The media industry is cautiously optimistic that the government will soon force the digital giants to pay for their content

With a federal election looming in September, the news media industry is cautiously optimistic that it will soon see the return of a bill requiring digital giants like Facebook and Google to pay media outlets for the use of their content online.

Paul Deegan, the new president and CEO of News Media Canada, said the biggest issue right now for the organization is the planned compensation bill by big tech companies like Google and Facebook. news media companies besieged by giant monopolies on online advertisements.

“We are looking for legislation to level the playing field between publishers and platforms, namely Google and Facebook,” he said.

Deegan expects to see more movement on that front this fall, but also hopes to see it in party political platforms.

Last week, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault announced that after the first round of consultations, the government had two paths to make the media pay the digital giants, but that it had not yet chosen one. a. The first option closely follows the Australian model, which sets standards for negotiation between companies. The second option is an independent media fund.

The most popular option in the media industry is to do what Australia has done, Deegan said. The option would require big tech companies to strike deals with news companies and pay a percentage of certain costs, negotiating directly but under the watchful eye of an arbitrator.

“It’s a proven model,” Deegan said.

The pandemic has accelerated the need for a fix to fix the market failure, Deegan said.

Marc-Noël Ouellette, co-owner of Ici Médias in Quebec, agreed that the pandemic has made the news bill much more urgent, compounding the “information deserts” created when local media folds.

“It was urgent last year,” he said.

Ouellette wants to make the news bill an election issue and intends to know the position of all the candidates on the subject.

He too supports the Australian model on an independent fund, which he says would take too long to set up.

“If it takes two years, we’re in big trouble,” Ouellette said. “Why create a new structure here?

Logic CEO and editor David Skok also favors the Australian model rather than an independent media fund.

“It requires having a business reason for a license agreement,” he said.

“All I’m asking for is a level playing field.”

In recent years, several other jurisdictions around the world have taken significant steps to address the market imbalance between news media publishers and digital giants like Facebook and Google.

Last year, Australia’s competition bureau forced Facebook and Google to share ad revenue with Australian news agencies, closely following the French competition bureau’s order to Google to strike a deal with news agencies. French press and publishers. A year later, France fined Google 500 million euros for not playing ball.

“There seems to be a groundswell around the world,” Deegan said of countries looking at big tech from privacy, competition and other perspectives.

“Legislators and regulators around the world are carefully considering this issue, and I think it’s important that Canada not fall behind.

Skok said there is a consensus emerging in the Canadian news media industry that something needs to be done about big tech.

While he doesn’t think the news media bill will be “a hot topic” in the upcoming federal election, he does think it will be a pressing post-election issue for the industry.

Indeed, Google and Facebook struck deals with major Canadian news publishers ahead of the bill, which Skok says will deepen the imbalance in the industry, preventing competition and innovation.

Ouellette agrees that the agreements make the news bill all the more urgent. These deals break the “armor of solidarity” between Canadian publishers in their stances against big tech, he said, and he wishes the government could have enacted its bill before that happened.

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law, said the proverbial pendulum has swung dramatically against big tech in recent years. , and that the Canadian government has a series of somewhat controversial provisions apparently intended to attack the technological monopoly from several sides.

Besides the News Bill, these include Bill C-10, an update to the Canadian Broadcasting Act that will allow the CRTC to regulate digital platforms like Netflix; a proposed framework (currently at the feedback stage) to tackle harmful online content, including child pornography; and other tax, privacy and competition initiatives.

However, Geist thinks the government should seek to address broader structural and regulatory issues instead of simply forcing companies to pay.

The government’s approach gives too much interpretive power to regulators, proposing to create a sort of unprecedented “regulatory superstructure”, Geist said.

“I think that’s a very dangerous political approach.”

Dwayne Winseck, a professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication and director of the Canadian Media Concentration Research Project, said the government’s approach to big tech appears “disjointed”. , with three bills – C-10, the Online Harms Bill, and the News Bill – coming under the Heritage Department, and public criticism of what has been released so far regarding C-10 and the online damages bill.

He, too, thinks the government focuses too much on regulating content and not enough on behavior and structure.

“If the government really wanted to tackle big tech…it would establish a harmonized set of principles for the protection of privacy and personal data,” Winseck said. “I think it would allow them to deal with the issues of online information compensation.”