> digital news intermediary means an online communications platform, including a search engine or social media service, that is subject to the legislative authority of Parliament and that makes news content produced by news outlets available to persons in Canada
"Making available" includes just links. In other words, there is no qualifier in the bill what-so-ever that requires that previews and snippets be extracted and provided. A single link with no text or any other content whatever qualifies as "making available."
Here is the entire text of the bill: https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-a...
And it should be pretty obvious that this is the case. If your interpretation was correct, Meta would not have removed Canadian news sources entirely. They'd just have removed the previews (hell, the news companies could have removed the previews themselves; they already have the controls for that).
> (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.
Is that wrong?
Sure, google currently has previews, and a law could be written to target previews, but I don't think this law targets previews.
I'm no fan of Google these days, but I wish they had played hard ball on this. This is a total joke.
That's not true, however. It is also often including a summary and an image, which is certainly republishing or reposting the content. In no way is it "web-illiterate/ignorant" to refer to it as such, because it is more than just a link.
With the rise of rage and clickbait, that might be a really good thing to disincentivize many of the bad ways that media is produced and presented.
That's what happened in Australia's law from a couple of years ago. The law was ratified, but doesn't actually apply to any company, so what the law said was totally irrelevant.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Re...
Maybe that was true in the days before big tech, venture capital and advertising monetized the internet, but the internet has been vastly changed by those three groups, and not always for the better. They certainly do make a bunch of money though!
I do wish there was more distinction between a link and content display. I think there’s a very real concern that summaries lower click-through rates, which Google has been pushing for years and will be turbo-charged with LLMs summarizing content in the future. It would be interesting to see if there might be some future nuance around that.
> (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.
Holding Meta as the good guys is pretty tenuous as well. Long, long before Meta had to do anything, like a crying, gnashing baby they blocked every source of news, across all of their properties, with a callout to Canadians declaring why. I pray that they stick with it, but I'm going to tell you the reality that Meta is going to make a similar deal, probably within days.
Because they make enormous sums on the Canadian market. And they have always pulled (or been pushed), aggregated and summarized news because it makes them money. The frequent claims on here that it's some incidental thing, if not some grand benevolence, is rather detached from reality.
And with every passing day more Canadians are just turning away from Meta properties because of their embargo. Again, I pray they actually stick with it and become irrelevant here (it is a toxic company that can be trusted with nothing), but they won't.
To play off what the other guy said, it's a pretty bizarre position to hold Meta as the good guys. If they have a position on something, it's an extremely good indication that that position is not a good one.
> And they have always pulled, aggregated and summarized news because it makes them money.
Not even accurate as news companies actively provide this content in their meta data explicitly for Meta to use. If they didn't want their content summarized they could stop it any time.
I'm not sure what's going on in Canada for Meta to be seen as the "good guy". Feels like rooting for Hitler to defeat Stalin.
Even this law, the government abused parliamentary process and the COVID situation to avoid having this law debated in parliament before it was passed. They don't care about democracy, they don't care about the rule of law, they don't care about anything, they just do what benefits them and their friends.
I hate Canada's politically connected elite, and honestly prefer facebook
I couldn't agree more. The current gov went way overboard with this, and by Google caving they have just guaranteed more of the same. There's no incentive from everyday people anymore for politicians to care about this.
I'm usually pretty in-the-middle on issues, but in this case it seems ridiculous. Google is giving them a valuable service for free by sending traffic their way. If it wouldn't violate neutrality, they should pay Google not the other way around[1]. A quick logic check helps reinforce this: If appearing in the search results were a bad thing for them, then why would these companies hire SEO experts to bolster their search rankings?
[1]: Note this is regarding the "tax" for serving a link, not talking about a full preview or AI summary or something, on which I'm much more sympathetic to the site owners and think they have a legitimate case worthy of debate
As a Canadian, this is exciting to me. I agree strongly with the goals of the law (while holding nitpicks about the actual wording). I think the fact that Google came to an agreement shows that they don't have a fundamental issue with the law either (or they could've just withdrawn from our market, like Meta). It's a win for independent media in Canada, and thereby, for all Canadians.
Or they calculated that the agreement is the less expensive option. We're both speculating, of course, but it's possible that they figure that not linking to news in Canada would put them at a [even greater] competitive disadvantage which could potentially cost them more in lost business as Canadian users and customers seek alternatives.
Alternatives, I might add, that are not unfairly targeted by a law granting regulators arbitrary powers to target and penalize some companies over others.
I also want to point out that the conclusion that Google has no issue with the bill because of the agreement reached is another reason I'm disappointed... because of course that's how it will be interpreted by supporters of the bill, and they will hammer that message home with a very heavy hand: "Look! Even our victims support what we're doing to them!"
That's a strange thing to conclude.
If the grocery store wanted to charge me 10 cents per visit for the air I breathe, I would have fundamental issues with that, but I'd still probably pay. And I'm far more motivated by emotion than a publicly traded company.
> I agree strongly with the goals of the law
I like the goals too. But I think the method is terrible, and that matters.
What exactly do you agree with? This is clearly just a shakedown and they're making very little effort to disguise it. Are you a shareholder of the corporations that will benefit from this arrangement?
I think the US is f'd up, and I don't want to be a part of it. But I also don't want to be a part of the gross kleptocratic mediocracy that's been built here.
The BBC article from 2021 linked above even says "The law is seen as a test case for similar regulation around the world."
[usual disclaimer: I work at Google but on nothing related to search or policy]
For example, with a current gov like Canada, I think they'd be more worried about government action than competitors, and that's plenty of an incentive to get them to pay the money.
Or maybe they think the engineering work to maintain a whole separate search page, and revenue loss from not including links, is less than the amount they stand to pay.
---
This Act applies in respect of a digital news intermediary if, having regard to the following factors, there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses:
(a) the size of the intermediary or the operator;
(b) whether the market for the intermediary gives the operator a strategic advantage over news businesses; and
(c) whether the intermediary occupies a prominent market position.
---
So a new search engine most likely won't initially have the size and market position necessary for the law to apply.
Google and facebook refused, and I think this is Canada's government and their media lobbyists bowing to a watered down money payment to save face after not getting what they actually sought for
Do you find this more valuable than the act of actually researching, writing, editing, and publishing the articles themselves?
If Google stops linking to news articles, media companies would be the bigger losers than Google would be. Admittedly Google isn't Facebook -- it's value to users comes from indexing everything. This is probably why they accepted this deal.
As a Canadian, I wish that they'd just gone ahead and blocked Canadian news.
And who gets to distribute the revenue?
Nothing else I can think of works like this. Generally if you take the work of others without being allowed and use it to make money you'll end up in trouble.
Now, for most people the trade-off is worth it, but it should not be the default. It should be a quick opt-in using robots.txt.
If you put your site on the public internet, you are effectively opting in. In addition, robots.txt is trivially easy to configure if you really don't want your site to be crawled by specific parties' crawlers.
The news corporations absolutely want their sites crawled, to the point that if Google unilaterally stopped crawling their sites they would run to the courts to file lawsuits.
Both sides have a point here. I'm not sure where I end up on the issue myself.
An even weirder perspective: What if they didn't kill reader?
$100 million a year can incentivise some awful outcomes.
And all pre-existing Meta and Google deals have been cancelled. This $100 million is all there is.
The local CTV outlet still does (not sure about their wider brand, I only look for local news). They just can't link back to CTV's website anymore.
Or some other sort of club instead of a school.
https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-a...
So just like in Australia, the applies to nobody. The text of the law isn't very relevant, the whole thing is intended as an elaborate shakedown.
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2023/08/read-our-letter-threate...
This. From the C-18 bill:
Requires the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (the “Commission”) to maintain a list of digital news intermediaries in respect of which the enactment applies.
There are some exclusions for foreign owned outlets.
news business means an individual or entity that operates a news outlet in Canada. (entreprise de nouvelles)
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)
news outlet means an undertaking or any distinct part of an undertaking whose primary purpose is to produce news content and includes an Indigenous news outlet or an official language minority community news outlet. (média d’information)
Eligible news businesses — designation 27 (1) At the request of a news business, the Commission must, by order, designate the business as eligible if it
(a) is a qualified Canadian journalism organization as defined in subsection 248(1) of the Income Tax Act, or is licensed by the Commission under paragraph 9(1) (b) of the Broadcasting Act as a campus station, community station or native station as those terms are defined in regulations made under that Act or other categories of licensees established by the Commission with a similar community mandate;
(b) produces news content of public interest that is primarily focused on matters of general interest and reports of current events, including coverage of democratic institutions and processes, and
(i) regularly employs two or more journalists in Canada, which journalists may include journalists who own or are a partner in the news business and journalists who do not deal at arm’s length with the business,
(ii) operates in Canada, including having content edited and designed in Canada,
(iii) produces news content that is not primarily focused on a particular topic such as industry-specific news, sports, recreation, arts, lifestyle or entertainment, and
(iv) is either a member of a recognized journalistic association and follows the code of ethics of a recognized journalistic association or has its own code of ethics whose standards of professional conduct require adherence to the recognized processes and principles of the journalism profession, including fairness, independence and rigour in reporting news and handling sources; or
(c) operates an Indigenous news outlet in Canada and produces news content that includes matters of general interest, including coverage of matters relating to the rights of Indigenous peoples, including the right of self-government and treaty rights.
Public list 29 (1) The Commission must maintain a list of eligible news businesses and publish that list on its website. An eligible news business is only included on the list if it gives its consent.
Most of the time it's not worthwhile though because few companies will pay, and at some point breaking the web starts losing you votes so politicians will back down first. Except when it's Google..
Canada: the best democracy, money can buy. /s
It’s still a bad law, and Google shouldn’t have capitulated.
