Online News Act leads to internet fragmentation: Internet Society

The Online News Act, Bill C-18, will “fundamentally change the relationship between people and the internet,” if passed, according to the Internet Society (ISOC). On Wednesday ISOC published a report which assessed the bill against the Internet Impact Assessment Toolkit – a framework developed by ISOC to evaluate whether a proposed policy change threatens the fundamentals of the internet. “The Online News Act, if enacted, would fundamentally change the relationship between people and the internet. One of the overarching reasons for this shift is that the Bill introduces a form of centralized management that runs counter to the nature of the Internet as an open, global resource for everyone,” the report reads. Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez introduced Bill C-18 in April. The bill aims to provide financial support to news media in Canada by mandating that large online platforms compensate news media for making their content available. The CRTC will be designated as the authority to oversee compliance. According to the report, the bill will go against the principle of a decentralized and open internet because the CRTC will have the power to oversee how people and businesses can use the internet’s common language and address system. “The act will significantly harm what the internet needs to exist and thrive, restricting how people and businesses can experience and innovate on the internet in Canada,” the report reads. The report claims that under the legislation, the same features, HTML or URL, will work differently in different contexts. For example, an individual may copy a URL identifying a news story into a private email which, under the act, does not represent “making available” the news content and is therefore not compensable. However, if the same URL is copied into a social media post, the URL might be “making available” the news. “In such a case, the platform might block the URL from appearing, or it might be subject to pay compensation to the news business that produced the content. The same URL in these different contexts causes different things to happen. That makes the URL less interoperable, because it does not work the same way under all conditions,” the report explains. “It also creates an incentive for intermediaries to block the functionality of the URL. Moreover, users are not always able to tell what happens if they re-use the building block (the URL) in different contexts.” The report claims that the bill will have extra-territorial impact on intermediaries outside of Canada’s jurisdiction. Some operators of services may choose to alter the way their services work for users in Canada to avoid the country-specific compliance requirements. “A service on the Internet will work one way when outside the Canadian context and a different way within it—with a likely outcome that Canadians will have less access to relevant content than people in other countries,” the report states. The report said the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union (EU) provides evidence that operators of service and startups will cater to jurisdictions with more favorable conditions. Following the EU’s implementation of the GDPR, many businesses, including news companies, chose to geo-block EU users instead of complying with its regulations, according to the report. “The Online News Act’s harm to the Internet will contribute to fragmentation, giving people and businesses in Canada a different use and experience of the Internet from those in the rest of the world. In turn, it will make people in Canada less secure, it will stifle innovation online, and it will hinder the growth and interoperability of Canada’s thriving digital economy,” the report states. – Reporting by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca and editing by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca.

Online News Act leads to internet fragmentation: Internet Society

Broadcast | February 17, 2023

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Online News Act leads to internet fragmentation: Internet Society

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