Canadian regulator, the CRTC, has approved Google’s application for the Online News Act. It’s good for 5 years.
Another major chapter in the Online News Act (formerly Bill C-18) has now finally closed. Last year, the Canadian government folded to Google, handing everything Google asked for over and called it a “deal”. The “deal” basically thwarted the potential death knell of the Canadian news sector because Google was basically gearing up to block news links on all of its services similar to what Meta did earlier on.
Google had long proposed a $100 million fund model, but the greedy mainstream media thought they could get much more money by trying to hold links to their news sites at ransom. This under the obviously mistaken belief that Google depends entirely on news links. As Google geared up to block news links, however, it gradually became clear that this talking point wasn’t really true and the mainstream media was basically gearing up to shoot themselves in the foot.
The big question in all of this, of course, was how Google was going to distribute that money. The obvious solution was to use a collective to distribute the funds. For Google, they had a choice between an independent collective and a collective that had close ties with the mainstream media. The mainstream media hoped that Google would select their close buddies to distribute the money to themselves, but Google ultimately chose the independent organization to find a way to more fairly distribute that funding.
In response, the mainstream media threw an absolute temper tantrum, publishing “news articles” screaming conflict of interest when they, once again, didn’t get their way. The temper tantrums made it clear that the mainstream media had every intention of corrupting the process and doing everything they could to hoard as much money in this deal as possible. With an actual independent collective, that wasn’t going to happen – at least, not right away. In the process, the mainstream media went running to their buddies at the CRTC and demanded that the collective be completely defunded – this in an effort to try and sabotage the process and ensure that the collective failed. To a degree, it was with great irony that the mainstream media pushed for defunding themselves indirectly.
The CRTC, in turn, delayed the decision to approve the arrangement. They sought information about it all and, no doubt, the mainstream media was working over time to try and thwart the direction all of this was heading. According to the CRTC today, however, the arrangement was approved:
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)
Today, the CRTC is issuing its first decision under the Online News Act Application and Exemption Regulations(the Regulations). This decision will pave the way for Google to contribute $100 million annually to Canadian news organizations through the Canadian Journalism Collective (CJC).
The Online News Act (the Act) received Royal Assent on June 22, 2023, and on December 19, 2023, the Regulations came into force. The Act (formerly Bill C-18) aims to ensure that online platforms that make Canadian news content available fairly compensate Canadian news organizations.
Under the Act, the CRTC is responsible for implementing the government’s Regulations. The Regulations allow online platforms to request an exemption from being required to bargain with individual news organizations if they reach an agreement with an organization that represents a broad range of Canadian news organizations. The CRTC is required to hold a public consultation on any exemption request received.
In June 2024, Google filed an application to be exempt from the Act. The CRTC moved quickly and launched a public consultation on the application within three weeks.
After reviewing the public record, the CRTC is granting a five-year exemption from the Act to Google. Google must pay $100 million to the CJC within 60 days of this decision. The CJC will then distribute the funds equitably to eligible Canadian news organizations.
The CJC will report back to the CRTC annually.
Now, unless there’s something going on here beyond this press release, it looks like the mainstream media lost yet another battle here to reverse the application and have the money flowing to their buddies instead so that smaller outlets would likely get left out of the whole process. Still, it’s kind of amusing that the CRTC is saying that they are ordering the $100 million be paid out when it was Google that volunteered that money in the first place as part of the deal struck with the Canadian government. So, a little revisionist history there, but I digress.
What is also noteworthy in all of this is that this approval will last 5 years. So, in all likelihood, we’ll start seeing this debate pick up again sometime in 2029, maybe even 2030. Will there be other more minor details that crop up in the next few months? Possibly. Still, one of the bigger open chapters in this ridiculous debate has seemingly been closed.
Unless something big comes up in the interim, this debate has largely been laid to rest. None of this whole affair should have happened in the first place. As a result of unmitigated greed by the mainstream media, the Online News Act has inflicted considerable harm in the entire news sector. Despite assurances by the mainstream media lobbyists, Canadian taxpayers have been put on the hook for this major blunder thanks to the massive bailouts the Canadian government issued to cover up the loss of Meta platforms. Bankruptcies filled the headlines as surviving sites saw their traffic plummet. By no means will the losses from a lack of Meta platforms be covered through the Google fund model, but still, at least the media sector lives – even if it is doing little more than limping along from their self-inflicted injuries.
