Canada forces Google, Facebook to pay news outlets
The Canadian Parliament has passed a law that will require technology companies to pay domestic news outlets for linking to their articles, prompting the owner of Facebook and Instagram to say that it would pull news articles from both platforms in the country.
The law, passed Thursday, is the latest salvo in a push by governments around the world to force big companies such as Google and Facebook to pay for news that they share on their platforms — a campaign that the companies have resisted at virtually every turn.
With some caveats, the new Canadian law would force search engines and social media companies to engage in a bargaining process — and binding arbitration, if necessary — for licensing news content for their use.
The law, the Online News Act, was modeled after a similar one that passed in Australia two years ago. It was designed to “enhance fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contribute to its sustainability,” according to an official summary. Exactly when the law would take effect was not immediately clear.
Supporters of the legislation see it as a victory for the news media, as it fights to make up for plummeting advertising revenue that it attributes to Silicon Valley companies cornering the market for online advertising.
“A strong, independent and free press is fundamental to our democracy,” Pablo Rodriguez, the minister of Canadian heritage in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, wrote on Twitter late Thursday. “The Online News Act will help make sure tech giants negotiate fair and equitable deals with news organizations.”
Tech companies feel differently.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, had warned lawmakers it would stop making news available on both platforms for Canadian users if the legislation passed. The company said that it now planned to do just that.
“We have repeatedly shared that in order to comply with Bill C-18, passed today in Parliament, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada,” Meta said in a statement.in a separate statement, a spokesperson for Google criticized the legislation as “unworkable” and said the company had proposed “thoughtful and pragmatic solutions” to improve it.
Google told Canadian lawmakers in May that debate over the legislation had created unrealistic expectations among politicians and news publishers of “an unlimited subsidy for Canadian media.” Among other changes, Google suggested requiring tech firms to pay for “displaying” news content, not linking to it.
“So far, none of our concerns
have been addressed,” the Google spokesperson, Jenn Crider, said in the statement on Thursday. She did not say what the company planned to do about the law and declined to comment further on the record.
Similar battles have been playing out for years in other countries.
In the European Union, countries have been trying to enforce a copyright directive that the bloc adopted in 2019 to force Google, Facebook and other platforms to compensate news organizations for their content.
In Australia, Parliament passed a law in 2021 that forces Google and Facebook to pay for news content that appears on their platforms. At the time, Google effectively appeared to capitulate by announcing a three- year global agreement with News Corp to pay for the publisher’s news content. Facebook took the opposite tack, saying that it immediately would restrict people and publishers from sharing or viewing news links in Australia.