Discussions

Here’s one link I think literally everyone in Westman should be subscribed to as long as it works. The Sun sends our daily ‘Sun Burst’ emails with top story links and some other local info. Please consider subscribing and pass it on…  
https://account.brandonsun.com/email-alerts

Not really the same thing tho. On those YouTube videos it’s the actual copyrighted work being used right over top of the video.  On Meta we’re talking just a link to the work where it’s then consumed and monetized on its creator’s site (granted the discussion in comments that can develop around the social media link sometimes gives away enough of the story to reduce clickthroughs which can be frustrating)  
 
Music creators also aren’t trying to force Youtube to use their songs and expressing that they need them. They’ve worked out a deal that works for both parties. And if the amount Google had to pay for those audio clips was so much that it didn’t make business sense you can bet they'd mass delete videos that had those clips and disallow use of themt.  
 
There’s value to both sides with links on social media. Clearly Meta is still prepared to accept that there’s an imbalance and pay like they’re doing in Australia, they’re basically just saying that Canada is pushing it too far to the point where any value in news that they get in their product isn’t worth the amount that would have to be paid. There’s a good video here that goes into the differences between Australia and Canada:  
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2254076483990  
 
Part of the less spoken thing here is that social media has gobbled up a massive amount of mindshare with content that has nothing to do with news. Think vacation pics, birthday greetings, cat pics, etc etc etc. Meta are saying that their platforms and the advertising engine around them are built more around everything else than they are news to the point where news is a non-core part of their apps. That shift in mindshare has hit traditional media sources in terms of what people spend time reading and what advertisers advertise on and it has little to nothing to do with the use of news story links.

You also don’t make as much money off of a reader online as you do through traditional means.  Does Meta make money off of for example a newspaper’s Facebook page as it engages with its 50,000 followers. Absolutely and I know they’ve been recently offering revenue shares to bigger FB pages (not sure what media that involves or how meaningful the dollar amounts are). But at this point if they’re willing to throw down this far I believe that they don’t need news at the level the Act values news as needing to be to them.  

Google is a bit of a different beast with how they use article snippets in results. I couldn’t begin counting the amount of times I’ve searched for something and there was enough text in the Google search results that I didn’t need to click on the link for more. Google News as a product is also pretty much DOA without the links, whether or not it drives much bottom line for them I don’t know. Will be interesting to see if they concede differently, but I gather they've been moving to have plain old links treated differently from content that also features snippets from the original work.  
 
At any rate, IMO gov needs to realize the mess they’ve created by pushing this too far and bring Canada closer to what Australia has. Hopefully sooner rather than later before too much damage is done. There's still a path towards a setup that helps our media, but every day this drags out will see new habits formed that could lead to serious unintended consequences.