Sept. 1, 2023
The federal government has put a price tag on how much it would like to see Google and Facebook spend under an act requiring the tech giants to compensate media for news articles.
Federal officials estimate Google would need to offer $172 million and Facebook $62 million in annual compensation to satisfy criteria they’re proposing be used to give exemptions under the Online News Act, a bill passed over the summer that will force tech companies to broker deals with media companies whose work they link to or repurpose.
Draft regulations released by the government Friday outlined for the first time how it proposes to level the playing field between Big Tech and Canada’s journalism sector, and which companies it will apply to.
The government said companies will fall under the act if they have a total global revenue of $1 billion or more in a calendar year, “operate in a search engine or social media market distributing and providing access to news content in Canada” and have 20 million or more Canadian average monthly unique visitors or average monthly active users.
For now, Google and Meta’s Facebook are the only companies to meet the criteria, though officials say Microsoft’s Bing search engine is the next closest to falling under the act.
Companies meeting the criteria can receive an exemption from the act if they already contribute an amount laid out by a government formula to Canadian journalism .
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