Quotulatiousness

August 3, 2023

“Tech giants” obey the law and block access to Canadian news sites to Canadian users

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

For some reason — despite a clamour of warnings from sensible observers — the Canadian government still seems shocked and surprised that the much-reviled “tech giants” have chosen to obey the new Online News Act and are actively blocking links to Canadian media outlets just as the law requires:

For months, supporters of Bill C-18, the Online News Act, assured the government that Meta and Google were bluffing when they warned that a bill based on mandated payments for links was unworkable and they would comply with it by removing links to news from their platforms. However, what has been readily apparent for months became reality yesterday: Meta is now actively blocking news links and sharing on its Facebook and Instagram platforms. The announcement does not reference Threads, but it would not surprise if news links are ultimately blocked on that platform as well. The company says that the blocking will take several weeks to fully roll out to all users, suggesting that it has learned from the over-blocking mistakes made in Australia and is proceeding more cautiously in Canada. By the end of the month, the world’s largest social media platform will become a news desert in Canada, with links to all news – both Canadian and foreign – blocked on the platform.

It is worth revisiting that it was only a couple of months ago that some industry leaders, lobbyists, and academics were assuring the Senate that the Meta threat was just a bluff. Kevin Desjardins of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, referenced the Australian experience, and told the Senate committee studying the bill that “when legislated to do so, they will come to the table”. Sylvain Poisson of Hebdos Quebec confidently said “they made those threats in Australia and elsewhere and every time they back down”. Chris Pedigo of the U.S.-based Digital Context Next assured the committee “it’s important to understand what happens when these bills become law. In Australia, they moved quickly to secure deals. They have done similar work in Europe, and I expect it would happen quickly in Canada as well.” And Carleton professor Dwayne Winseck said “I am not worried. The threats they are making, they are doing this all around the world.”

Despite the assurances, the company was true to its word and blocking news links is now here. If this is a negotiation tactic, it’s a pretty strange one given that reports indicate the company is not talking to the government about potential changes to a law that has already received royal assent. Indeed, while the new Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge urged the company to participate in the regulatory process, there is nothing in the regulations that could alter the fundamental principle in the bill of mandated payments for links. At best, the government could toss aside its commitment to stay out of negotiations by using the regulations to dictate to the supposedly independent CRTC how much needs to be spent in order to avoid Bill C-18’s final offer arbitration provisions. Government negotiating total payment value and eviscerating the CRTC’s independence does not inspire confidence and Meta reasonably wants no part of it, since the time to fix Bill C-18 was before it received royal assent, not after.

Bolded section mine: I didn’t realize that it wasn’t just Canadian media links that were being blocked … it’s all news sites in the world being hidden from Canadian users. That’s an escalation from what I’d originally understood. I don’t blame the “tech giants” at all, but it will be tough on older Canadians who’ve been depending on social media to keep them up-to-date on domestic and foreign news.

July 4, 2023

It’s not “bullying” for corporations to act in their own (and their shareholders’) best interests

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The weekly round-up from The Line editors wasn’t happy reading for fans of the Canadian mainstream media:

The Canadian government approached this as if it was “Big Tech” who were reaping all the rewards … when in fact it was the Canadian media companies getting most of the benefit from the arrangement. No wonder “Big Tech” chose to take their bat and ball and go home.

There are two major items up for consideration, and we’ll deal with each in turn. The first is a proposed merger between Postmedia and the Torstar/Metroland newspapers. The second, and most significant, news item, is that following on Meta/Facebook’s decision to stop featuring news on its feeds, Google is promising to drop the Google News Showcase feature, and to stop surfacing Canadian news links on its search feeds. All of this is in response to C-18, the Online News Act.

This law is trying to force Facebook and Google to compensate news organizations for the links that appear on their platforms; so the companies reacted in an entirely predictable way after the bill received Royal Assent last week — they announced they are going to absent themselves from the scope of the bill by no longer providing those links.

The government, its supporters, and many in the media itself reacted to this announcement with the same inane bluster that has come to dominate the conversation around this byzantine and poorly conceived bill. The Liberals promised to stand up to “Big Tech”; and the media organizations that pinned their survival on milking this new revenue stream are now accusing Google et al. of “bullying”. We at The Line don’t consider this rhetoric to be rational or in good faith. We are annoyed — we are horrified — by these companies’ decisions, but we understand them.

Both Facebook and Google made it clear that C-18 was untenable from a business point of view; they both warned that they would consider pulling news links in response. From Big Tech’s perspective, the decision-making tree is real simple here: does the revenue generated by news outweigh the potential uncapped financial liability that C-18 would present? Further, would complying with C-18 in Canada present a greater risk to the company globally if the bill were replicated in larger media markets? Or are the companies better off to withdraw from a low-priority market pour encourager les autres. We can scream about the evils of Big Tech all we want, but ultimately, these are just math conversations.

No one ought to be surprised that the math didn’t go our way. But almost everyone was. Because — and there’s no nice way to say this — this country’s media industry is both painfully parochial and embarrassingly self-important. For people whose job it is to understand and explain the world to Canadians, it often astonishes us at how incompetent we are at understanding and explaining that world to ourselves. Canadian journalists have an unshakeable faith in our vocation; we genuinely believe that our work is a vital service to democracy. Therefore the fruits of that labour — the news content — must be valuable to the digital platforms that we now depend upon to distribute it. This is why many in the industry were so unshakeably convinced that Facebook and Google were bluffing during the course of C-18. Incredibly, many seem to remain convinced that Big Tech will capitulate to their demands for capital, even now. To quote this old gem: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”.

The flaw in this reasoning ought to be apparent, yet the industry lacks the digital savvy to understand the risk it is courting. “What about Bing, amiright?” Denial and self-importance are now sucking Canadian journalism straight into the maw of an existential crisis. To lose Facebook is a major set back; to lose Google is death.

The thing our colleagues and peers need to come to terms with is that Canadian journalism just isn’t that important in the global scheme of things. Facebook and Google aren’t out to get us — they are indifferent to us. Canadian news comprises a small and un-lucrative segment of even Canadian traffic flows. And Canada is a mid-tier market, at best. Optics aside, global tech oligopolies simply don’t lose very much by cutting us off. Facebook and Google are in the business of advertising, not journalism. They share neither our self regard, nor our democratic mandate; as a result, there is no internally coherent reason for them to take losses in order to save our industry. We just don’t matter to them.

On her Substack, Tasha Kheiriddin doesn’t blame Google for the impending destruction of what’s left of mainstream Canadian media:

The funeral has begun. The pyres are lit; the mourners are weeping. RIP, Canadian media industry, we hardly knew ye. Between mergers, acquisitions, closures, and layoffs, you didn’t stand a chance. And then came Bill C-18.

The legislation, passed last week, compels internet behemoths Meta and Google to compensate Canadian news outlets in exchange for featuring links to their content. Bill C-18 is modeled on an Australian law that saw the two tech giants enter into financial arrangements with media outlets in that country. Here in Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Office estimates similar deals could produce annual revenues of $329 million, a juicy sum for the cash-strapped news business.

Instead, Meta and Google announced that they would no longer include Canadian news links. Rather than reap a profit, Canadian media companies now face the prospect of far fewer eyeballs on screens – and the decimation of their ad revenue. Meta also cut its funding to CN2i, the Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante, which supports six print publications, including La Presse, further damaging media companies’ bottom line.

Cue the sound of “Taps” and political outrage. Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez had this to say:

    Big tech would rather spend money to change their platforms to block Canadians from accessing good quality and local news instead of paying their fair share to news organizations … This shows how deeply irresponsible and out of touch they are, especially when they make billions of dollars off of Canadian users.

No, this shows how deeply out of touch the government is with the business model of these companies – and with internet technology in general.

July 1, 2023

The Trudeau plan to eliminate Canada from the internet is going great!

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Government, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Wait, you mean that wasn’t the plan? It must have been, if you judge the plan by the amazing results:

The damage caused by the government’s Bill C-18 continues to grow as Meta has started to cancel its existing agreements with Canadian publishers. The move should not as a surprise since any deals that involve facilitating access to news content would bring the company into the legislative framework and mandate payments for links. Indeed, Meta said earlier this week that its 18 existing deals “did not have much of a future“. When this is coupled with a reported “impasse” between the government and Google over its approach to Bill C-18, the risks to the Canadian media sector look increasingly dire.

This was entirely foreseeable, yet Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez never seemed to take the risks seriously. It raises the question of whether the government developed estimates of the cost of its legislation if Meta and Google chose to comply by stopping news sharing or linking. While there were estimates for the benefits of new deals that ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars, did it conduct a risk assessment of the economic costs that would come from Internet companies exiting the news market in Canada?

There are obviously costs that extend far beyond the economics that include reduced access to news, increased prominence of low quality news sources, harm to the Canadian Internet, and the reputational damage to a government that handled this about as incompetently as possible. But from a pure economic perspective, the risks were always understated as they extended beyond just the value of increased traffic to publishers from the links they were themselves posting. Both Google and Meta have deals with Canadian publishers reportedly worth millions of dollars. As Meta’s step to begin cancelling deals suggests, those agreements are unlikely to survive the decision to exit news in Canada.

And of course, Google doesn’t want to set any kind of precedent by accepting a shakedown from any two-bit hoodlum country like Canada:

The worst case scenario for Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, the Canadian news sector, and the Canadian public has come to pass: Google has announced that it will block news links in Canada in response to the mandated payment for links approach established in Bill C-18. The decision, which the company says will be implemented before the law takes effect, will cover search, Google News, and Google Discover. The decision – which government seemingly tried to avoid with last minute discussions with Google executives after it became apparent that the risks of exit were real – will have lasting and enormously damaging consequences for Canadians and represents a remarkable own-goal by Rodriguez who has managed to take millions away from the news sector and left everyone in a far worse position than if he had done nothing at all.

If you’re in any way interested in Canadian government … machinations … when it comes to digital policy, you really should be following Michael Geist‘s reporting. He’s been doing a great job and deserves the support.

June 24, 2023

Canada’s Online News Act already impacting news delivery for smaller outlets

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

A local site I use regularly has already begun to feel the negative effects of the federal government’s Online News Act (aka Bill C-18):

Durham Radio News (DRN) doesn’t normally post editorial content, but when local news is being attacked we refuse to stay silent.

Bill C-18 is now law and will have a very negative impact on local independent newsrooms such as DRN.

The bill forces major tech companies such as Google and Meta to pay news outlets for content.

The vast majority of referrals to our DRN site come from Facebook and Google.

Both platforms have been instrumental in growing our audience.

Despite multiple warnings from Meta and Google that they would block news, the Liberal government proceeded with Bill C-18.

It’s now law and in a statement Meta says news will no longer be available on Facebook and Instagram.

Google is expected to follow suit.

Both tech giants have publicly said they don’t make much money off links to news stories so it doesn’t make financial sense for them to pay news providers.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called their threats to remove news a bullying tactic and said it will not work with his government.

It really appears the Liberals thought they were bluffing, we now know they were not.

DRN has been trying to get our voices heard for months on the negative impact this bill would have on our business.

We were drowned out by larger media outlets who would stand to benefit from this bill.

We will not be naming other outlets and we don’t begrudge the financial help they are already receiving.

Meta provides funding through fellowships with some media partners, and it is these outlets that became greedy and were asking for more.

For them it doesn’t matter if they get kicked off social media platforms.

For us it will make a huge impact.

March 20, 2023

“It amounts to nothing less than a declaration of all-out war between the government and the Big Tech companies”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The editors of The Line have strong opinions on the federal government’s decision to batter Google, Facebook, and other online “giants” over their opposition to the proposed internet legislation in bills C-11 and C-18:

As a result of C-18, both Google and Meta have considered dropping news distribution from their platforms, or have outright promised to do so. To which we have responded: “Well, no shit, Sherlocks.” We have, in fact, warned all of the parties involved with this misguided bill that that’s exactly what was going to happen.

Nonetheless, the dim-witted government officials and corporate media barons who have pinned their hopes of survival to the apparent money spigot of Big Tech didn’t believe us. So when Meta came right out and said it would drop news last week, the ashen-faced Minister of Heritage accused them of using “intimidation and subversion” tactics. And, thus, these demands for private correspondence appear to have been drafted.

It amounts to nothing less than a declaration of all-out war between the government and the Big Tech companies — and, by extension, the many independent media creators like ourselves.

Well. Okey Dokey then.

*cracks knuckles*

Let’s start with two very obvious points: firstly, we at The Line don’t object to forcing these tech companies to disclose funding to third parties for the purpose of opposing C-18 et al. That is perfectly reasonable, in our minds. Further, if these companies are being accused of anything illegal, by all means, investigate away — after you get a warrant.

The rest of these demands are nothing short of banana crackers; it’s an extraordinary interpretation of the committee’s mandate. It’s the kind of overbroad dragnet that will necessarily create privacy breaches for the unknown numbers of ordinary citizens, dissidents and journalists who have corresponded with these companies about these bills.

We will remind the government that private citizens and private companies do not owe the government a full accounting of their private business or communications. The government is subject to this kind of transparency and disclosure because the government works for us. Not the other way around.

We will also point out the irony. The government is demanding years worth of correspondence from private entities within a very short time frame: this is a level of transparency that no government department would subject itself to. Don’t believe us? Just try to draft a similar ATIP request to any ministry; it would take years to get such a request fulfilled, and half if it would come back redacted.

March 19, 2023

Disagree with the Canadian government’s attempt to take over significant parts of the internet? Get ready for administrative punishment, citizens!

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Michael Geist, who often seems like the only person paying close attention to the Canadian government’s growing authoritarian attitudes to Canadians’ internet usage, shows the utter hypocrisy of the feds demanding access to a vast array of private and corporate information on a two-week deadline, when it can take literally years for them to respond to a request for access to government information:

Senator Joe McCarthy would be in awe of the Canadian government’s audacious power grab.
Library of Congress photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The government plans to introduce a motion next week requiring Google and Facebook to turn over years of private third-party communication involving any Canadian regulation. The move represents more than just a remarkable escalation of its battle against the two tech companies for opposing Bill C-18 and considering blocking news sharing or linking in light of demands for hundreds of millions in payments. The motion – to be introduced by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage (yes, that guy) – calls for a series of hearings on what it describes as “current and ongoing use of intimidation and subversion tactics to avoid regulation in Canada”. In the context of Bill C-18, those tactics amount to little more than making the business choice that Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez made clear was a function of his bill: if you link to content, you fall within the scope of the law and must pay. If you don’t link, you are out of scope.

While the same committee initially blocked Facebook from even appearing on Bill C-18 (Liberal MP Anthony Housefather said he was ready for clause-by-clause review after just four hearings and no Facebook invitation), bringing the companies to committee to investigate the implications of their plans is a reasonable approach. But the motion isn’t just about calling executives before committee to answer questions from what will no doubt be a hostile group of MPs. The same motion sweeps in the private communications of thousands of Canadians, which is a stunning disregard for privacy and which could have a dangerous chilling effect on public participation. Indeed, the intent seems fairly clear: guilt by association for anyone who dares to communicate with these companies with an attempt to undermine critics by casting doubt on their motivations. Note that this approach is only aimed at those that criticize government legislation. There has been a painfully obvious lobbying campaign in support of the bill within some Canadian media outlets, but there are no efforts to uncover potential bias or funding for those that speak out in favour of Bill C-18, Bill C-11, or other digital policy initiatives.

It is hard to overstate the broad scope of the disclosure demands. Canadian digital creators concerned with Bill C-11 who wrote to Youtube would find their correspondence disclosed to the committee. So would researchers who sought access to data from Google or Facebook on issues such as police access to social media records or anti-hate groups who contacted Facebook regarding the government’s online harms proposal for automated reports to law enforcement. Privacy advocates focused on how Google administers the right to be forgotten in Canada would ironically find their correspondence disclosed as would independent media sites that wrote to Facebook about the implications of Bill C-18.

March 1, 2023

Our modern age of “squishy totalitarianism”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Chris Bray on the odd controlling habits of our “great and good”, our “moral and intellectual superiors” to urge us to follow their directives “for our own good” (or else):

The anarchist philosopher Crispin Sartwell describes our political culture as one of “squishy totalitarianism”, a term I like quite a bit. (See the third page of this document.) You can disagree and refuse to comply, and the secret police won’t show up at your door (with maybe a growing list of exceptions). We don’t have a gulag. We don’t have the “culture of the disappeared“. You just … maybe find yourself with fewer friends, and some family that stops talking to you, and maybe your employer lets you know that hey, you know what, this doesn’t seem to be working out.

It’s not the Great Terror, it’s just a kind of low-grade grind of social decredentialing that lets you know you’re not making the right choices. We need to rethink Thanksgiving this year, because we’re very disappointed in you. (Don’t you want to be safe?) The way Google searches are working these days is a pretty good example of squishy totalitarianism: Oh, I’m sorry, we have no results for that widely known piece of wrongthink, but here are some results that debunk the conspiracy theory you’re searching for. Wouldn’t you prefer to read a correct search result?

[…]

We can debate the origins and the motive force behind the constant parade of error that has plagued us over the last three years: useless mask mandates, aggressively harmful school closures, insanely damaging vaccine mandates, ludicrous closures of beaches and parks, the pearl clutching over all those conspiracy theories about a lab leak.

You know the terms of the debate: Is the world led by idiots who are screwing it all up, or is this a plan that they’re executing on purpose?

But whichever answer turns out to be correct, one thing that seems extremely clear to me is that this perpetual reign of error couldn’t possibly go on without the unthinking enforcement activity of a distributed commissariat, the slogan-repeating upper-middle-class-aligned cultural apparatus that endlessly lawn signs their compliance. No one has to tell journalists to scold Woody Harrelson: they already know. The moment the Woodster engaged in crimethink, the Rolling Stone writer Marlow Stern started salivating like a trained dog hearing a bell. Vast armies of professors and HR specialists and marketing executives and bureaucrats and Hollywood functionaries and school board wokescolds and on and on and on already know their roles without being assigned to them. It is not correct for you to fail to comply with Current Thing; you are spewing conspiracy theories.

    Doctor, the symptoms began shortly after I received the second dose of the Covid vaccine.

    No, that is not possible, vaccines do not cause injuries. Let us not discuss this conspiracy theory any further. Here are some pills.

We have an enforcement apparatus made up of people who volunteered for the job. In terms of social class, we have the lower class, the lower-middle-class, the middle class, the Stasi, and the upper class.

February 26, 2023

Politicians who ignored warnings now demanding to know why nobody warned them

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Canadian government is moving to pass a new law to force “Big Tech” companies like Google and Facebook to pay Canadian broadcasters and newspapers whenever they post a link to one of those sites. The government was told many times that this law wouldn’t produce a cornucopia of new funding for Canadian companies, but would instead get them nothing — in fact, worse than nothing — as Big Tech firms would just ignore Canadian news altogether (possibly even blocking their own users from posting those links). Despite that, now that Google announced they were testing their ability to shut off linking to Canadian sites, the PM and the minister responsible for the new bill are acting as though it’s Google and the other tech firms making threats:

The report that Google is conducting a national test that removes links to Canadian news sites for a small percentage of users sparked a predictable reaction as politicians who were warned that Bill C-18 could lead to this, now want to know how it could happen. None of this week’s developments should come as a surprise. Bill C-18 presents Google and Facebook with a choice: pay hundreds of millions of dollars primarily to Canadian broadcasters for links to news articles or stop linking. Both companies are doing precisely what they said they would do, namely considering stopping linking (Google conducted the same tests in Australia several years ago). Indeed, strip away the hyperbole and the bottom line is this: the costs of Bill C-18 are enormous (the government’s Senate representative suggesting the bill could result in revenues to cover 35% of news expenditures of every news outlet in Canada) and the revenues from news for the platforms are not (Facebook says news only constitutes 3 percent of posts and Google does not even run ads on its Google News product). As some have noted, the government says the companies are stealing content if they link and blocking content if they don’t.

Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has blithely ignored the risks associated with Bill C-18 for months. By mandating payments for links, the bill creates a real threat to the free flow of information online. It also raises press independence concerns, may violate Canada’s international copyright obligations, harm the competitiveness of independent media, and open the door to trade retaliation by the United States. But as the Google test demonstrates, everyone loses with the current bill. Trust in Google is undermined when it secretly degrades its own service, news organizations won’t see new revenues if the companies stop linking and they will also lose the benefits of the links, and Canadians will find that the bill is an own-goal by the government that undermines the foundation of the Internet.

No one likes to get called on their assertions that Google and Facebook were bluffing when they warned that the prospect of removing news sharing or search results was real, but it is telling that Rodriguez and the bill’s supporters continue to rely on misleading claims about the bill instead of making the case for its actual impact. For example, consider yesterday’s Rodriguez’s tweet:

Leaving aside the fact that Google is blocking links to news sites, not the news sites themselves, Rodriguez continues to falsely claim that the premise of the bill is for the tech companies to “compensate journalists when they use their work.” This just isn’t what the bill does. First, it now includes hundreds of broadcasters that do not even produce news, yet still qualify for compensation. That isn’t compensating for use, it is payment based on holding a CRTC licence. Second, the bill does not require compensation based on use. The standard in Bill C-18 is making news content available, which is defined as:

    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.

Google and Facebook don’t typically reproduce the news. Rather, they link to it and thereby send the user to the publisher’s own platform where the publisher benefits from increased traffic and potential ad revenue. Therefore, the key provision is (b), which covers facilitating access to the news, better known as linking to it. That is not how most Canadians would conceive of use and why officials typically avoid acknowledging that the bill is about payment for links.

I tapered off linking to Canadian newspapers the last time this idea was being tossed around, and clearly I’ll need to omit ever linking to Canadian broadcasters and newspapers in future … but given that easily 90% of my readers aren’t Canadian, it’s not going to be too much of a sacrifice.

December 30, 2022

QotD: If AT&T had used the Google model

Filed under: Business, Quotations, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I’ve written elsewhere of how much we would have suffered if AT&T had run the phone network with a Google strategy. You wouldn’t be able to talk on the phone until you heard a bunch of advertisements first. The restaurant you call for a dinner reservation would have to kickback a share of your meal tab to the phone company. Everything you did on your phone would be more cumbersome and less efficient.

Guess what? That still may happen. The only reason Apple hasn’t already started force-feeding ads on your iPhone is a fear that competitors may not do the same — and they might lose a few market share points. But all it takes is one backroom meeting of dubious legality between smartphone providers, and you will soon start hearing a pitch from the GEICO gecko before you even say hello.

Ted Gioia, “YouTube May Force You to Watch 10 (or More) Unskippable Ads in a Row”, The Honest Broker, 2022-09-19.

December 16, 2022

The Online News [Shakedown] Act passes the House of Commons

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Michael Geist summarizes the farcical progress of Justin Trudeau’s legalized theft from the “tech giants”:

Later today, the House of Commons will vote to approve Bill C-18, the Online News Act, sending it to the Senate just prior to breaking for the holidays. While Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez and media lobbyists will no doubt celebrate the milestone, it should not go unremarked that the legislative process for this bill has been an utter embarrassment with an already bad bill made far worse. The government cut off debate at second reading, actively excluded dozens of potential witnesses, expanded the bill to hundreds of broadcasters that may not even produce news, denigrated online news services as “not real news”, and shrugged off violations of international copyright law. All the while, it acknowledged that mandated payments for links are the foundation of the bill with officials stating that individual Facebook posts accompanied by a link to a news story would be caught by the law. As for the purported financial benefits, the government’s own estimates are less than half those of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who also concluded that more than 75% of the revenues will go to broadcasters such as Bell, Rogers, and the CBC. The end result is a bill that will undermine competition and pose a threat to freedom of expression, while potentially leading Facebook to block news sharing in Canada and Google to cancel dozens of existing agreements with Canadian news outlets.

As I’ve chronicled for months, Bill C-18 is the product of an intense lobbying campaign from some of Canada’s largest media companies. While the Globe and Mail broke from the pack at the last minute, years of one-sided editorials — even devoting full front pages to the issue — had its effect. Indeed, Canadian newspapers would be exhibit #1 for how government intervention in the media space has a direct impact on an independent press. From the moment of its introduction, the consequences were immediately obvious as payments for links serves as the foundation for a law that treats “facilitating access to news” as compensable. Canadians can be forgiven for thinking the bill is about compensating for reproduction of news stories. It is not, since the platforms don’t do that. Instead, it is about requiring payments for links, indexing or otherwise directing traffic to the news organizations who are often the source of the link itself. In most circumstances, recipients pay for the benefits that come from referral traffic. With Bill C-18, the entities providing the referrals pay for doing so.

Further, the bill is about far more than struggling Canadian newspapers as it expands eligibility into broadcasters such as the CBC, foreign news outlets such as the New York Times, and hundreds of broadcasters licensed by the CRTC that are not even required to produce news. The end goal is negotiated payments for links, backed by the threat of a one-sided arbitration process overseen by the CRTC in which the arbitration panel can simply reject offers if it believes it fails to meet the government’s policy objectives. That isn’t a commercial deal, it is a shakedown.

I’ve been operating on the assumption that the government is betting that the big internet companies won’t do the obvious and ban linking to any Canadian media outlet on their respective platforms, but the feds don’t have a great track record of predictions in recent years …

In a later post, Michael Geist illustrated the literal misinformation that was pushed by government MPs during Bill C-18’s path through to final reading by quoting some of Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner’s contributions:

Last month, Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner shocked Canadian online news outlets by stating that “they’re not news. They’re not gathering news. They’re publishing opinion only.” The comments sparked instant criticism from news outlets across the country, leading Hepfner to issue a quick apology. In the aftermath of the comments, Hepfner said nothing for weeks at Heritage committee studying Bill C-18. That bill passed third reading yesterday – I posted on the embarrassing legislative review – and Hepfner was back at it. Rather than criticizing online news outlets, this time she targeted the Internet platforms, saying the bill would make it “harder for big digital platforms like Facebook and Google to steal local journalists’ articles and repost them without credit.” 

[…]

Hepfner’s comment not only provide a troubling example of an MP engaging in misinformation about links who has effectively labelled her own Facebook posts as theft, but strikes at the heart of the problem with Bill C-18. As government officials have acknowledged, the entire foundation of the bill is based on paying for links. In fact, when a proposal to remove links from the bill was raised at committee, government MPs described the change as a loophole and voted against it. In the case of the CBC links, the government confirmed that Hepfner could write about the availability of children’s medications (ie. “Great news! CBC reports a million bottles of pain medication are on the way”) but once she added a link to provide a source for the claim, Bill C-18 is triggered.

These examples highlight the absurdity of a law that treats links as compensable and MPs who equate those links to theft. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with Hepfner or anyone else providing a link to a story on greater availability of children’s medicine. In fact, the CBC story has effectively already been paid for by the public and should be shared widely without the government creating barriers to sharing that information. What is wrong that is ill-informed MPs have voted for Bill C-18, creating a framework in which the government is imposing a mandatory payment scheme for some platforms for hosting links. The bill is now headed to the Senate which will hopefully make the necessary amendments to set Hepfner’s mind at ease that her own Facebook posts do not make her an accomplice to theft.

November 8, 2022

The inevitable next act of the media subsidy game – “Before long we will be back for more”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Line, Peter Menzies outlines the state of play in the continued efforts of the federal government to pass C-18, a bill that will massively benefit certain media outlets … or convince the “tech giants” to pull out of the Canadian market altogether rather than pay the blackmail:

News Media Canada’s persistent campaigning finally produced its Holy Grail — Bill C-18. All might have been well for Torstar, Postmedia and Le Devoir except that once the flesh was thrown on the bones of the Act, broadcasters that aren’t facing economic peril heard the dinner bell and came running.

The result, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, is that Bill C-18 is expected to produce $329 million in annual revenue for Canadian media (for context, that’s less than the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun and Calgary Sun were bringing in between them 20 years ago). Of that, $249 million will go to broadcasters, few of whom are on a fiscal ledge and a good many of whom have contributed to the demise of local newspapers. Remarkably, the CBC, already receiving $1 billion in taxpayer funding, will get the most of that cash, followed by CTV (Bell), Rogers, Videotron and others. The newspapers and start ups will have $80 million (a little more than what the Edmonton Journal and Edmonton Sun used to make in combined annual profit) to fight over.

And very few of those previously mentioned startups — run by mostly young and often female innovators — trying to find a sustainable business model for good journalism can expect anything more than a token pay off. No. They will have to go to the little kids table and see what they can find on the children’s menu of subsidies.

It is distressingly obvious that while so many were tricked into believing this was the most progressive Canadian government ever, it is in fact, a slave to the status quo; as staunch a defender of the corporate establishment as the Toronto Club could wish for. With the 21st century and all its opportunities staring it in the face, Justin Trudeau’s government has not only turned its back on innovation, it has put its thumb on the scale in favour of failed business models that long ago ran out of ideas.

Yet there may be a final twist in this tale.

Bill C-18’s particulars are, as Meta/Facebook’s Kevin Chan put it to a Parliamentary committee last week “globally unprecedented”. For all its sins — and for all we know there are a few more skeletons rattling around in its closet — Meta is unlikely to pay up. Sure, it can cover the Canadian shakedown; what it can’t afford though is to pay every other country in the world that makes the same demand. So Meta says it may simply stop serving up news links which, when you think about it, is a better idea in the long run than permanently entrenching its dominant market position

So while the publishers of those blank pages appear to have bullied even the Conservatives into supporting this travesty, they are still left to ponder:

“Imagine if Facebook wasn’t there.”

November 2, 2022

Bill C-18’s scheme to force payment for online links threatens freedom of expression

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Michael Geist considers the ways that the federal government’s Bill C-18 will suppress online freedom of expression in Canada:

“Automotive Social Media Marketing” by socialautomotive is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The study into the Online News Act continues this week as the government and Bill C-18 supporters continue to insist that the bill does not involve payment for links. These claims are deceptive and plainly wrong from even a cursory reading of the bill. Simply put, there is no bigger concern with this bill. This post explains why link payments are in, why the government knows they are in, and why the approach creates serious risks to the free flow of information online and freedom of expression in Canada.

[…]

Why is the government suspending the fair dealing rights of Internet platforms in the bill? Because it knows that the platforms don’t typically use the news in a manner that would be compensable. For example, the platforms may link to the news, feature a headline with the link or sometimes offer a one-or-two sentence summary or quote from the article. These uses are generally permitted under Canada’s fair dealing copyright law rules and do not require a licence or compensation. In other words, claiming that links might qualify for compensation requires setting aside the platforms’ copyright rights which places Canada in breach of its obligations under the Berne Convention, the international treaty that governs copyright law.

The government’s intervention into the final arbitration process is further evidence that it recognizes the weakness of the argument for payments for links. Bill C-18 mandates final offer arbitration, which encourages the parties to provide their very best final offer as part of the process since the arbitrator must select one or the other. Yet Section 39 gives the arbitration panel the right to reject an offer on several policy grounds. Why would such a provision be necessary in a final arbitration system that encourages submitting your best offer? It is only necessary if you fear one side will examine the evidence and proffer a low offer on the grounds that it does not believe that there has been a demonstration of compensable value. That is a real possibility in this case given that there should be no need to compensate for links and there is little else of value. In light of that risk, the government gives the arbitration panel the power to reject offers that do not meet the government’s policy objectives.

[…]

Aside from the obvious unfairness, the broader implications of this policy are even more troubling. Once government decides that some platforms must pay to permit their users to engage in certain expression, the same principle can be applied to other policy objectives. For example, the Canadian organization Journalists for Human Rights has argued that misinformation is akin to information pollution and that platforms should pay a fee for hosting such expression much like the Bill C-18 model. The same policies can also be expanded to other areas deemed worthy of government support. Think health information or educational materials are important and that those sectors could use some additional support? Why not require payments for those links from platforms. Indeed, once the principle is established that links may require payment, the entire foundation for sharing information online is placed at risk and the essential equality of freedom of expression compromised.

To be clear, supporting journalism is important. But Bill C-18’s dangerous approach ascribes value to links where there isn’t any, regulates which platforms must pay in order to permit expression from their users, and dictates which sources are entitled to compensation. This is an unprecedented government intervention into the media and freedom of expression. If the government believes that Facebook and Google should be paying more into Canada, tax them and use the funds for journalism support. If that isn’t enough, create a fund for participation in the news system with mandated contributions similar to the Cancon broadcast world. That may not be ideal, but it would at least keep the system arms length, remove the qualification issues, and reduce the market intervention.

I suspect the government fears that Canadians would easily recognize the risks associated with mandated payments for links and fundamental unfairness with the system envisioned by Bill C-18. It is why it has misled on the inclusion of link payments, rejected the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s estimates on who benefits, and sought to frame Facebook’s concerns as a threat, when the real threat lies in the bill itself. But despite those efforts, make no mistake: Bill C-18 is a law about forcing some platforms to pay for links. It gives the government the power to regulate who pays and which expression is worthy of payment. In doing so, it creates a threat to freedom of expression for all Canadians.

September 30, 2022

“To maintain the illusion of free, all our online activities are sinking into spam, scam, and sham”

Filed under: Business, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ted Gioia on the insatiable growth of predatory behaviour from providers of “free” content online:

The biggest trick the Devil ever played was convincing people that online stuff is free. But the Devil always collects, sooner or later — and we are starting to learn the actual terms of this cursed deal.

Consider some recent news stories:

  • YouTube has been testing users’ willingness to watch 10 unskippable ads on a video. And the ads aren’t spaced out. They come at you, one right after the other, at the outset — because Google wants to be paid first, even if the video sucks.
  • Nobody wants ads on iPhone, but they’re coming. Executives at Apple are allegedly planning to triple the ad revenue from phones.
  • “For some Google searches literally the whole screen on Google is ads.”
  • TikTok can track a user’s every keystroke, and Beijing has “access to everything”.
  • “Scams are showing up at the top of online searches.”
  • Snapchat has been forced to pay $35 million for storing and selling users’ biometric information without permission.
  • Even if you pay for ad-free streaming, Spotify inserts ads in podcasts.
  • Ads are coming to Netflix too.
  • Etc. etc. etc.

This is what happens when “free” really isn’t free — but consumers prefer to stay in denial. Go ahead and rob me, just make sure I’m not looking when it happens.

It’s even worse than that. Web users are now hooked on free — and like all addictions, this one is far costlier than you realize at the outset.

You have more leverage when you negotiate an actual price. When I cancel a paid subscription, the corporate provider always comes back with a special offer to get me to reconsider. But how much bargaining power do I have if I refuse to click on those “terms and conditions” that always come with the free stuff?

I’ll answer that for you — none at all.

How bad will it get? YouTube described its ten unskippable ads as a “test” — but this wasn’t done in a laboratory or with volunteers. They just forced it on users, and watched them squirm. And squirm they did.

In fact, one person reported a 12-ad blitz.

This wouldn’t be so bad if it was just one business or sector of the economy that played these games. But this is the de facto business model for the entire digital economy. To maintain the illusion of free, all our online activities are sinking into spam, scam, and sham. Everything from sending an email to sharing a photo gets monitored and monetized by big tech companies — and often you’re the last person to find out what the real price is.

June 4, 2022

Bill C-18 might as well be called the “Keep legacy media alive at all costs, even if nobody wants it anymore” act

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Line‘s Jen Gerson lays out the case against the federal government’s plans for permanent corporate welfare for the big Canadian legacy media organizations:

How Jen Gerson might visualize Torstar and Postmedia during the lobbying effort for Bill C-18.
“Zombie nuns” by Michael Cavén is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This week, The Line signed on to a campaign put together by a coalition of independent media publishers calling for amendments to the panda trash fodder piece of legislation known as C-18. To be fair, I mostly signed on; my co-founder Matt Gurney had some reservations, and I figured it would be best to hash them out in full here.

The bill is a hot mess created by a clearly well-intentioned government that appears to have been bamboozled by a group of media industry lobbyists helmed by organizations like Postmedia and Torstar — companies that despite extraordinary history and resources have largely failed to sustainably transition to a digital media environment. These large outlets are now using the last of their dying power and influence to champion legislation that will force big technology companies like Facebook and Google to compensate them for linking to their content.

This is a straightforward case of regulatory capture, the very thing we would condemn in any other industry; big media companies are using their credibility and political power to pressure the government into forcing “Big Tech” to sustain their dying business models — the very “Big Tech” that they’ve spent years deriding and defaming in their very own newspapers and outlets.

This whole process is corrupt. I don’t say that lightly. Perhaps inevitably, I’ve grown totally disillusioned with the industry to which I have devoted all of my adult life. We used to consider journalism a calling or a vocation — manipulative terms that justified the low pay, harassment, and sometimes abusive management. How can the church of journalism and its holy mandate to preserve democracy continue to take itself seriously when the very catechism of the craft are nowhere present in its own self-created lobbying arm, New Media Canada?

I think the leaders of this initiative have convinced themselves that the business model they enjoyed in the ’80s and ’90s is so totally central to the survival of democracy and liberal values that they’ve committed to keeping it afloat by any means necessary regardless of the ethical and philosophical cost. In doing so, I believe that they’re only ensuring their own failure.

By driving legislation in this way, they are not proving their worth to the broader public. Rather, they are conceding that what they produce has so little value that they need to evolve into parasites of the state. It demonstrates that commitment to democracy and accountability is secondary to their primary functions; running a business. They have stockholders to please and interest on loans to pay. Big loans.

Meanwhile, the legacy media they have managed is little more than a zombie in nun’s drag. It is in a state of terminal decline, and keeping it alive poisons the earth for the generations to come after.

November 20, 2021

Modern navigation aids compared

Filed under: Britain, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In common with most people in this age of pandemic, I don’t travel very much these days. Back when I did manage to get out and about on the roads, I had an early Garmin GPS device in my vehicle and when I eventually updated the sound system in my truck to a new device, it included a built-in GPS (that constantly “loses” satellite fixes and loudly informs me, even when I’m not using the mapping function). I’ve had both good and bad experiences with these devices, but Alistair Dabbs is much more entertaining with his story:

“Sat Nav FAIL” by J-o-n-o is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Turn left. Turn right. At the roundabout, take the fourth exit.

Nobody enjoys being told what to do all the time but in the case of Google Maps I will make an exception. What I like about it best is that I can ignore her directions – should dissent take my fancy – and she doesn’t get cross.

This is in sharp contrast with all the classic sat-navs I have ever used, including the one embedded permanently into my current vehicle. Not only does it have a penchant for taking me on pointlessly circuitous routes, the wrong way up one-way streets, and along shortcuts too narrow for a bicycle, it grows angrier by the second when I refuse its orders.

“Turn right, turn right, turn right, turn left,” it would yell at increasing volume, trying to browbeat me into making a U-turn. Well no, I don’t want to drive through that building site or weave between those ambulances and fire engines dealing with that overturned lorry. Can’t you take me on an alternative route?

“Recalculating …” it would bark like a sulking dalek, but never accomplishing such. “Recalculating … Recalculating …”

Clearly I am not the only reluctant motorist to have given up on traditional sat-navs: not a single ad for one of these has turned up in my Black Friday spam deluge this year. And good riddance. Of the £3m per minute spent by Brits on their Black Friday shopping, roughly £0 will be spent on in-car nags.

Google Maps is more chilled. It’s as if she has resigned herself to my penchant for taking the wrong exits and missing turns. This is a habit I acquired by trying too hard not to drive like my father, who would obey every instruction from his sat-nav with military immediacy. As soon as he heard the words “Turn left”, he’d turn hard on the steering wheel straight away and we’d find ourselves heading up someone’s front drive, into an underground office car park or across a pedestrianised shopping walkway.

Me, I prefer to wait a bit – maybe a bit too long. Google Maps doesn’t mind and gives me no grief. Perhaps she also recognises her own faults in occasionally trying to direct me to drive through bricked-up entrances and children’s playgrounds. “Pff, whatever,” she probably thinks. “He’s too thick to follow the normal route. Let’s try a longer one.”

The odd thing is that she talks to Mme D in a very different way. On her smartphone, Google Maps is, well, chatty.

While all I get is a functional “Turn left/right” or “In 300 metres take the slip-road,” Mme D is treated to a tirade of verbosity. “Move into the filter lane and turn left at the next traffic lights heading north-northwest into B3496 Lower High Street but keep to the right to avoid the turnoff, mind the pedestrian crossing and wave hello to the butcher on the corner …” it spews, one directive tumbling into the next in a single continuous description of the journey and all its finest details.

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