• jarfil@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    This was done in Europe, several times, over the last 15 years or so. The process goes like:

    • News sites in [country] claim Google/Facebook/Lemmy and any other news aggregators are “stealing” their content
    • A bunch of out of touch lawyers get lobbied into “making them pay”
    • Aggregators stop linking to news sites in [country]
    • News sites in [country] realize that most of their visits were coming from aggregators, revenue from ads plummets
    • Panicked backpedaling ensues, law gets reverted
    • Aggregators start linking again to news sites from [country]

    This year it’s Canada’s turn… and I fully expect the cycle to make the rounds back to European countries in a decade or two.

    • sculd@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      This means all governments around the world should impose similar laws so Facebook / Google will finally fxxking pay the news organisations they helped destroyed.

      • jarfil@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Are you saying Beehaw is destroying news organizations? Because the law is the same for all: “pay us for any link with an excerpt of our news”, like the link with a title up top.

        Anyways, after all these years, and all these countries, it should be proof enough that link aggregators help news sites by driving traffic to them, not destroy them.

        This is nothing else than some cunning lawyers getting news sites onto a hype train based on a tale they know is false, but they will get paid for defending, then tearing down, in one more country.