Canada introduces bill requiring online platforms to share revenue with newspapers

The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday introduced legislation by which companies such as the parent companies of Google and Facebook would have to pay Canadian media outlets for publishing links to news content on their platforms.

Canadian newspaper companies, many of which are struggling financially, have long been pushing the government for such a move, arguing that advertising revenue that was once the backbone of their business has migrated to the global online giants.

That pressure increased after Australia passed a similar measure in 2021 and Europe revised its copyright laws to compensate newspaper and magazine companies.

“The sector in Canada is in crisis,” Pablo Rodriguez, Canadian heritage minister, told a news conference. “This contributes to the rise of public distrust and the rise of harmful misinformation in our society.”

Rodriguez said 450 media outlets in Canada closed between 2008 and 2021.

He said the proposed law is broadly similar to Australia’s measures but would include public reporting requirements and give an independent body, rather than the minister, the power to determine which operations qualify for subsidies.

In 2020, Facebook warned that it would prevent its users and Australian news organizations from sharing news on its social network and Instagram if that country passed the legislation in the form proposed at the time. At the beginning of the following year, he began to limit the news, but he soon backed down.

Google also threatened to cut Australia from its search engine in 2021, but later formed voluntary compensation agreements with news outlets based there.

Rodriguez said he and officials consulted extensively with major tech companies.

“They were open to regulation,” he said. “Are there things they agree or disagree with in the bill? We’ll know in future conversations.”

News Media Canada, a group of news publishers, passed the bill.

“Real news reported by real journalists costs real money,” Jamie Irving, the group’s president, said in a statement. “This legislation levels the playing field and gives Canadian news publishers a fair chance without requiring additional funds from taxpayers.”

Rachel Curran, public policy manager at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said in an email that she is “reviewing the proposed legislation in detail” and that she “expects to engage with stakeholders once we better understand what the bill entails.” .

Google did not respond to a request for comment and Twitter declined to comment.

The new law would exclude YouTube, another subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, from the compensation plan. Officials told reporters that YouTube falls under the country’s radio and television laws. The law also doesn’t apply to services like Apple News, which already license newspaper articles, or personal messaging systems like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

Exactly what form Canada’s system will take and how much money will be funneled to news outlets will be determined largely through negotiations between technology companies and publishers, as well as regulatory decisions, particularly about which companies will receive subsidies.

Publishers will be able to team up to negotiate collective agreements with technology companies. They will also be able to continue private and voluntary agreements with tech companies, like the ones Meta made last fall with 18 Canadian publishers.

If trades fail, a compulsory arbitration process will determine compensation.

While Trudeau’s Liberals don’t control a majority of votes in the House of Commons, the bill is expected to pass because of its recent alliance with the New Democratic Party, which has long pressured tech companies to pay for usage. news.

The bill is the latest in a series of measures by the Trudeau administration to support the newspaper industry. Previously, it set aside CAD 595 million (BRL 2.2 billion) to subsidize journalist salaries and another CA$ 50 million (BRL 188 million) for local journalism programs. Because of the pandemic, publishers received millions of dollars in emergency aid from the government, a program that was available to all businesses. Magazines and small newspapers also received additional industry-specific funding for Covid relief.

Christopher Waddell, professor emeritus of journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa, said he was concerned that the wording of the new legislation would allow the federal radio and television regulator to define which news organizations could trade funds with technology companies.

“To what extent, when you start down this path, are you pushed into the quagmire of government regulation and control?” he said. “It’s a slippery slope.”

Anabel Quan-Haase, professor of information and media studies at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, said Australia has shown that extra money has helped smaller news companies retain full-time employees.

“I think this could really reverse some of the trends we’ve seen over the last couple of decades,” she said.

But Waddell said he was skeptical that the proposal — or any of Canada’s programs — would necessarily save the news industry.

“The big problem that newspapers face, besides not keeping their advertising revenue, is that their audience is disappearing,” he said. “And the audience is not disappearing because there are no ads.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves