Google, Facebook determined to stop news sharing should C-18 pass as currently drafted

With Bill C-18, the Government's plan to have news organizations negotiate rates of compensation with internet platforms, before the Senate for review, Alphabet Inc.'s Google wants the bill to have more clearly articulated exemption criteria. Such exemption criteria would give the company a sense of how much it would have to spend in agreements with news organizations to avoid the mandated collective bargaining envisioned by the bill. “Creating clear exemption criteria would have the immediate benefit of encouraging Google and publishers to sit down, reach agreements, and flow money to journalism, quickly," Google Canada's vice president of news Richard Gingras told the Senate's Transport and Communications committee Wednesday evening during a hearing on the bill. Google also called on Senators to remove final offer arbitration – or so-called "baseball arbitration" where parties each present their final offer to an arbitrator, in this case the CRTC – with standard commercial arbitration. Standard commercial arbitration, Gingras continued, "is relied on for the most complex business disputes," and "would be the fair and just way to settle any resulting disputes." Google also reiterated its threat to block news links from Canada – or as Gingras phrased it, "adapt our product" – should the bill pass unamended. Asked why Google has not been proactively partnering with news organizations ahead of the implementation of Bill C-18 in order to avoid its regulations, Google's government affairs and public policy counsel Jason Kee said that the company has been doing just that, and pointed to the Google News Showcase project. "We have been engaging with publishers in Canada voluntarily for some time, long before C-18 was introduced. And again we wish to continue to do so," Kee said. "The challenge we face is that without a clear sense of a path to exemption, we don't know what else we should be doing, how much we should be spending, and what the expectations are. Until we have that kind of clarity, it's difficult for us." Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook, too, said that it would yank news content from its platform should C-18 become law as currently constructed. Indeed, the company's representatives took an even harder line at the Wednesday night hearing. "A framework that requires us to compensate publishers for links or news content they voluntarily put on our platforms is quite frankly, Senators, unworkable for us," Facebook's head of public policy for Canada Rachel Curran told the committee. "Because the legislation ignores the realities of how our platforms work, the preferences of people who use them, and the value we provide news publishers, we have no choice but to comply with it by ending the availability of news content in Canada if C-18 is passed as drafted," Curran said. The testimony of the platforms at Wednesday's committee was substantively similar to the same arguments they have been making on C-18 for months, as the legislation has moved through parliament. – Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca

Google, Facebook determined to stop news sharing should C-18 pass as currently drafted

News | May 4, 2023

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Google, Facebook determined to stop news sharing should C-18 pass as currently drafted

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