Australians tell senators that Canada has nothing to fear from C-18

A collection of players from the Australian news industry appeared before the Senate Transport and Communications committee to lend their support to Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act. Don't be scared, was their main message to the senators on a Wednesday evening meeting of the committee. Emma McDonald, a senior policy adviser to Minderoo Foundation's Frontier Technology initiative and who worked on putting together the Australian legislation, told the senators that "despite the tech outrage in the lead up to the introduction of the code, it has proven to be a success for Australian news media large and small." "It's workable, and it's effective," McDonald said. McDonald also sought to push back against some of the rhetoric against the bill. "It did not break the internet. It is not a link tax. And it showed that it is possible to curtail the market dominance of the platform's not long after, after the code became law," McDonald said. Lawrence Gibbons, a publisher of Australia's Star Observer LGTBQ+ newspaper and Sydney's City Hub alternative weekly, told senators that the threats from Google Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook to pull out of the country did not not materialize. "We Australians have heard it all before. In 2021 when our parliament debated similar legislation, Facebook pulled the plug on news published on their platform. Then, after a few weeks, the news returned," Gibbons said. "Despite claims to the contrary, a range of small and independent media companies sat down at the negotiating table. Australian legislation facilitated this outcome," he said. Unifor's media sector director Randy Kitt called for the passage of the bill. The threats from tech giants to pull their services from Canadian users is more evidence in favour of the legislation, Kitt said. "As we speak Google and Facebook, while in the midst of negotiating deals with publishers before this bill is passed, are also threatening and in some cases removing news access to Canadians," the union man said. "This is a further abuse of power and market share, and it shows that this legislation is needed more than ever." Dissent came from OpenMedia campaigns director Matt Hatfield, who told senators that the bill is based on a false premise, namely that tech giants are diverting revenue from news outlets. The false premise, he argued, had led to the threats from the tech giants. "If they're benefitting inappropriately from the sharing of links, as C-18 says they are, why not just stop sharing them? Would that be good for Canada? No, it would be enormously destructive," Hatfield said. President of the Internet Society's Canada chapter Philip Palmer told senators that the bill has an overemphasis on the CRTC's ability to exempt platforms from mandated bargaining should they strike deals with news businesses, arguing that under the bill, "exemption is to be the reward for compliance." "Rather than a means to reward compliance, the exemption power represents a retrospective regulation of the relations between platforms and news businesses," he said. –Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca

Australians tell senators that Canada has nothing to fear from C-18

News | June 1, 2023

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Australians tell senators that Canada has nothing to fear from C-18

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