Why Link Taxes Like Canada’s C-18 Represent An End To An Open Web
from the save-the-open-web dept
Well, here we go again. For years now, the legacy news industry, often led by lobbyists for Rupert Murdoch, have been pushing a bizarre plan to tax links on the internet. The entire rationale for this plan seems to be “news organizations used to be rolling in easy money, they failed to innovate with the times, and now Google and Meta are rolling in easy money, so we should just make Google and Meta give news orgs cash.”
That’s it. That’s the entire rationale. Sometimes people try to get all high minded and talk about the importance of journalism, which I agree is important and which certainly could use new sustainable business models, but that doesn’t explain why they should break the fundamental nature of the internet (everyone can link to everyone) to solve that problem. Also, none of it explains why internet companies should magically be responsible for paying journalism outfits.
At best supporters of these plans come up with this rationale: Google and Meta take a huge percentage of digital advertising, and it’s likely that those ad budgets used to be what supported news orgs, so therefore, they should share some of the cash. When people look askance at that — or point out that under that logic any business that successfully competes with a legacy business should be forced to share its revenue with the business they out competed — they might say “but Google and Meta “use” news without paying for it.
But, let’s interrogate that claim as well. No, Google and Meta don’t “use” news without compensation. Quite the opposite. Both sites have a very, very small part of their sites that may link people to news. Google News is an aggregator/news search engine that sends traffic to people’s sites by linking to those news stories. Meta’s Facebook property similarly allows its users (who often include news sites themselves) to link to their stories elsewhere and drive traffic to them.
If those sites fail to monetize that traffic, that’s kinda on them.
Now, when I point that out, some people claim that those links don’t really send that much traffic, because too many people just see the link/headline/snippet and decide they don’t need to click. And, um, the answer to that is again to suggest that it’s difficult to see how that’s Google or Facebook’s fault. If your news articles provide so little value beyond the headline, image, and a snippet, I dunno, you kinda don’t deserve to make that much money? Good journalism has to add value, and part of that is building up a reputation that readers should want to read the details and nuances.
Also, what this article kinda highlights is that many of these news publishers who are whining for a bailout from Google and Meta spent many years focused on gaming Google and Facebook’s algorithms for clicks rather than building a loyal audience who recognized and valued their journalism.
And this takes us to the real proof that news publishers are full of shit in all of this: just look at what they do rather than what they say. If Google and Facebook sending them traffic was really a problem, they could easily fix that themselves. They can use robots.txt to block Google. They can use referrer tags to block traffic from Facebook. They can change the social graph content to make it less appealing.
But, of course, they do the opposite of that. They hire Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing experts to try to help them “rank better” on these sites and get more traffic. They explicitly try to get better promotion from those sites because they already get tremendous value from that traffic.
Now they want to get paid for that traffic that they already value! It’s basically news orgs saying “hey Google and Meta, not only must you advertise us for free, you must ALSO pay to advertise us.” The whole equation seems backwards.
Similarly, you sometimes see people make quasi-copyright arguments in favorite of this scheme, but that’s a fundamental perversion of copyright, an already extremely perverted concept designed to create incentives for creation. In order to function in a free society, copyright has to be limited to more egregious levels of copying. But linking an including a headline/snippet can never reach that level of a copyright violation, and changing the law to make it so would have so many downstream negative effects, enabling all sorts of copyright abuse and silencing speech.
And, of course, the only way that these link tax plans actually work is by breaking the most fundamental element of the open web: the hyperlink. For the entire history of the open web, a key attribute was the freedom to link to others. Now, those others could block the traffic, or put up a paywall, or whatever else they wanted. But everyone must be free to link to one another.
These “big tech pays news” schemes break this fundamental idea. They announce that some companies, these big companies who apparently no one likes, must suddenly pay to link. And sure, you can easily state (1) these big companies can afford it, and (2) no one likes them any way, so maybe you think that’s good. But nothing good comes from breaking the fundamental principles of the open web.
Once you break this concept of the freedom to link, you’re flinging open Pandora’s box to all sorts of mischief. Once industries learn that the government has no problem stepping in and forcing companies to pay for links, does anyone really believe it will stop at news organizations? Of course it won’t. Then the whole internet just becomes a food fight for lobbyists to argue with politicians over which industries they can force to subsidize other industries.
It’s pure unadulterated crony capitalism at its worst. Those with the best connections get to have the government force those with weaker connections to subsidize their own failures to innovate and compete.
And yet, this idea remains inexplicably popular (I mean, it’s quite explicable for the news orgs, but it’s inexplicable why so many others have jumped on board). As you’ll recall there were a few early experiments with this in Europe. In Belgium, when such a law passed, Google threatened to block any publisher who didn’t give them a free license, and all the publishers rushed in to give Google a free license, showing again how much they actually value the traffic. In Germany, the tax was applied to snippets, so Google did the only sensible thing and removed snippets, causing the publishers to freak out again.
In response, Spain passed an even more problematic version that said that Google literally couldn’t block those it didn’t want to pay. They literally said that if you have a news aggregator product, paying for links is mandatory. So Google did the only reasonable thing: shutting down Google News in Spain. Still the program went ahead, and, of course, it was the smaller news orgs who suffered the most.
Of course, the biggest success for all this, not surprisingly came in Australia, where everyone freely admitted that it was a plan to extract money from Meta and Google and hand it to Rupert Murdoch, who has been most pleased with the arrangement. Yet again, while this subsidy to Murdoch may have made him happy, it served to screw over smaller publications.
This whole scheme has now come to North America. Last year, Senator Amy Klobuchar pushed to help Rupert Murdoch and to harm the open internet with her JCPA. While that failed, it’s quite likely it’ll come back in some form — probably worse — soon.
But now the biggest push is up in Canada, where bill C-18 has been a big point of discussion for months. As in Australia, backers of the bill insist it’s not a link tax, it’s just a law to require a negotiation on how much to pay. But… pay for what? The answer is to link. It’s a link tax. The people claiming otherwise think you’re stupid.
Already, both Google and Meta have said they’ll block news links in Canada if this bill passes. And, again, this is the only reasonable move: if the government taxes something you expect to get less of it. The stupidest thing in all of this is not only is the government trying to force the payment of something that is fundamentally free, they seem to expect the sites to just continue letting news flow across their platform, despite its costs.
The Canadian government is so mad that Google and Meta are doing exactly what the government is pressuring them to do by taxing an activity, that they’re calling it “intimidation” and demanding internal communications from both companies. It’s kind of a galaxy brain take to say “you’re engaged in intimidation by following the incentives we’re creating, so in response, we’re going to intimidate you by demanding your private communications.”
Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the whole framework of C-18 is particularly disingenuous. The bill’s title is: “An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada.”
Can you spot the problem? I knew you could, because you’re not as stupid as people pushing this bill think you are.
Google and Facebook are not “making news content available” to people in Canada. They’re linking to that news that the news organizations are themselves making available.
The whole thing is problematic… and has a decent chance of becoming law in Canada. The days of the open web where concepts like “linking” were unquestioned may be coming to an end.
Filed Under: australia, c-18, canada, competition, crony capitalism, jcpa, link tax, news, rupert murdoch, subsidies
Companies: facebook, google, meta
Comments on “Why Link Taxes Like Canada’s C-18 Represent An End To An Open Web”
“Already, both Google and Meta have said they’ll block news links in Canada if this bill passes.”
Likely. But, 2 things to note from here in Spain to confirm what’s mentioned here – at least from the English speaking community. One, the blocks in Spain didn’t block other news, so for example you could still go to the US or UK versions, it was just the .es domain blocked. The other is that it was mainly smaller publishers that suffered. So, influencing a block didn’t lead to better information for the local population, it led to a foreign-influenced and/or major published monopoly. It’s harder to find news not associated with a certain corporate interest.
However they want to play this, Google News is an afterthought that’s not directly monetised. Google make more by shovelling traffic to newspaper sites then attaching ads than they could ever do by directly monetising the news service itself (which they don’t, unless something changed).
Another example of something that sounds good if you don’t understand the landscape, but in reality just gives more money to another entrenched corporation.
My family once owned a very profitable business making horse harness and related equipment. The arrival of the automobile largely destroyed that business. I want a tax on the sale of every automobile to reimburse my family for the lost income caused by automobiles.
Re: Not another horse buggy/car analogy
My family owns a little business with a storefront on Main St. It has a nice little window display that everyone enjoys stopping by and looking at. It generates good conversation while engaging the community. I update it daily with new stock, which takes effort.
But now there’s a corporation that set up across the street. Every day that business owner comes into my store, takes all the merch on display in the window, across the street, wraps a little bow on it and displays it as his wares as part of some diorama. He never pays for the merch he is taking. He claims it’s not about the individual wares, rather “the experience” his diorama creates from them.
I offered to sell to him my wares at a wholesale rate, but he’s not interested. He claims he does not charge his customers for his wares so shuld not need to pay for them. Yet, he seems to declare ridiculous profits every quarter; that’s his business model.
I’m just asking the authorities do do something about his daily taking of my wares from my display without compensation.
Re: Re:
Except you could easily stop him from doing that by just telling him not to do it anymore, and he would, but instead you try to get him to display your products even more prominently than others’. Also, he has a bunch of other businesses that could easily be the source of the profits, and he tells customers to check out your shop for more like it. Oh, and he only takes stuff on request, then puts them back afterwards. Oh, and he’s not actually taking anything, because it’s still on your display throughout this, so it’s more like he’s posting a livefeed of something on your display without actually touching it.
Yeah, this analogy falls apart pretty quickly.
Google and Meta out competed us in the advertising market we used to have, so make them pay us for what they have stolen from us. The Newspapers.
atlas shrugged
This is like Atlas Shrugged. John Galt invented a new steel process (in the book), which was putting a bunch of old rich guys out of business. So laws were passed requiring him to share his recipe.
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Obligatory: https://www.angryflower.com/348.html
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I haven’t read Atlas Shrugged, but I’d like to point out that requiring the sharing of a patentable process is not analogous to forcing John Galt to pay the rich old guys with outdated business models. The former would be forcing John Galt to compete on a government-manipulated playing field, but at least it retains the competition.
So, Mike. You talk to the movers and shakers in DC. What if you asked someone, point blank, like Klobuchar, why should a search engine company, pay to send traffic to a news organization. A simple question. How would she respond?
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Her answer is always the same: a the daughter of a journalist, she knows the importance of local journalism, and “big tech” has destroyed the ability of local journalism operations to survive, so all this is doing is giving them a chance to negotiate for their “fair share” in order to sustain their journalistic efforts.
That’s wrong on almost every point, but it’s what she says.
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Where will the money from a link tax go, paying journalists or to the executives and shareholders.?
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Journalists? Being paid according to their actual value and work? Quaint.
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They’re better off actually doing the content creation gig…
At least they’ll make a tiny bit of cash.
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Consider this – where does the money from the surcharge on all blank media, for fear of data storage being used to store pirated media, go to? It’s not going to go to musicians, or the innumerable people who are part of a musician’s production crew.
Now a common rebuttal to that statement and other similar copyright-critical statements typically comes from authors and artists who claim to still regularly receive monthly royalty payments (but will never cite who they are, curiously and unsurprisingly). Which is fair, but the question was never about whether copyright helps artists get paid. It’s about whether the cost we pay for copyright actually goes into incentivizing actual creation, which a blank media levy absolutely does not. A blank media levy/link tax is the equivalent of paying a few cents more for your subway fare, due to claims that 1) the money could have been spent on more expensive forms of transportation and keep more people employed (somehow), and 2) subways may be used by criminals making a getaway so everyone should add a little more compensation into the system just in case. The money is simply not going to go to the people that the systems claim will benefit; the people running the whole thing won’t have the capacity to divide every nickel and dime up evenly and appropriately. Consider that even performance rights organizations can’t even be bothered to make sure that the artists they supposedly represent get paid.
Re: Re: Re:2
“but will never cite who they are”
You really think that any copyright holder would identify themselves under their pro or real names just get more harassment from the likes of you?
Let alone a female creator like me, so that the house trolls here can makes their real life hell?
What a stupid and irrelevant comment to make. Do you imagine a billion dollar industry like Romance books is driven by nobody getting paid royalties?
I got my latest monthly sales payment today. Granted it was in the tens rather than hundreds of dollars, but i’m now self-published after a lot of being ripped off by pro publishers, and haven’t written a book in nearly ten years. Still, it’s USD income that I can use to drop a donation or two to news sites, donate to friends in need, and pay for other things without conversion fees. A thousand USD a year is better than zero USD, and i did the damn work to earn it.
Re: Re: Re:3
That’s the explanation copyright holders give when they’re complaining on articles written about the likes of Richard Liebowitz or John Steele. More often than not, it’s always done in the context of supporting aggressive copyright trolling methods. I don’t deny that you’re probably going to get harassed, but in an absence of evidence, an average person is completely entitled to make judgment calls. This is even more so considering that when Shiva Ayyadurai threatened to sue Masnick into the ground and have his website destroyed, the site was swarmed by trolls claiming that BestNetTech’s less-than-favorable opinion on copyright enforcement not only harmed them directly, but thousands of content creators and inventors. So when nameless nobodies stroll up to the site and say things like “Criticizing suing innocent grandmothers hurts legitimate copyright holders”, you shouldn’t expect a pat on the back.
And where do you think that billion dollars is going? Based on testimony from collection organizations and performance rights groups, it’s a known fact that the money doesn’t always trickle down to the right people. Considering that these groups are the ones who scream the loudest about piracy and copyright infringement, you’d think they’d be a little more careful about making sure copyright holders actually get paid.
It’s great that you get royalties paid, but why is it my moral responsibility to sing the praises of an industry known to fudge their own numbers, just because they get it right some of the time? Why should they be afforded more praise and genuflection for doing their literal job at a level of middling competence?
Meanwhile, you ignore the point made by the article, and the point made about blank media levies, based on what we know of the organizations who request them. How much do you, as a content creator, make from link taxes and blank media levies, which we have to pay because you think that you’re owed the money in case of piracy?
Re: Re: Re:4
The actual copyright holders are the labels and publishers, and they are responsible for passing money onto the creators, so guess who is last in line for a share of the income from the collection societies, after admin expenses and etc. have been taken from the sum.
Re: Re: Re:4
“ And where do you think that billion dollars is going?”
Publishers, retailers, and authors.
The cut authors get varies from 10% for pro publishing, to 70% for self-publishing.
“How much do you, as a content creator, make from link taxes and blank media levies, which we have to pay because you think that you’re owed the money in case of piracy?”
None, and I don’t think that.
Your conflating creators, and publishers – and trolls – is ridiculous and insulting. Also there are different industries involved in copyright, with vastly different levels of creator reward. Music is notoriously bad at rewarding artists. Visual artists are frequently shafted by clients and art thieves alike. Book publishing is pretty civilised compared to all that, but most authors don’t make a living out of it. Most authors are lucky if they sell a thousand copies of a single book.
I rake no blame for the stupidity of link tax proposals or anything Rupert Murdoch pushes. Do you really think your average journo thinks this is a good idea either?
Re: Re: Re:4
“So when nameless nobodies stroll up to the site and say things like “Criticizing suing innocent grandmothers hurts legitimate copyright holders”, you shouldn’t expect a pat on the back.”
A comment made by someone who can’t ever make up a name to distinguish themselves from all the other anonymous cowards.
Also you’re replying to someone who:
1. Uses a distinguishing name
2. Has signed in
3. is a “BestNetTech insider”, meaning i’ve donated to the site
4. Has written to Mike under her real name and linked that to her username here
Yet you airily dismiss the inevitability of harassment should I deanon myself, and grandly accuse me of demanding something i have not asked for, anon or not anon.
Puhlease. Take your hobby horse out to the park and cease trying to exercise it all over my back.
Re: Re: Re:5
But that’s precisely the point. I don’t deny that the traditional system gets some publishers, retailers and authors paid. It’s a key reason that copyright advocates use to justify prolonging what exists instead of considering that copyright might need adjustments to account for the digital era. If you’re not a part of this privileged, “good old boys” network you’re not likely to see any of this money. And the ones who do, like you, often go back to the “You wouldn’t believe me because you’re all pirates” excuse.
Frankly, tough. We pay these levies and fines because creators, publishers and trolls conflate everyone as lawbreakers carrying terabytes of stolen goods on our persons at all times. Does it suck to be conflated with bad actors. Yes. Should it mean that people should be made responsible for bad actors they might be associated with? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s the world we live in. I insult Republicans for hating on women and sexual minorities, I insult men for sticking to antiquated views on gender dynamics, I insult Christians for disliking videogames and drug use. If you want to take it personally, I’m not going to lose sleep over that.
If journalists have protested link taxes in general, it was evidently not to a level where it was significant. I can certainly list artists and musicians who protested SOPA, not so much for link taxes.
I enjoy the same level of anonymity you enjoy. If that makes you unhappy… tough. The fact is that BestNetTech regulars have seen copyright trolls justify suing the innocent to preserve the sanctity of copyright law. That you’re not one of them is a good thing, but not to a point where that’s considered commendable. Being a human with a basic level of decency is not something that deserves red carpet treatment.
average_joe, one of the most recognized BestNetTech trolls, signed on as antidirt as an Insider for a time, and continued to spew the same narrative of “BestNetTech sucks”, “copyright should last forever minus a day”, “I hope all of you get arrested and thrown in pound-me-in-the-ass-prison”, etc. What I’m saying is, the ability to give money to a person is not an accurate barometer of character.
I don’t doubt someone will harass you. I noted the similarity to other trolls who have made copyright-extreme positions and rebuffed all criticisms in the exact same way. One such troll on Torrentfreak was proven by K’Tetch/Andrew Norton to be an author who wrote one book about card counting, and after 10 years of doing nothing ranted on one article that libraries were stealing money from authors. So what I’m saying is, an informed leadership can pick out such vested interests from a mile away. Sympathy for copyright troll points tends not to be received well.
You can justify your anonymity, but it won’t protect your pro-copyright positions or shield their shortcomings.
Re: Re: Re:6
Hang on here, “I don’t want to identify myself to a bunch of rando fuckers on the internet” is being a “copyright troll” now?
Are you even listening to yourself or are you just galloping away at top speed on a hobby horse, presumably whilst hauling the goalposts behind you in some sort of cart?
Re: Re: Re:6
“the ability to give money to a person is not an accurate barometer of character.”
Which was NOT MY POINT.
I gave a donations under my real name. We were talking about anonymity, not virtue. Do try to keep up.
“I enjoy the same level of anonymity you enjoy”
At least you can be sure you’re replying to the same person as before. I can’t.
“I don’t doubt someone will harass you.”
Well, isn’t that nice of you. I guess deanoning to keep you amused is worth my real-life endangerment.
“copyright-extreme positions”
Oh yes? Which ones have I espoused?
I mean, other than recognising that creators do have copyright, and are allowed to use that to make money from their work?
You apparently can’t tell the difference between someone acknowledging how copyright laws operate, and someone defending them.
And seriously, the rest of your comment is just full of shit, like you.
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Ha! No, it goes to hedge funds. Many news orgs are already cash generating factories. They’re stripped down not because they’re not profitable, but because the hedge funds that bought them out demand even greater profits.
Re: Re: Re:2
Much of the media landscape in Canada’s privately held, in point of fact. Rogers is owned by the Rogers family; Shaw, by the Shaws. Quebecor is still owned by the founder’s family as well. And of course the CBC is a Crown Corporation, which isn’t particularly influenced by ‘hedge funds’.
There are certainly some involved — Postmedia was picked up by a U.S. one, and BCE is publicly traded with its largest stakeholders (2-3% per) being banks and investment firms — but it’s not that many.
All the search engines and whoever else should just get ahead of the game and drop news outlets entirely. No specific news aggregation. No results in search, etc.
Everyone can sign up to be searchable or aggregated if they want, unless a government makes payment mandatory. Then publishers from your friend’s mom’s blog to No really, We’re Journalism, Why Do You Ask Corp. can publish on servers in a different country and/or complain at the government and the few outfits driving this bullshit.
You're forgetting just 1 thing...
If you really want to go after the parties responsible for the decline of local journalism, you’d tax the hedge funds.
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Oh, I’d love to see someone sue News Corp on HUMANITARIAN GROUNDS.
google and meta should simply block all links to news in canada otherwise they simply encourage the destruction of the open web ,google provides a service
it displays any website including news news orgs can simply use robots txt to block google ,
this is similar to nintendo asking for revenue sharing of youtubers who make game lets plays,
eventually they gave up as they realised it was free advertising and promotion for their games .
but then in countrys outside america its easy for
news orgs to say google has loads of money
it should pay for links to news storys .
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“news orgs can simply use robots txt to block google”
This is the key, really. If it’s just about unaccepted traffic, they already have the tools available, and Google will honour them. But, the papers want it both ways, they want the traffic and someone to pay to send it to them. It doesn’t work that way, never has.
Noindex is your friend
If you don’t want search sites listing your site, there’s a free and simple way to effect that.
Without search engines Murdoch’s garbage and a lot of other worthless sites would be nowhere at all.
This is nonsense legislation which will backfire spectacularly. Can’t wait to see it.
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“If you don’t want search sites listing your site, there’s a free and simple way to effect that.”
Therein lies the rub…
They’re aware that they get sent free traffic, so they won’t block it. They’re also aware that Google gets ad revenue when people visit their sites if they use Google services (though not the Google News site since they don’t have direct advertising). The old school model where they charged extra for classifieds, etc., while knowing more people would read the paper than paid for it has fallen through, so now they’re trying to get others to pay for them.
It won’t work, but sadly the Murdoch garbage with clickbait, gossip and such will be more likely to survive than actual journalistic outfits.
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Fox doesn’t rely on Fox news or advertising. The real money is in cable contracts.
I assume they know this will kill off what’s left of their small competitors, so they can charge whatever they like for their “news” and sports products.
Win-win
For the larger publishers pushing this corruption it’s a win-win no matter the outcome really so long as they learn from the early mistakes and make the payments mandatory.
Option 1: Google/Meta fold and start paying out, giving the publishers a free source of money that will only grow with time as once they’ve caved it becomes a lot easier to pressure smaller companies/platforms to follow suit to stay competitive.
Option 2: Google/Meta refuse to fold, and while all the publishers suffer as a result the smaller ones that might have competed with the larger ones really get screwed over, potentially to the point of shutting down.
The question to be asked isn’t ‘why does this keep happening?’, that one’s easily answered by a mix of short-sighted greed and blatant corruption, the question is why doesn’t it happen more often given how it has basically no downsides for those pushing it.
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In some markets, it’s because there’s at least some illusion of a diverse press. Openly shutting down smaller outlets wouldn’t necessarily fly, even if the excuse given was because Google wouldn’t pay. Which itself could bring some more attention – if Google/Meta are the only things keeping the press alive and it’s demonstrated so solidly, maybe people will do something about that.
But, also, there’s value to the majors in pretending there’s a diverse press, even though most of them are just rewriting the same tweets and AP feeds. If people start noticing there’s nobody representing them, they might start getting agitated and active…
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Seems more likely it will be a lose-lose for publishers.
Been Fighting Against this for Months
Bill C-18 is one of those bills where the digger you deep, the more horribly corrupt and self destructive it ends up being. One of the talking points by the big publishers is that the point is to help the smaller journalists (LOL!). Yet, the elligibility requirements makes it clear that they don’t want smaller online journalism outlets benefitting it (Section 27): https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/third-reading
The inclusion of “not primarily focused on a particular topic” is one such example, yet it’s this very provision that will also cause an absolute explosion of state sponsored troll farms and clickbait content (re: “regularly employs two or more journalists in Canada”)
Further, the bills backers are wildly claiming that the bill will cause platforms to pay for up to 35% of all expenditures of news rooms as well. The numbers never really backed up those claims, especially when looking at what smaller players receive (estimated 75-25% split between the large players and everyone else. Find any dollar value and divide by the number of players. You’ll see very quickly how bad that pays out). Either way, the government is saddling platforms with unlimited liability that barely features on their own services. Little wonder why they want out. It’s the obvious move under the circumstances.
I really could go on and on about it, though it has been one of the things responsible for making my blood boil for the last several months now.
Re: Another example
As one poster responded above, there are several examples of “prior art” that preclude this kind of nonsense. My favorite is the piece by Rick Falkvinge, wherein he notes that “Nobody asked for a refrigerator fee”…. and the whole world got along just fine.
https://falkvinge.net/2012/02/04/nobody-asked-for-a-refrigerator-fee/
I personally feel that every public office holder should be required to read it out loud in a public square, with advance notice to one and all, before taking an oath of office. Private business executives are of course immune to being coerced into reading it, but then again, the wise ones always pay attention to both the public sector and to what government is doing, or at least planning to do.
Two points to consider
Two points for media outlets to consider:
1) If you’re using a click bait headline to get readers, you’ve already failed. Do people really think there’s a story of value behind a headline that says “Drivers in Florida over 50 need to know this one trick.”
2) Don’t put your entire website behind a popup that tells people to disable their ad blocker to read the story. Sorry, I’m not going to risk getting malware from an ad. Instead, I’ll get my news from another site.
Then watch VPN usage go up
The DMca does not apply to the end user.
Doing things like bypassing geo restrictions or bypassing product activation is not illegal for the end user because it’s not belong done for for financial hain, meaning making money
The DMCA requires that it be for for financial gain for it to be a felony offense
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The DMCA isn’t Canadian law.
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Some people think it applies abroad when it does not
US laws do not apply abroad
Re: Re: obey
Someone finally gets it right that the CFAA and DMCA do do apply abroad
When I am on road trips to Mexico I use a VPN to get iHeartRadio, YouTube music and SiriusXM wille I am driving down there I am not breaking any US laws because neither the CFAA or the DMCA apply in Mexico
When I go to Mexico I only have to obey Mexican law
American law including the CFAA and the DMCA have jurisdiction in Mexico
hopefully Open Web does not end and many are fighting to keep it alive.
Bad regs are a global contagion
I’ve been watching these bad ideas proliferate across the western world. While there are nuances (like common law countries versus civil law, constitutional variance, etc.), there is a pattern whereby each new jurisdiction points at those that have already taken (bad) steps and uses that as proof of a smart idea. But then, if Billy jumped off a bridge, does that mean you should? (quoting my mom).
Jurisdictions are exerting more and more regional regulation over the web. Yes, VPNs are the technical answer, but the source of the issue is political power, and the fear that politicians have that the internet is challenging theirs. Canada is ticked because tech won’t comply (don’t give me that attitude! … my mom again).
Is anyone else convinced that a fragmented internet is only a few steps away? Countries are intent on forcing their own values on their local networks – they aren’t going to give up just because technology doesn’t work that way … yet.
Bottom line: laws like this are proliferating, governments see tech as a threat to their absolute power, and they have the rule of law to enforce compliance without being “fair”. It’s only a matter of time before the fire walls go up.
History lesson
Taxes are useful and necessary for free access societies.
The United States didn’t have federal taxes until after the war of 1812.
But still small and specific.
It was with the war of tariffs and state’s rights that they became wide spread. Following the civil way and the change of a Republican union of states to a federal grant of districts, the Union states rolled out taxes on all land. The war with Spain brought us country wide taxes.
WWII brought taxes to each and every person. We had to pay for all the war crimes the Allies committed. Mines, incendiary bombs, chemical weapons. The methods to deatomise humans.
That’s what the new world does, tax.
What next
The thinking is that Google has essentially become like the front page of a newspaper, in the past this was where the highest paying adverts would be. The income those adverts generated were used to fund the articles that were written. I’m not saying a link tax is the right way to go, but I wouldn’t just write it off as a bad idea. The current model is clearly not working, so we need to evaluate other ideas. Ones where the profits go to “good” journalism, or at least not promoting misinformation. I feel uneasy about the power that Google has to index and promote content, whilst profiting from how it does this.