Hakaku

Sensational news articles like this are also expected in the fallout. Most news companies in Canada lobbied for the change and simply hoped that big players would cave right away. But now that Meta and Alphabet have announced that they’ll block news in Canada (a predictable response), news companies are realizing the impact it’ll actually have on them and the amount of lossed revenue it’ll entail if things don’t work out the way the want them to. They’re basically crapping their pants and writing up these types of headlines to pressure Meta/Alphabet as a last-ditch effort.

The amendments were passed and enacted before the Australian media code ever received royal assent. Meanwhile Bill C-18 already received royal assent in Canada, so amendments won’t be anytime soon. You’re right that it can happen, but if the government or our news publishers cared to avoid any fallout, then they would have negotiated on agreements and possible amendments prior to royal assent (which is what Australian news corporations did), not after.

And so as long as a difference exists, we can’t expect the Canadian situation to develop in the same way as Australia. And the interim fallout in terms of lost revenue for our own news publishers is actually very significant, despite everyone saying ‘good riddance to Meta and Alphabet’.

I’m just here with the popcorn for when Canadian media finally realize they made a terrible decision with this bill. Everyone consumes American media anyway, so nothing lost.

Australia implemented amendments that were sought by Facebook, not at all the same.

Why wouldn’t they? Microsoft operates the largest search engine used in Canada after Google, owns LinkedIn which is one of the top 10 social media platforms with a heavy news aggregation focus like Facebook, provides a default news aggregation feed pre-installed on all Windows computers, etc.

By the wording of the bill, there’s no reason they can’t be labeled as having a “prominent market position” or “a strategic advantage over news businesses”. And this applies especially so if Alphabet and Meta recuse themselves from the Canadian news market.

If the spirit of the bill is to get money from big corporations to support Canadian news organizations, then there’s no reason not to target Microsoft. And the fact that MS has already been consulted on the bill and released a statement about it strongly suggests they’ll be on the list.

The bill itself doesn’t name any specific company. It has a clause saying that the CRTC will publish and maintain a list of “digital news intermediaries” to which the contents of the bill apply. The official list isn’t yet available.

The official list of digital news intermediaries hasn’t yet been published by the CRTC. Although Alphabet and Meta have been in the news, it’s very likely Microsoft will also be impacted and by proxy all services that use Bing (including Yahoo and DDG).

DDG which uses Bing to power its results will also have to comply by the same law or drop Canadian news results if they don’t want to negotiate and pay.

Have our premiers done anything themselves?

Of course it’s Manitoba

I’m glad the story didn’t go the other way with you lighting something on fire