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."
