think this will turn out great. As a news outlet, there are two ways it could go:<p>- Your revenue goes up, because people are now visiting your website and giving you ad hits instead of just seeing a blurb on Facebook.<p>- Your revenue goes down, because nobody cares about news unless it&#x27;s dropped in their feed, and the few page views you were getting are now gone. Not to worry, you can strike a deal with Facebook and Google for them to reinstate your links for $0.<p>The secret third option is that your revenue goes down, you go to Facebook and Google to ask them to show your links again, and they ask you to pay them for the privilege of having your links shown.<p>Diclaimer: I have not yet read the bill.<p>Edit: After reading the bill, it looks like if Google links to any news at all in Canada, it has to participate in the bargaining and arbitration process, so their only winning move is not to play. Looks like Option B won&#x27;t work unless all of the news outlets decide on it together.

Going a step further, I think google should stop crawling websites that are paywalled. When I search for something, I want to see results that I can click on. Not some snippets from NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg and others which are heavily paywalled.

This will likely have a worse effect than intended of fewer people having access to Canadian ends and instead American news or worse the meme news networks that have out educated press conferences over the pandemic.

related: the official post from Google <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36523516">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36523516</a>

Is Apple News affected by this?

Is there really anything new in this post from the news that came out last week?

Didn’t they try this in Australia and it failed?

canada has always had the media monopolies control the politics, now they are just getting the dividends from that control

Most Canadian media is owned by asset-stripping American private equity firms, just like American newspapers. They just want to get paid, and have figured out a particular way that Canadian, Australian, German, and Californian legislators can be duped into it.

Google need to pay for its copyright infringements ... Not exactly sure if that&#x27;s what this is about though

The web may never be better than it was about 5 years ago, and that makes me very sad

it seems like the canadian government wants to use its news as propaganda in small local regions without the rest of the world being able to figure it out via searching for it.<p>this might also be a leeway for charging the same cost to social media sites. might this be an insidious form of censorship?<p>given the canadian government&#x27;s strong ties to its government-funded media, this sounds like it could be concerning.

Just need the US and EU to follow suit now and the giants can get back to paying for what they use!

&gt;&gt; Walker said he wrote a letter to Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez early Thursday morning to inform him and his team of the decision.<p>The fact that this is being lead by the Minister of Heritage should tell you how little this has to do with actual business and technology justifications.

A side effect of this implies that if the internet platforms drop all Canadian media as a result of this law, it demonetizes all Canadian media, and then the only Canadian media that survives is what is directly subsidized by the government at its discretion.<p>I see why this &quot;works&quot; now. The effect is censorship and silencing of disfavoured outlets with the pretense of deniability. This country is a lost cause.

I actually forgot about google-news. It used to be my landing page, long ago. Now my landing page is an actual (online) newspaper. I like the fact that it is well-organized, with curated content by professional reporters. I pay a little for this, but find it to be good value.<p>I won&#x27;t miss google news. And I never saw any real value in facebook.<p>So, my response to this, as a Canadian, is &quot;who cares, eh?&quot;

Disclaimer: Am Canadian.<p>The way i see it, it&#x27;s a clear case of &quot;we tried nothing and we&#x27;re out of ideas&quot; on BOTH sides. The canadian medias are boring and are mostly opinions and a few Reuters&#x2F;AFP articles. On the other hand, GOOG and Meta are not even acknowledging that they&#x27;re trying to bully nations around while providing a slowly worse service as time goes by and profiteering from work they acquire for free. I do understand that people weren&#x27;t forced to use this service in the past and can (with some level of difficulties) remove their content.<p>It&#x27;s not as clear an issue some would like it to be. I know that I will remove myself of both these services in the future as they are hostile (and really, i should move to my own domain for lots of reasons).

As a Canadian, I don&#x27;t really care about this. The informed citizen model is already broken by censorship, cancel culture, corporate influence, paywalls, monopolies and a soon to be flood of AI content. Burn it all down imo and let something else take its place. I only use google news now to see what agenda&#x2F;narrative is being pushed at the moment or maybe to check the weather.