TECH: Canada wants to adopt a law requiring Facebook, Google to pay news publishers.

Cana­da may soon echo Aus­tralia in mak­ing inter­net com­pa­nies pay news pub­lish­ers to use their con­tent. CBC News reports Canada’s rul­ing Lib­er­al Par­ty has intro­duced leg­is­la­tion tak­ing that Face­book, Google and oth­er online com­pa­nies com­pen­sate news out­lets for either repro­duc­ing or eas­ing access to con­tent. The mon­ey would help fos­ter the“sustainability“of Cana­di­an news, accord­ing to the gov­ern­ment.
Com­pa­nies that do not pay pub­lish­ers would be sub­ject to bind­ing arbi­tra­tion led by Canada’s tele­com reg­u­la­tor, the Cana­di­an Radio- TV and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion. The CRTC will also decide which news sources qual­i­fy for compensation.

Offi­cials saw this as a mat­ter of neces­si­ty. Her­itage Min­is­ter Pablo Rodriguez claimed the news assiduity was“in extremity“and that pub­lish­ers could not lean on announce­ment earn­ings like they had in the past. This sim­ply addressed a” mar­ket imbalance,“he said.
We have asked Google and Face­book par­ent Meta for remark. In the past, they have main­tained that pub­lish­ers served from the busi­ness dri­ven to their web­sites through quest results and social media posts. They have also hov­ered to dis­able ser­vices rather than pay pub­lish­ers, although Google even­tu­al­ly caved in Aus­tralia and struck deals to avoid an arbi­tra­tion bat­tle. In a state­ment to CBC News, Google said it was” pre­cise­ly reviewing“the leg­is­la­tion and” com­plete­ly sup­port (ed)” access to news.

The leg­is­la­tion may well pass. Although the Lib­er­als do not have a major­i­ty in Canada’s House of Com­mons, they late­ly reached an agree­ment with the New Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to advance bills reflect­ing par­tic­i­pat­ed inter­ests. Whether or not it works as promised is anoth­er con­cern. As Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa inter­net explo­ration pres­i­dent Michael Geist advised, there is a con­cern that the CRTC’s part will lead to just a” handful“of major com­pa­nies ben­e­fit­ing at the cost of loweroutfits.However, it might not help far­ther dam­age to the coun­try’s news indus­try, If so.