Comment on Canada says Google will pay $74 million annually to Canadian news industry under new online law

kirklennon@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  No it’s not.

  The “open” Web desperately needs good quality journalism.

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  • Zak@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I agree that the decline of journalistic quality is bad for the world and would like a mechanism to improve it, but I have yet to read a convincing argument for why anyone should have to pay a fee to link to a news article. I could see an argument for reducing the amount of the content that can be republished as a preview under fair use, but nobody seems to want that.

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    • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Getting sick of saying that it’s not the link, it’s the preview.

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      • Zak@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        There are three things I don’t like about that argument.

        1. The idea that small excerpts of copyrighted works are fair use that don’t require licensing or payment is also widely-used in journalism.
        2. At least in the case of Facebook, publishers get to decide what’s in the previews using open graph tags.
        3. News organizations have not lobbied for general changes to fair use, but special legal status for themselves and a few tech companies. Laws centered around special status rather than broad principles tend not to work out well in the long term.

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      • festus@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That’s not how the Canadian law was written. Google providing a link, even with no headline or preview, would still have to pay.

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  • pajn@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Having to pay to even link to news articles will only accelerate the downfall of journalism though. Instead of paying, why not just link to an AI generated article instead? Much needs to be done to save good journalism but this law is a massive step in the exact opposite direction

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    • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      An AI generated article would still need source material.

      Anyway, what would be the appeal of a platform that couldn’t link anything but just showed AI content?

      The way I see it, journalism is more or less dead. A shade of the former institution. There doesn’t seem many other ways to fund journalistic endeavour.

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      • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        “Journalism” has be dead for a long time. Just read up on what Hearst was doing in the 1800’s.

        We’re just seeing the zombie grasping at everything it can.

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• sfgifz@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What’s stopping you from directly visiting those sites if you want to view their content?

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  • drmoose@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I agree with OP. This law is a disgrace and I don’t understand how people here on open fediverse can support it. It breaks the open web model and allows mega corporations to double dip - their content is public but only when they want it to be. So they want the advantages of public web without bearing the costs.

    Disregard that this is Google. It sets precedent for all web and its as bad as other anti open web laws we hate.

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    • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Can you elaborate a bit?

      I don’t really see how this is anti open web.

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      • breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Free linking is essential for the open web. You can link to anything at no cost. That’s especially important here too; no free linking, no Lemmy. Link taxes are hostile to that, and that’s exactly what this is. It might be good for journalism - though it’s probably just the big players that are going to seriously benefit - but it’s a bad precedent.

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      • drmoose@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        This law essentially gives special rights to corporate news websites. It allows them to have the benefits of being public source (indexing, sharing, previews, accessibility etc.) but they can choose not to bare the costs of public information. This shitty law should have been a copyright framework ammendment that applies to all IP but instead it’s a clear example of regulatory capture.

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      • kirklennon@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The World Wide Web is a web of links. Websites link to other websites. These publishers want to be paid when certain companies link to them. That’s an affront to a core functionality of the web.

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    • ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      People just hate Google.

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      • drmoose@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I hate giant corporations as much as anyone else but this recent trend of blindly siding with the opposition is just so incredibly dumb to the point where it feels like the fire is being stoked by legit political troll farms. Wouldn’t be surprised if they are involved in this spread of chaos and distraction.

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      • GigglyBobble@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        A great example how helpful hatred is then.

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  • systemglitch@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Disingenuous.

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• kandoh@reddthat.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think they’re more concerned about having their culture merged entirely with the United States.

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  • kirklennon@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    So just start a government subsidy program for news, and increase corporate taxes. That would at least be honest. The lie that this is somehow compensation for something of value is the part that I can't abide. There's not even any advertising on Google News. It's literally just linking out to news articles. If you search for news topics, you usually won't find any paid links on that either. People bid on search terms related to stuff people might buy, not on hard news topics.

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