Do media aggregators have a duty to provide links to public news sources in emergencies?
Do media aggregators have a duty to provide links to public news sources in emergencies?
The NWT government and city of Yellowknife are describing in tweets, Instagram messages etc. how to search key evacuation information on CPAC and CBC. The broadcast carriers have a duty to carry emergency information, but Meta and X are blocking links.
While internet access is reportedly limited in Yellowknife, residents are finding this a barrier to getting current and accurate information. Even links to CBC radio are blocked.
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Should they? Not if we punish them with fees for linking. I mean, imagine you're trying to warn your neighbours about an approaching fire and a police officer pulls up to tell you that you'll have to pay $50 for each neighbour you warn. I wouldn't blame you if you stopped, I'd blame whatever law stopped you. Similarly here, I don't blame Meta for not linking but I blame the government that will penalize Meta the moment any link points to a news outlet, emergency or not.
The tax and the legislation is at least a half a year from coming into force, the regulatory framework to operationalize it hasn’t even been published for public consultation.
Meta has started blocking preemptively. This is a power play protest about avoiding being subject to other countries’ law. That’s it.
While I'm sure there are some messaging aspects to doing it early, it's worth pointing out that by January, unless the government repeals the law, Meta will be penalized for allowing links during emergencies. This specific law comes into operation regardless of whether the government has published any framework or not.
This is a power play protest about avoiding being subject to other countries’ law.
Meta is complying with this law. The idea behind the law was that Meta was stealing ad revenue from news organizations by linking to them, and that if they wanted to continue linking to them they needed to compensate news organizations. Meta has thus stopped 'stealing' the ad revenue. That's complying with the law. It did exactly what it was expected to do, in the same way that when you tax cigarettes you expect some people to cut back on smoking. Even better, Meta stopped 'stealing' before the law even came into force!
Seriously it's like there's nothing they can do to satisfy their critics - they get accused of stealing news so they stop it, and then they get accused of harming news sites by not stealing.
Which is it? Is Meta beneficial to news organizations or harmful to them? If harmful then there's no problem with Meta blocking news links. If beneficial, then maybe this is a dumb law that's akin to the government putting a tax on exercising.
They could have put on their big boy pants and done like Alphabet and send someone to talk to the government to negotiate with them so the law wouldn't affect them... But Zuck is Zuck and he preferred to "make an example of Canada" and people are defending them for some reason...
My understanding (getting this all entirely from Michael Geist, who's been remarkably consistent advocating for an open internet for years now) is that the government's ability to set regulations for this bill are quite limited.
Now that the bill is passed and could take effect at any time, and that there really isn't much the government can offer in negotiations at this point, is that Meta is just moving on and putting all this behind them. From an implementation standpoint, Meta also needs time to make sure that their news blocking is done correctly as any bugs in that process after the law takes effect could be extremely costly.
Plus, the government and supporters of the bill are slowly being forced to realize that Meta wasn't lying when they said that they could live without news content. Engaging in a negotiation process, especially one that won't deliver what Meta wants, will only delay when the bill's supporters eventually recognize that the assumptions underpinning this bill (that Meta is stealing value from news organizations) were false.
I'll always be in support of the bill because I'll always believe that if a company profits from the work/content/things created by the people of a country then they owe taxes to that country.
Even without it coming from news themselves, it would be easy for the Canadian government to force Meta to pay taxes in Canada on all profits made off Canadians or face getting banned from the country's internet and to redirect those taxes to Canadian medias. And I guarantee you, they would rather make less profit from Canadians than no profit from Canadians.
But that's the kind of regulations we'll see coming from Europe before Canada I'm pretty sure.
For what it's worth I believe Meta should pay taxes here too - but let's tax them on their revenue and not on something arbitrary like how much traffic they send news organizations. That happens to be the view of Michael Geist as well - he'd rather that we just tax Meta & Google directly and then use the money to create a fund to support news organizations, instead of this roundabout way where we try to force them to pay some unknown amount of $ directly to the organizations.
Perhaps we’d do better to look at the text of Bill C-18.
You seem to be saying that the law itself has already laid out that Meta is who it applies to.
Instead, it says that a list needs to be established.
List of digital news intermediaries 8 (1) The Commission must maintain a list of digital news intermediaries in respect of which this Act applies. The list must set out each intermediary’s operator and contact information for that operator and specify whether an order made under subsection 11(1) or 12(1) applies in relation to the intermediary.
Meta clearly sees that the law is intended to apply to digital platforms with significant market power such as it has. But it has not yet been designated.
Timing - coming into force - you are correct that there is a hard deadline at end of year.
180 days after royal assent (6) Despite subsections (1) to (5), any provision of this Act that does not come into force by order before the 180th day following the day on which this Act receives royal assent comes into force 180 days after the day on which this Act receives royal assent.
Basically, you are justifying Meta’s actions on the basis that it recognizes that a law it doesn’t like will apply to it in future.
From the text (very end of the bill):
180 days after royal assent
(6) Despite subsections (1) to (5), any provision of this Act that does not come into force by order before the 180th day following the day on which this Act receives royal assent comes into force 180 days after the day on which this Act receives royal assent.
The bill received royal assent on June 22nd, 2023, which actually means this law takes effect in December at the latest.
EDIT - I think we were updating our messages at the same time as I added the above before yours was finished.
I think it's clear that Meta would be covered if it links to news given this section:
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.
7 (1) If this Act applies in respect of a digital news intermediary, its operator must so notify the Commission.
There's doesn't seem much room for Meta here - if they link to news they'll be covered by this law. The only possible escape might be in Section 11 where it allow the Governor in Council to write regulations that exempt organizations, and if the government is going to exempt Meta they might as well just repeal the law.
Or Parliament may pass further legislation on accelerated calendar that will require Meta to carry links in declared emergencies much as cable companies and private broadcasters are now.
This is a bad take. I'm blaming Facebook for deciding they'd rather not have news than share the money they make off it with the people who need to be paid to make it.
While paying 0$ in taxes on the profit they make off of Canadians, don't forget to add that part!
@Kecessa @ram
So tax them!
C-18 is the absolute WRONG way to extract revenue. It hurts Canadians as well as smaller Canadian news and content providers.
The CBC and our oligopoly of mainstream news are pushing C-18 to cement their own status, not help Canadians to be better informed.
It's not Meta and Alphabet's fault that our media can't monetize their content once people get to their sites. Taxing links is not the answer and the consequences are obvious.How do you tax a company that on paper has no revenue in your country?
Oh... Exactly like the government is trying to do right now, will you look at that?
You realise they manage to not even pay taxes in the USA?
I'm not engaging with this. Obviously facebook is monetized. I'm not gonna sit here and explain how advertising and the sale of your data makes a company revenue.
@ram
They monetize everything; cat pix, political rants, food reviews etc. And they don't pay for that either.
FB is enduring zero loss for blocking Canadian news. Even the call for an ad boycott is a bust. The biggest losers are the very media sources that pushed for this crap law.