#Canada enacted a #LinkTax law. If #Meta and #Google keep providing links to the #paywall s of #news websites, they will have to pay 30 percent of the total cost of all news production in the country (mostly TV news).
"No TNX", said Meta and Google. They just won't provide links to paywalls anymore. The government thought it was a #bluff and called it. Now Meta has started blocking the links, a I report for @heiseonline in German:
Here's an astounding #opinion piece by a freelance journalist who thinks that #Google and #Meta are "desparate", that #Instagram is "dying", and that NOT providing links to #news paywalls is "self-sabotage".
He says valuations of Meta and Google are "bloated by the artificial-intelligence mania". Maybe; but in March he predicted in the same publication that "coders will lose jobs to AI".
Is it so hard to understand that the typical user of #Facebook or #Instagram is only marginally interested in professional #news?
Is it so hard to see that #GoogleNews has always been a financial loss for Google?
Is it so hard to understand that #Zuckerberg is not interested in pointing his users to new, interesting stuff on other websites?
@newstik They (Google and Meta) eventually negotiated and are paying the press in France since 2021, in application of the 2019 European directive on copyright and related rights.
@ericfreyss Not quite.
In France, if reports are correct, Google pays news publishers for the right to show news content. (Google has been doing that in Canada already. They pay publishers millions to show paywalled content in the Google News Showcase.)
The Canadian #LinkTax would NOT allow Google to show any copyrighted content. It is a tax on providing links to paywalls or broadcasters websites. Very different. Most of the $$$ would go to large telecom corps who also own cable TV stations.
@ericfreyss Also the amounts are very different. If reports are correct, Google pays 20 mio Euro a year in France.
In Canada, Google and Meta are expected to pay more than eleven times that amount.
Note that France has about 60% higher population than Canada.
@newstik re Meta https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2021/10/21/facebook-va-remunerer-une-partie-de-la-presse-francaise-au-titre-des-droits-voisins_6099383_4408996.html
and they launched the Facebook news service in France as well.
One of the agreements had mentioned 25M€ but they are confidential. In the process Google was fined **500M€** https://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/medias/droits-voisins-google-evite-une-nouvelle-amende-en-soldant-son-contentieux-avec-les-editeurs-de-presse-1414744
As for C-18 its objectives are very similar and does not target mere links (I believe that is more the language of the platforms) but actual content (which in practice, as a feature, is automatically embedded when you insert a link on FB).
@ericfreyss You misunderstand the Canadian Online News Act. It would not provide a license to actually show any copryighted content. That would be a separate cost to to Google or Meta, outside of the scope of the act.
Say they show a news article: They would have to pay the link tax AND obtain a copryight license.
Say they just link to the homepage of the Toronto Star (paywalled). They don't need a copyright license, but they still have to pay the link tax.
@newstik I actually quoted the text in the image I joined in my previous message. Yes I do understand the text.
@ericfreyss How much is the link tax? Nobody knows. The CRTC will tell them in a few years.
The official expectation is a massive amount: 30% of the total cost of professional Canadian news production for print, online, radio, TV, podcasts, etc.
On top of the copyright licenses Google already buys in Canada.
@newstik it is not a tax but an obligation to find agreements with right owners just like in France.
Link to the C-18 bill https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-assent
@ericfreyss Not like in France. France allows private deals; as you said, agreements reached are not public. In France, the partners of the deal decide.
The Canadian Act is very different. Yes, it talks about bargaining. But any deal reached does not apply under the Act unless the CRTC finds that many undefined criteria (and not yet published criteria) are met. And the CRTC can make up additional conditions afterwards.
Who wants to run a business where you learn years later what your cost was?