In June, Canada’s Online News Act became law. It requires tech companies like Meta and Google to pay media outlets for sharing Canadian news content on their platforms.
I think this law incorrectly assumes that online platforms linking to Canadian news stories cause Canadian media outlets to lose revenue. If that’s the case, then Canada would need to stop all news aggregators out there.
Let’s look at e-newsletters as an example. I can list several in Madison, Wis., that simply link to other stories instead of producing any original content. While these e-newsletter publishers can make money off of subscriptions and ads, they at least still link to the original article.
That’s what Meta and Google were doing: pointing users to the original articles, which in theory provides the media outlet with more visibility and web traffic, not less. Case in point: many media outlets freely share their news on social media platforms like Facebook to gain visibility and web traffic.
To make matters worse, Meta and Google said they would block Canadian news from their platforms (Meta has already begun the process). As a result, the losers of the Online News Act will be consumers in Canada. I’m not sure lawmakers had this intent, but it will be the reality.