Does anybody know what these bills say about distributed / open platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon? (obviously paying per link is not viable here)
The bills objective is to give journalists compensation for their work. I think Lemmy actually promotes this because people click on the links to try to read the article directly, instead of viewing them through a social media platform acting as a middleman.
I think this is unclear, as the CRTC isn’t expected to have the actual policies developed until sometime next year.
However, this is in the text of the bill:
6 This Act applies in respect of a digital news intermediary if, having regard to the following factors, there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses:
(a) the size of the intermediary or the operator;
(b) whether the market for the intermediary gives the operator a strategic advantage over news businesses; and
© whether the intermediary occupies a prominent market position.
I can’t imagine this ever applying to decentralized social media.
I assume the server instance and the user would both have to be in the country. But I don’t think lemmy instances are making money off of their users that I know of.
Here’s the key issue and principle buried deep at the bottom of the article.
She said a main area of discussion at the confab is how globally-minded digital companies had “really revolutionized our industries for a lot of good reasons” and added: “No one is saying to get Facebook or Google out of Canada — Canadians love and appreciate these services.”
Tait said Canadian broadcasters and services were required to pay taxes and services and invest in Canadian content, meaning companies as powerful as Alphabet and Meta would simply be paying into a existing system. “We all have requirements regarding local news so that there is a provision in a country of only 40 million to support our own domestic industry,” she said. “We would ask Facebook to be held responsible in the way we treat our own companies.”
We all have requirements regarding local news
“Well all” meaning broadcasters. That is the deal in exchange for using public airwaves.
Facebook doesn’t broadcast over public airwaves…
