Within 180 days after June 22 this year, the Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18, is set to come into fruition. The law requires tech companies to pay Canadian news outlets every time somebody accesses news on their website through a link or through other means.
The goal of this bill is to financially compensate news outlets, who otherwise do not have many people financially subscribing to them. It is also said that news outlets in Canada have been receiving falling subscriptions as well as less ad revenue despite their efforts to stay financially afloat. This is backed up by the fact that 85 per cent of Canadians do not spend money on online news subscriptions and how Canadians younger than 64 use social media platforms to check the news. As a result, the financial compensation these news companies would receive should go into helping the companies stay financially stable so that they could continue producing more content and making news more accessible to Canadians.
As a response to the law, Google and Meta will block Canadian news from their sites. This raises concern on both how Canadians can access news as well as how people outside of Canada can access important Canadian news. Calling the bill a “link tax,” the company states that it “breaks the way the web and search engines have worked for more than 30 years.” Moreover, Meta Canada’s Head of Public Policy Stated “For many months, we have been transparent about our concerns with the Online News Act. It is based on the incorrect premise that Meta benefits unfairly from news content shared on our platforms, when the reverse is actually true.” Hence, the two of the largest tech companies in the world disagree with the Act and outwardly express their disagreement.
This law is harmful because it creates problems with regard to accessibility to pertinent news. It bars access to information that urgently needs to be spread such as missing persons news, emergency news, and more. Adding this additional barrier to access to information may negatively impact the Canadian news industry as opposed to benefitting it because the purpose of these news sites is to spread information. Hence, if they are unable to spread information in an effective and efficient manner, they would not be fulfilling their goal in society. As a result, it may be more beneficial to find other ways to financially compensate them for their work given how the law may be getting in the way of news sites fulfilling their primary purpose of spreading information.
