Are instances of fediverse platforms going to be affected by this law? Does it apply at all to the fediverse?
No. The act would only apply to “digital news intermediaries that occupy a prominent market position”. Unless an instance starts pulling in millions of dollars, the act wouldn’t apply.
Bill C-18 is a ridiculous law that’s going to harm Canadian news outlets.
Canada’s new bill forces companies who shares a link to a Canadian news outlet to pay the outlet called a “link tax”. Google doesn’t want to pay the “link tax” so they got rid of every search result to Canadian news outlet in response. This effectively ensures nobody can see the news from Canadian news outlets through Google.
Don’t worry, Google is bluffing. They don’t want other countries to do anything similar so they have to make a big show of fighting it, but their massive power to fight it is exactly why C-18 is necessary. Google backed down in Australia, and sooner or later, they’ll back down here — there’s still a lot of money for them to rake in even after paying to use the news outlets’ work.
My understanding is that Canadian news outlets are already suffering specifically because of Google. Wouldn’t keeping the status quo also be causing harm to these outlets?
