- Pascale St-Onge has voiced hope for a new rule compelling Google and Meta.
- The Online News Act intends to protect a struggling Canadian news industry.
- The act needed to specify the conditions under which news enterprises might get support.
Pascale St-Onge, the minister of culture for Canada, has voiced hope for a new rule compelling Google and Meta to compensate publishers for news material.
The Online News Act, which is based on legislation of a similar nature adopted in Australia, intends to protect a struggling Canadian news industry that has seen hundreds of newspapers shut down and a flight of advertising money during the past ten years. Google has expressed objection to the Act but has postponed taking any more action until after the bill becomes operative in December.
Canadian company
About 80% of Canada’s total online advertising income, totaling billions of dollars, is under the hands of these two businesses. The government estimates that compelling the pair to enter into reasonable commercial agreements with Canadian outlets for the news and information disseminated on their platforms or face binding arbitration may cost the two a combined total of C$230 million (US$170 million).
While Facebook does not want to police content, St-Onge recognized that Google does not want to end up in an arbitration procedure for business relationships.
According to Google Canada, the bill’s “critical structural issues” “have not been sufficiently addressed.” They continue to be concerned that laws may need to be changed and that regulations alone won’t be able to address these basic problems.
The act needed to specify the conditions under which news enterprises might get support, the kinds of support that qualified, and provide incentives for them to negotiate in good faith. Additionally, it asked for a compensation ceiling consistent with international norms like the European copyright legislation.
Google maintained that the law only applies to news that has been carefully selected, not just links to news or excerpts from publications.
