It is now up to the CRTC to approve of the model before it can start distributing the $100 million in Google money.
When the Canadian government folded to Google and just accepted whatever they were asking, it wound up being the moment that the government knew it lost with the whole link tax debate. The media and the government attempted to strong arm the platforms in their effort to get a massive financial windfall under the very obviously wrong assumption that platforms depend on news links.
Those efforts backfired in spectacular fashion when Meta dropped news links As a result, publishers took a very heavy traffic hit. While it caused a lot of pain in the sector, it would’ve been nothing compared to if Google had dropped news links as well. It would’ve easily been the killing blow to pretty much the entire news sector. More terrifying, before the Canadian government folded, Google was prepared to do exactly that. Even I was watching the situation and seeing my news writing career flashing before my eyes, knowing that the publishers unchecked greed was about to cost everyone in the sector dearly.
Perhaps the only reason Freezenet (and many other journalism outlets) are still operating was because the Canadian government backed down. In exchange for handing Google everything they asked for, Google wouldn’t basically kill off almost the entire Canadian news sector by dropping news links.
In the months that followed, supporters of the Online News Act tried to spin this situation into some sort of victory. They would argue along the lines of how they were able to get $100 million out of Google and, therefore, they brought them to heal because they clearly would never have survived without news links. The reality is that very little of their traffic revolves around news content. What’s more, the $100 million price tag isn’t even all new money. Previously inked deals would be rolled into that fund model. Further, the $100 million price tag was nowhere near enough to offset the estimated $230 million loss the sector experienced when Meta dropped news links. Finally, the link tax, as a concept, is officially dead in Canada. If anything, supporters of the Online News Act should just say, “the Aristocrats!” after everything that happened.
Of course, the question then become how one distributes the $100 million. This isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do, so a collective is to be set up to distribute that money. Unsurprisingly, the large media companies worked overtime to try and figure out how to corrupt the process so that the largest players gets all the money and the smaller outlets get completely screwed over in all of this. This set the stage for a fight between the mainstream media and Google. It really wasn’t much of a fight because, ultimately, Google was basically deciding how it intends on spending its own money. No matter how much the mainstream media tried to spin and lie to an alternative narrative, that was the reality.
Ultimately, the choice wound up boiling down to two organizations. One organization was made up of representatives of the mainstream media. The other collective was made up of independent voices and third party experts, focusing in fairness. Understandably, Google chose the independent collective over the one controlled by the mainstream media. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media, realizing that they couldn’t corrupt the process and hoard the maximum amount of money for themselves, threw massive temper tantrums over it all. They made up stories about how the collective is corrupt and fabricated conspiracy theories about how Google was making an end run around the Online News Act by choosing an organization that might actually hand a few bread crumbs to smaller outlets. I know, the horror, the horror.
While it was difficult to really figure out how the mainstream media really had much of a say in the matter, things are moving forward. The Canadian Journalism Collective has submitted its governance model to the CRTC for approval so that they can move forward with distributing that funding to news outlets. From the Canadian Press:
The group Google asked to distribute $100 million to news outlets in Canada has publicly released its governance model, which it says focuses on sustainability, equity and innovation within the industry.
The Canadian Journalism Collective submitted plans to Canada’s broadcasting regulator this week outlining the structure of the board that will ultimately oversee the funds. That submission was made public on Wednesday.
The Canada Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission requested the information as part of the public consultations to enforce the Online News Act, which compels tech companies to enter into agreements with news publishers for the use of their content.
The collective has had limited time to develop this novel framework under a law that is being closely watched by other countries that want to implement something similar, including the United States.
It will ultimately be up to the CRTC to determine if the collective’s plan meets its expectations. If the governance model is satisfactory, then the CRTC will grant Google an exemption from the law.
This is a pivotal step as the journalism industry comes together to ensure the money is distributed equally, regardless of the business model or self-interest of any individual media outlet.
At this point, it’s not necessarily a sure thing that the CRTC will or won’t approve of this. After all, when major corporations tell the CRTC to jump, the CRTC asks “how high?”, so it is entirely possible that the mainstream media will attempt a backroom sabotage of the process in an effort to get the collective they control the ability to distribute money to themselves. Who knows? If not, then the CRTC could approve of this funding distribution model and we can all move on with our lives (maybe).
