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      Google to pay Canada’s “link tax,” drops threat of removing news from search

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 29 November - 21:47

    Canada's national flag

    Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Manuel Augusto Moreno)

    Google has agreed to pay Canadian news businesses $100 million a year to comply with the country's Online News Act, despite previously saying it would remove Canadian news links from search rather than make the required payments.

    Google and government officials agreed to a deal that lets Google negotiate with a single news collective and reduce its overall financial obligation. Facebook owner Meta is meanwhile holding firm in its opposition to payments.

    "Google will contribute $100 million in financial support annually, indexed to inflation, for a wide range of news businesses across the country, including independent news businesses and those from Indigenous and official-language minority communities," Minister of Canadian Heritage Pascale St-Onge said in a statement today.

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      Facebook bans all Australian news content over pay-to-link proposal

      Timothy B. Lee · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 17 February, 2021 - 21:43

    Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Munich Security Conference in 2020.

    Enlarge / Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Munich Security Conference in 2020. (credit: CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP via Getty Images)

    Facebook has gone nuclear in its long-running battle with the Australian government over news content. Australia is considering legislation that would require Facebook to pay to link to Australian news stories. In response, Facebook has announced a wide-ranging ban on users linking Australian news content.

    The ban means that Facebook users in Australia can no longer make posts that link to news articles—either in the Australian media or internationally. Meanwhile, users outside of Australia can't post links to Australian news sources. The ban has already gone into effect, as I discovered when I tried to post a link to The Sydney Morning Herald on Facebook:

    Screen-Shot-2021-02-17-at-3.34.45-PM.png

    Facebook says that Australian news publishers will be blocked from sharing or posting content to their Facebook pages. Posts by news publishers outside of Australia won't be available to Australian users.

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      Microsoft backs Australian law forcing Google to pay for news links

      Timothy B. Lee · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 3 February, 2021 - 17:02

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. (credit: Microsoft)

    Google has portrayed itself as a defender of the open Internet as it battles an Australian proposal to force Google and Facebook to pay Australian news organizations to link to their articles. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has argued that the ability to link to content without paying is "fundamental to how the Web operates."

    Google has warned that if the proposal becomes law, the company may exit the Australian search market altogether.

    But Microsoft, one of Google's top search competitors, isn't rallying to defend the principle of free linking. "While Microsoft is not subject to the legislation currently pending, we’d be willing to live by these rules," Microsoft said of the Australian proposal in a statement to Reuters.

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