Some reflections on the Australian experience and what they might mean for Canada.
After Google’s move on Thursday, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez sent a written statement calling the companies’ moves “deeply irresponsible and out of touch … especially when they make billions of dollars off of Canadian users” with advertising.
Australia’s regulatory experiment – the first of its kind in the world – also got off to a rocky start, but it has since seen tech companies, news publishers and the government reach a middle ground.
It’s called negotiation. What Canada is doing is not that. They are demanding unbounded amounts of money.
In Australia they ended up negotiating a price that worked for both sides. No doubt a predictable among each year too.
The proposed regulations haven’t even been published for consultation yet.
Yes, which is literally why Google said they are preparing to remove links. They are not going to incur completely unknown penalties. In Australia Meta and others also pulled links for the same reason. It was only after they negotiated a price that worked for both sides that they came back. If I ran Google or Meta I’d do exactly the same thing.
They are jumping the gun.
Retroactive establishment of penalties aren’t a thing in Canadian federal regulation.
The penalties can’t be implemented without a Gazetting period for the regulations, and Meta and Google will have the opportunity to formally comment on the proposed penalties then.
The bill received royal assent last week, but I guess it leaves it open for specific implementations. Google and Meta oppose the whole thing. https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/news/2023/06/online-news-act-receives-royal-assent.html
