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The News by Taymaz Valley CC BY 2.0 https://flic.kr/p/2k6i7AS

CRTC Approves Google’s $100 Million Online News Act Exemption Deal

The government’s deeply flawed attempt to force tech platforms to pay Canadian news outlets for linking to news is nearing its payout. The CRTC this week formally exempted Google from negotiating individual agreements and facing a potential mandated arbitration system in return for a lump sum $100 million annual payment. The $100 million deal was the government’s last ditch attempt to salvage the Online News Act as its insistence that tech platforms would never walk away from news proved to be disastrously wrong. Within weeks of the former Bill C-18 receiving royal assent in June 2023, Meta blocked news links on its Facebook and Instagram platforms. The block has remained in place for more than a year, causing significant harm to news outlets and sparking a CRTC investigation into whether user attempts to evade the block bring the company within the scope of the law.

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October 31, 2024 7 comments News
Demonstration gegen rechten Terror und Antisemitismus by Rasande Tyskar https://flic.kr/p/2hudtRp CC BY-NC 2.0

When Antisemitism No Longer Shocks

Last week, Green College, an interdisciplinary graduate college on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, hosted a medieval workshop titled The Writing of Ancient Christianity in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. As the title would suggest, the workshop was highly specialized and of limited interest to anyone outside of the scholarly field. Yet, as my Hub opinion piece notes, the presence of a professor of Jewish Law and Ethics alongside academics from the University of Haifa and Hebrew University in Jerusalem placed a target on the workshop that sparked online harassment of participants as well as vandalism and graffiti that called for the removal of Zionists on the walls of the college.

Few Canadians heard about the incident at UBC. They similarly were likely unaware that last week the University of Windsor’s Board of Governors refused to consider a motion to examine a controversial agreement arising from last summer’s encampment protests on the spurious grounds that the deal falls outside of its purview.

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October 25, 2024 21 comments Columns
Facebook Bill C-18 notice

Is Meta Offside the Online News Act? The CRTC Wants to Know.

Meta has blocked news links on its Facebook and Instagram platforms for more than a year in response to the Online News Act, resulting in significant lost traffic to many Canadian news sites. The company’s position has been pretty clear from the start: the law applies to digital news intermediaries that make “news content produced by news outlets available to persons in Canada.” By blocking news links, the company believes that it falls outside the definition and therefore is not required to register with the CRTC and enter into negotiations for payments to Canadian news outlets. After Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge repeatedly urged the CRTC to examine the issue, this week the Commission sent a letter to Meta giving it seven days to comment on “what measures Meta is taking to comply with the Act, and whether news is being made available on Meta’s platforms.”

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October 9, 2024 18 comments News
Red alert -[ HMM ]- by Carbon Arc CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 https://flic.kr/p/FgBkhR

Reflecting on October 7th: The Antisemitism Red Alert Warning Won’t Stop Buzzing

Late on Friday, October 6, 2023, I was dozing after a family Sabbath dinner meal when I was suddenly awoken by the continuous buzzing of the Tzofar red alert app on my phone and watch. I had installed the app, which is widely used in Israel to warn of imminent rocket fire, months earlier while visiting on a teaching assignment and had forgotten it was still on my phone. At first I thought the app was malfunctioning since the buzzing would not stop and it implausibly appeared that hundreds of communities were under attack. Hours later I of course learned there was nothing wrong the app and that I had digitally witnessed the start of the October 7th massacre in real time.

I have since deleted the app, but a year later it feels as if the Canadian Jewish community needs something similar to warn of antisemitic outbreaks. Such an app would buzz nearly daily given the rise of antisemitism which emanates with astonishing frequency from both the extreme right and left. Indeed, what would have once sparked immediate condemnation now occurs with little commentary or surprise: synagogue vandalism incidents too numerous to mention, Jewish schools and community centres hit with gunfire or makeshift bombs, Jewish senior homes and hospitals facing hostile protests, and university campuses home to what multiple presidents admit is significant antisemitism problem.

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October 7, 2024 6 comments News
Our Beloved Phone Company by Dennis S. Hurd (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/8v9Mm9

The Bill on Canada’s Digital Policy Comes Due: Blocked News Links, Cancelled Sponsorship, Legal Challenges, and Digital Ad Surcharges

Canada’s digital policy has seemingly long proceeded on the assumption that tech companies would draw from an unlimited budget to write bigger cheques to meet government regulation establishing new mandated payments. Despite repeated warnings on Bills C-11 (Internet streaming), C-18 (online news), and a new digital services tax that tech companies – like anyone else – were more likely to respond by adjusting their Canadian budgets or simply passing along new costs to consumers, the government and the bill’s supporters repeatedly dismissed the risks that the plans could backfire. Yet today the bill from those digital policy choices is coming due: legal and trade challenges, blocked news links amid decreasing trust in the media, cancellation of sponsorship deals worth millions of dollars that will be devastating to creators, and a new Google digital advertising surcharge that kicks in next week to offset the costs of the digital services tax.

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September 25, 2024 16 comments News