Recently as part of a trio of overpromised "internet modernization bills" which served to deny more and more Canadians their fundamental speech and property rights, the Online News Act (formerly Bill C-18) was passed into law. The quick summary is that, at the behest of the legacy media, "big players" (Facebook and Google) are required to pay an unknown but substantially large (over 4% of their global revenues) sum to the Canadian newsmedia for any linking done to their sites, including links done by users.
The rationale was that by generating news sections where links to media were being done, Google and Facebook were getting the advertising revenue that the websites themselves were expecting. CBC and the Toronto Star were looking at how much these large tech companies were making and thought they deserved it. Shiny Pony's government agreed, and at their behest started crafting legislation and going gung-ho on it no matter who disagreed or pointed out the bill's many many problems.
One of the strongest voices on this was Michael Geist, who for a quarter century has been the go-to internet expert in Canadian academia. Geist continually criticized the Liberal government's bizarre agreement that Google and Facebook in particular (one of his bugaboos is that the law seems designed to target them) are "stealing" content by profiting from linking. He criticized the Liberals' continued comparisons to an Australian law that on the surface was very similar but in reality was vastly different. He routinely pointed out that the policy was designed to milk them dry to support legacy media, including the legislation setting a floor but not a ceiling and restricting the companies' bargaining positioning in the event they chose the "deal" route. Finally, of course, to the howls of pro-Liberals in his comment section, he warned that the big tech companies could and would do exactly what they've done since: stop providing the links at all (which in theory the pseudo-plaintiffs would be happy about but in reality they aren't).
The Raptors’ mistakes are nicely articulated in this piece by Josh Lewenberg, who covers the team for TSN. Drawing from that piece, there are at least three that merit mention. First, the Raptors misjudged the market for VanVleet, which left them without a viable response to a massive contract offer from the Houston Rockets that they did not see coming. Second, the Raptors took the wrong lesson from past experience, in which they previously had managed to recoup some value even when losing a star player. Third, the Raptors engaged in disastrous risk analysis, opening the door to losing a player without any return rather than pre-emptively pursuing a less-risky alternative.
I think the same three mistakes apply to the government’s inept approach on Bill C-18. First, it badly misjudged the market for news links on Internet platforms. Even as Facebook repeatedly emphasized the limited economic value of news links on the platform (three percent of user feeds and highly substitutable), the government appeared convinced it would still be open to paying $50-100 million for those links. The same seems true for Google, who is focused on its platform that is built on links and a global market that could lead to billions in liability if the Canadian approach became a model for others. A compromise is still possible, but if even one Internet company complies with the legislation by stopping links and cancelling deals, the government policy will at best break even or more likely still result in a net loss. With the recent Postmedia-Torstar merger proposal, Bell Media layoffs, and regulatory requests at the CRTC to reduce news spending, the sector appears to have already made up its mind and is rapidly losing faith in the bill.
Second, the government drew the wrong lesson from the Australian experience as it convinced itself that the situation would play out in the same way with room to negotiate a late settlement (Scrimshaw hints at this too). While that might still happen, the government ignored notable differences in the legislation (Australia left itself with more flexibility to negotiate a settlement than does Bill C-18), the economic circumstances (Facebook was flush with cash during the Australia fight, while it has laid off tens of thousands in recent months), the value of news (news has been steadily de-emphasized on Facebook in the years since it reached its deals in Australia), and the global environment (Australia was largely alone, while the Canadian bill comes at a time when the issue is playing out in multiple jurisdictions including the U.S., where a U.S. senator is cheering it on). In other words, simply thinking history would repeat itself was a major error that failed to identify important distinctions between the two countries that could well lead to different outcomes. If Australia proves to be the example of how the system can work, Canada may become the model no one will want to emulate.
Third, the government’s risk analysis has been disastrous at every step. It started with adopting the riskiest available legislative model premised on mandated payments for links even when there were other less controversial options to support the media (taxing big tech, mandated support for a fund model). During the legislative process, it actively excluded contrary voices, considered blocking Facebook from even appearing as a witness during the study of the bill, and went out of its way to criticize the tech companies and their concerns. At the very end of the process, it amended the law by establishing a six month deadline for the bill to take effect, thereby decreasing the time available to find a compromise. The approaches only expanded the divide and made a compromise more difficult to achieve.
It's a flimsy conceit, but none the matter. The real illustrative point, which so many pro-C18 voices seemed to be ignorant of, actually comes in the many spam comments in Geists' comment section.
For all the comments you'll find about how Google was "pimping" content or "stealing" it with links, you'll also find lots of comments like the image above telling you how you can make $95/hour, or play "game grid 2", or get a job at a social media team "for roughly 10-15 hours a week to focus on Normally level tasks". So the question then becomes....
If Google and Facebook are "stealing" content, isn't Geist stealing these spammers' content by allowing the links to the sites to remain on his webpage? Clearly Michael Geist is a content thief and these shady Asian websites deserve to be compensated.
Of course, when you think about this it breaks down immediately. Obviously the links have value to the scammers. Now it's true that the links may have value to Geist as well: not in these particular cases, but on any blog that has a "readers tips" thread you are enriching the owner of the linking site by posting it. One of the key aspects of the Austrian school of economics is in fact that there's no such thing as one "value" to a product: both buyer and seller by definition assign it differing (valid) values. At the end of the day though, that link from another site onto yours has value (and it's why you'll probably see me posting a link to this post on one of Geist's C-18 articles)
Once you realize it would be ridiculous for a Canadian blogger to pay basketballrandom.org a fee for a link that they themselves put there then the entire structural basis for C-18 collapses.
Bonus WTF: "Pay for links"is by far the most ridiculous of arguments to make in favour of this legislation. Coming in at a close second, however, is the "well you're an idiot if you get your news from Facebook" knee-jerk response.
You can vaguely see where they're coming from: people who don't watch reputable sources like TNC News or Rebel Media or DailyWire or InfoWars for the information about what's going on in the world around them, and instead follow retarded friends who post links from fake news garbage sites like NBC News, CTV News, CBC, BBC, or MSNBC. However, the kicker is that this bans links to Canadian news websites. In other words, now instead of "getting your news from Facebook" in that your own ideological bubble sends links to news stories that only fit a single narrative (not ideal), you're "getting your news from Facebook" in that people will simply tell you what the news is and if you know they're wrong you can't post a link disproving it (even less ideal).
Say, for example, an East Indian news article posts a story about how the Prime Minister of Canada was caught on video raping black toddlers. It gains a lot of traction, and the Vancouver Sun has an article debunking it. You can't link to the Canadian article explaining why it's wrong, but the other guy can endlessly link to the newspaper article showing its true.
"Getting your news from Facebook" in the sense of somebody telling you about a news story in a Facebook post hasn't changed. What has changed is nobody will be getting their news from a Facebook friend sending them to a mainstream media news outlet. Crazily enough, this ecosystem was implemented at the behest of the mainstream media.
