“The digital giants must pay the media,” said Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez in January.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
The federal government plans to introduce a bill on online news soon. The objective is to force the digital giants to pay royalties to the media for the use of their content. We must salute this desire but we cannot help adding that it was time.
Since their very beginnings, Facebook, Twitter and Google have appropriated texts and journalistic reports without paying anything, either to their authors or to the media concerned. As I wrote in my book The digital barbarians, the digital giants have thus contributed, for too many years, to the deconstruction of our media. They misappropriated advertising revenues, which formed the basis of the business model of most media outlets in the country. However, this advertising on digital platforms is now the property of Google and Facebook, which alone collect 80% of online advertising revenue. And as a bonus, the digital giants do not pay any amount for journalistic content when it ends up on their platforms. With this deconstruction, several media have had to close their doors in Canada in recent years. Others, make significant budget cuts.
At the same time, they flout the copyright of journalists whose texts are taken up on social networks.
At present, texts and reports can be found, for example, on Facebook without any royalties being paid to their author. Lack of copyright recognition and lack of remuneration for the media and journalists. It is high time to take action.
However, the challenge is daunting. This bill should establish as a principle, it is hoped, fair recognition of the work done by the media. In the meantime, some media have not waited for a law and have already negotiated special agreements with Google and Facebook. This is the case, among others, for The dutythe Globe and Mail, the National Independent Information Cooperative (Cn2i). So much the better for these media, but we cannot leave it to the digital giants to choose which media will enjoy this “favor”. Nor place the media in a role of “beggar”. It would be dangerous for the diversity of voices in information.
Big challenges
The first issue with such a royalty formula is media eligibility. Under what criteria could some media qualify and others not?
We don’t have to go back to square one. It will be recalled that an independent committee made up of experts proposed by eight journalists’ associations in the country has already worked on these qualification criteria when the federal media assistance program was set up. Much of the work is therefore already done.
The admissibility of major recognized media such as The duty, The Press, Radio-Canada the major media of the Quebecor group goes without saying. But how to obtain these royalties when a medium is smaller? Consider, for example, weekly media from First Nations cultural communities, or local and regional newspapers. Or to others, such as the digital media “Pivot” or the magazine To port. Who will draw the line? This is an important issue.
The other challenge, what do we do with media like Rebel News or Radio X? Collision in sight…
On the other hand, if the goal is to protect online news, what content will be considered news? What do we do with chronicles? Investigations produced by documentaries?
Outstanding questions
Finally, the other dimension to be clarified will be the negotiation formula. Would there be a grouped negotiation of several media or each media will have to negotiate alone with Google or Facebook?
Moreover, once the legislation comes into force, what will remain of the agreements already established between Google, Facebook and some media?
And if it blocks, what are the possibilities of appealing the decision? Which body? As we can see, several questions will have to be answered in the bill.
In January, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, indicated that the legislation would be inspired by what has been done in Australia over the past year. It will be remembered that after a showdown with Google and Facebook, the Australian government finally forced these digital giants to establish agreements with the media. But the chosen formula only favored “chosen” media, which obviously included those of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, which holds the vast majority of major Australian media. In this sense, it is important that the model proposed in Canada favors a formula that promotes broad access to these royalties.