Other countries are in the process of developing similar legislation to Bill C-18, said McGill University media professor Taylor Owen. That means the tech giants are mindful of what precedents will be set in Canada.
Meta spokesperson Lisa Laventure said in an emailed statement that a “legislative framework that compels us to pay for links or content that we do not post, and which are not the reason the vast majority of people use our platforms, is neither sustainable nor workable.” She said the company is taking the same position it previously took in the United States.
Similar bills are underway in United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Brazil and other countries. If C-18 becomes law, Canada could become the second country in the world to pass news revenue-sharing legislation aimed at the two tech giants. The first was Australia, which experienced a similar face-off with Google and Facebook before making last-minute amendments to the legislation.
Critics say Bill C-18’s premise that companies need to compensate publishers for making news available, including by “including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content,” effectively puts a value on links to news stories. Internet advocacy group OpenMedia has argued links and clicks are the only quantifiable criteria that can be used to determine value under the bill.Article content