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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

People were predicting this would happen when Google caved and started paying "link tax" to Australia and Canada and other jurisdictions with similar laws. Now – to no surprise – every government (really every media conglomerate lobbying arm) around the world wants the free money and so more such laws are popping up.

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Dunno about Australia but Google ‘won’ in Canada, where the government agreed to accept what Google had originally offered, and make it up to their corporate media buddies in the following budget.

It ended with a negotiation and Google agreeing to pay $100M+ annually to Canadian news organizations, so I wouldn't exactly call that a "win" for them.

It might be a win for Google.

>Oh, you posted this story we really didn't like. Sorry, this month's check got lost in the mail. We'll sort it out in 6-15 business days.

Businesses eventually become reliant on significant revenue streams which gives the party that provides them power over the business.

It might not even be Google doing anything nefarious, just a case of "sorry, but our business is doing poorly and we might have to shut down Google News and stop paying if this keeps up."

In Australia there were concessions where the Australian gov of the time thought that having Google negotiate an agreement only with the major outlets (Rupert Murdoch) was acceptable so they don't pay every paper, just the ones that agree with the Liberal party (a right wing party) viewpoints.

The liberal party is now out of power but the labor party has no courage to stand up to Murdoch to repeal this.

It was all very clever and basically a way to fund right wing media in Australia via big tech. Blatantly corrupt as fuck and people need to be arrested for what went on to create this law but definitely clever.

It still boggles my mind the Government of Australia passed laws to collect money from tech giants to give 100% of it specifically to Rupert Murdoch.

Impressive it was done, and absolutely insane.

It may be different in the USA though because of the first amendment?

If google decides to delist, forcing them to list news sites would constitute compelled speech, would it not?

The US is not unique in having free speech laws. And those laws aren't a complete free for all.

I’m not sure this addresses the parent comment specifically mentioning the first amendment. I don’t think anyone was saying that the US is unique in having free speech laws or that those laws are a free-for-all.

However, it seems to at least be a common belief that US free speech laws are often interpreted more broadly than free speech laws in several other countries. Moreover, compelled speech (as noted by the commenter) seems not unrelated here. For instance, see the somewhat recent Colorado web designer case [1].

[1] https://www.cpr.org/2023/06/30/supreme-court-303-creative-ca...

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