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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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.”
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.
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 212: Matt Hatfield on the State of Canadian Digital Policy as Politicians Return from the Summer Recess
Parliament resumes after a summer break today. While digital policies receded into the background over the past few months, the political intrigue of by-elections and a minority government without an NDP deal will be accompanied by questions about what happens to Bill C-63, Canada’s online harms bill, Bill C-27, the privacy and AI reform bill, Bill S-210, the age verification bill, and a myriad of other regulatory and policy issues. Matt Hatfield is Executive Director of Open Media, one of Canada’s leading digital rights organizations. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to break down where things stand and what other digital policies may command attention.
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 208: Will Page on Why the CRTC’s Bill C-11 Ruling is Discriminatory and May Ultimately Hurt the Canadian Music Market
The recent CRTC Bill C-11 decision mandating that streaming services pay 5 percent of their revenues has left seemingly everyone unhappy and has sparked multiple legal challenges. While much of the focus has been on video streaming, music was a core part of Bill C-11 and the implications for music streaming services may be the most pronounced. Will Page is the perfect person to unpack these issues. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Tarzan Economics, the former Chief Economist of Spotify and PRS for Music, the co-host the Bubble Trouble podcast and a regular contributor to BBC, Financial Times, and The Economist. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to provide new data on what the CRTC’s numbers mean and why the decision could ultimately move the Canadian market backwards rather than forward.
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