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Comment by adjav | Hacker News Reader

Note: This article is by the National Post, which is owned by PostMedia, who were one of the main backers of bill C18. Just something to keep in mind.

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For those of us not from Canada[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_News_Act

Not a Metà fan, at all, but I don’t understand why they are being called “unreasonable” and “irresponsible” for blocking news from Canadian newspapers. As they (currently) don’t have an agreement with Canadian newspapers, or perhaps don’t want one, which also seems like a legitimate position to me, the only responsible thing is not to use or link to articles from said newspapers, isn’t it?

They had made agreements with torstar prior to this bill passing. They abandoned those agreements when the bill passed. Its hard to avoid the conclusion that they are specifically taking issue with being legally compelled to make such agreements.

The Canadian government thought they could just force these companies to subsidize their failing news industry, and instead, when the outcome is "alright, fine, you win, we won't pay you in order to make you relevant, we won't 'profit' off of your news any longer, have fun in the dumpster" they're "blocking news."

There's nothing unreasonable or irresponsible about this decision at all, what's unreasonable is passing a law trying to squeeze money out of the only places in the world left that still make you relevant and then getting mad when they don't want to be abused.

PostMedia is itself owned by Chatham Asset Management, an American private equity firm that also owns dozen of U.S. newspapers.

Ah, a perfect exemplar of the kind of independent journalism free from corporate influence as stated in the bill.

> Act provides that any such agreements must not allow the freedom of expression and journalistic independence enjoyed by news outlets to be undermined by corporate influence.

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/charter-charte/c18_...

Journalists, as well as "journalists", are going to get paid one way or another. If it's not subscriptions or ad revenue, it'll be in some other form.

Yep, even if that includes regulatory/gov capture like we see here in Canada.

> Journalists, as well as "journalists", are going to get paid one way or another.

Says who?

Lots of journalists have been laid off in the past decade because of media consolidation -- some of them found other jobs or went independent, but most had to find another field because _the money isn't there_.

The media companies will get paid one way or another, but the companies are not journalists.

Upvote this post for the context. In the oligarchy society of Canada, it's important to know who the big players are

Also in addition: PostMedia (owners of the National Post) and Nordstar (owners of the Toronto Star), are apparently in talks to merge, meaning there would be even less competition and fewer major news orgs in Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/toronto-star-nordstar-talks...

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