This has happened in every other places such a plan has been tried like Spain or Australia. What did they expect?
And really, what else could goog/fb etc do -- what other company or person for that matter would pay someone in order to provide them a service? Governments tax things they want less of (e.g. smoking) so this should be no surprise.
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.
And apparently we've yet to hear from Google on this regarding Canada. But what's different? It's hard to see how Google can have a principled objection to Canadian but not Australian danegeld.
The dirty secret is that the Australian law doesn't actually apply to anyone. They passed the law, but left it to the government to define which companies are in scope. And the government never designated any companies to it.
Basically it appears that the tech companies signing the same kinds of deals as elsewhere is being spun as a success of the legislation, even though the law does not apply to anyone, as a face saving measure.
[Australian here] Recalling these 'negotiations' when they happened and when Facebook blocked news links for a short while (which was actually quite a lovely time) - the whole thing came across as a shake-down with all the subtlety of a tele-evangelist.
I'm Canadian and I suspect our problem is that we're approaching this in earnest, not realizing that the Australian law was a shakedown and made no sense from an earnest perspective.
We were advised by Australia's top policy wonk, but maybe he was in earnest and didn't understand the game he was in.
I've got mixed feelings about the news media bargaining code but I don't think the lack of designations is one of its problems. Only stepping in once negotiations fail seems to be how the law is intended to operate. 52E(3) of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 says that in making the designation that the code applies the minister must consider:
1. Whether a significant bargaining power imbalance exists.
2. Whether the platform has made a significant contribution to the sustainability of news media.
As to 1. the mere existence of the code seems to redress any power imbalance somewhat. As for 2. The actual deals Facebook and Google made in response to the law being enacted are confidential, but many news media companies said they were happy with the results so there wouldn't seem to be any reason to designate these organisations in the first place.
Details matter? Australian law may have had details to make negotiations happen and result in deals that are still commercially viable for search engines.
I believe the Australian deals were "tell you what: we won't pay you, but we'll continue to send you traffic" and the papers realised that that was better than the alternative: "we won't pay you and we won't send you traffic either."
How is Facebook providing the news sites a service? Did they go out to Facebook and say "please post our content on your users' feeds"? No. It's not a business relationship between the two. Facebook users are posting the news sites' content on Facebook, which enriches Facebook and the Facebook users.
Now, whether posting links is the kind of enrichment that deserves payment is a separate question. But the idea that Facebook is somehow providing news sites a service in some sort of charitable way by allowing URLs to be posted by 3rd parties is ridiculous.
The equation is different for Google and search indexing, though. And of course once Google started harvesting content directly from third party websites and shoving it into answerboxes, actively siphoning traffic away, it got more complex.
>Did they go out to Facebook and say "please post our content on your users' feeds"?
In most cases, yes:
>Our users – and in this case news publishers – choose to share it themselves. Globally, more than 90% of organic views on article links from news publishers are on links posted by the publishers themselves.
Nobody is surprised. People discuss current events without being surprised. In this case it’s a negotiation struggle between two parties, they will both play their cards until one side gives up. Any side can decide to increase pressure or give up at any time, there isn’t just one possible outcome.
>In this case it’s a negotiation struggle between two parties
Not necessarily. Meta eliminating news from Facebook and Instagram is consistent with either of two scenarios:
1. They're playing 'hardball' to negotiate a better outcome
2. The amount they would have to pay outweighs any benefit they gain from keeping news links on Facebook and Instagram.
If a prospective employee would not provide a business with more than minimum wage in productivity, it is not a 'negotiating struggle' if they don't hire him; it simply means it isn't worth it to them.
The difference here being, if this is simply a negotiating tactic, it is rational to just outwait Meta; they will restore news links eventually, because the benefit outweighs the cost.
But if it isn't worth it because of scenario 2, they could just never restore news links.
So the real question here is: How much value is added to Facebook and Instagram by allowing news links on those platforms?
Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the value added were negative.
And really, what else could goog/fb etc do -- what other company or person for that matter would pay someone in order to provide them a service? Governments tax things they want less of (e.g. smoking) so this should be no surprise.