Bill C-18: Canada federalizes news with fight for ‘fair pay’ with Google

Poorly leveraged negotiation between the Canadian government and Google on behalf of news media publishers may result in a federalized news industry in Canada. News organizations there may have to rely on government subsidies to continue operations after traffic sourced from big tech is eliminated.

Google Canada Blog: An update on Canada’s Bill C-18 and our Search and News products

The search engine giant had proposed that the displaying of news content, rather than links, be a basis for payment and that only businesses that produce news according to journalistic standards are eligible. Reuters

Google, Meta fight with Canada over law forcing them to pay for news_WASHINGTONPOST

Google, for its part, objected to the “unworkable” legislation that requires “two companies to pay for simply showing links to news, something that everyone else does for free.” The company pledged to nix Canadian news articles from its search function.

Canada will require Google and Meta to pay media outlets for news under bill set to become law_AP

Column: California and Canada absolutely must call Google’s and Facebook’s bluff on news_LATIMES

Canada’s Online News Act