YSK: Google to Block Access to Canadian News for Anyone Living in Canada
YSK: Google to Block Access to Canadian News for Anyone Living in Canada
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.
@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?
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.
I think it's awful for a free internet. It's a dumb law written by people who don't understand the internet.
Yeah, same thing that has happened in several other countries. Google is supposed to pay companies to advertise their news stories through search results, and google refuses to do that meaning they have to block news websites in that country.
@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.
Possible solution (for now): Use a different search engine. I recommend DuckDuckGo.
This law should apply to all search engines, should it not?
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.
Sucks for those that didn't, but I guess this is what will happen.
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.
Usually when google makes headlines, this would be my take, but what they're doing here is completely reasonable.
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.