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Comment by whitewingjek | Hacker News Reader

The eff had an interesting article[1] about this issue (and others) as well as some alternative ways solve the issue, not that I agree with all of them.

Ultimately, this is the wrong approach. The internet should be "open," and people or companies should be free to link to whatever they want without penalty.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

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What a bad take from the EFF!

> Break up the ad-tech sector, open up app stores, end-to-end delivery

I thought they stood for freedom, and now they want to pass laws on how software can work?!

Their literally saying this software code can't be this way, you need to submit a PR to change how it works to match this law. If this isn't the antithesis of freedom I don't know what is.

But what does it mean exactly to be open? Are you allowed to monetize via ads on the work of others or no?

That makes it sound like ad companies are invading the websites of news companies who are resisting.

These news organizations want to have their cake and eat it too. They rely on these platforms for traffic. Now they also want to be paid for getting that traffic. That's not how this works.

Facebook, Instagram, etc. are not "open", so the argument doesn't work.

Then maybe the government should focus instead on forcing them to be open?

How would a Canadian government force an American company to be more open?

The same exact way they are doing here - pass a law requiring the company to comply with certain standards if it wants to operate in Canada and lawfully provide services to Canadian customers. Standards that could, for example, include the requirement for all content on the platform to be indexable. Or even to mandate open protocols and federation.

The word used was "open", and you wouldn't be able to force a company to open itself to intellectual theft at the hands of a foreign government. You're reducing a complex legal/rights policy into "wats the problem just do it guys" mentality. You can't even get rights to index something niche, like the Ontario Opera archive catalogue without running into several unions and trade rights representatives. To think that everyone from Google to Netflix could just do this is hilarious.

> The internet should be "open,"

Which RFC is that?

"The Internet is for End Users":

* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8890

RFCs are technical specs. This is a question of ethics.

While I agree with them, it's important to note that the EFF is very pro-big tech and is largely funded by them.

People are so often surprised when the money in an industry funds an industry group. It's especially egregious in the defense industry when people turn it into conspiracy theories saying like "this think tank is a puppet because they got money from the people with money."

exactly. like how else they'll get the money? do you the random people donate?

Obviously a bake sale and all the members of the think tank have to work gig economy jobs in-between research, writing and speeches just to keep the lights on in a dinky little conference room of the sub-sub-sub basement of the Pentagon they rent out.

Perks of the job mainly consist of being able to sporadically say “Gentlemen. You can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!” and having critics in the mainstream media that hate your guts and will—uncompensated!—drop your name on a frequent basis and imply you are much much much more important and influential than you actually are.

> it's important to note that the EFF is very pro-big tech and is largely funded by them.

I find that a puzzling comment. EFF has a strange way of showing its allegiance to "Big Tech".

What do I not know? How does the EFF demonstrate its allegiance to them?

I took the EFF's work on privacy as an impediment to "Big Tech"'s business model. How am I wrong?

EFF always struck me as a more specialized version of the ACLU (for internet and digital privacy). I think they are pro-tech in the sense that tech can empower people and they are sensitive to the ways that the government and various actors attempt to turn that value proposition upside-down and subvert people's rights and quality of life.

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