Canada also forced IT giants to break monopolies

With 450 Canadian news outlets shut down since 2008, the government intends to use the sale of media news content to large companies to benefit journalists, IRNA reported on Wednesday from the French newspaper Le Figaro.

“Thanks to this law, these big companies will be held accountable for their content,” Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez told a news conference, referring to a bill that would oblige IT giants such as Google and Facebook to sign commercial contracts for their content. They will be and will benefit from a reliable news ecosystem that supports the independence and freedom of the media.

According to him, the purpose of the bill is for media outlets and journalists to receive fair rewards for producing content.

“If we look at 2020 revenue, the two platforms Google and Facebook are at the top, as they receive 80% of online revenue, which is a very large figure of $ 10 billion,” Rodrigues added.

According to the Canadian official, 450 media outlets in his country have been shut down since 2008, 60 of which have occurred in the last two years.

The bill, called the Online News Act, is inspired by a similar Australian law passed in 2021. It was the first law in the world to deal with the loss of media advertising revenue as a result of the presence of American IT companies.

Initially, Facebook and Google opposed the law, threatening to shut down the service. But the law was a way for the two big digital actors to invest tens of millions of dollars in local content production deals.

The press and media accuse the Google Group and other major platforms of exploiting their content without sharing revenue with them. To address the issue, the European Union introduced a “related rights” issue in 2019, according to which online platforms had to pay the press for the content used.

Unwilling to cooperate from the beginning, Google signed a contract with French newspapers in November for the first time in the world to use their content. AFP signed a “related rights” agreement with Google late last year, giving the American company the right to use the news agency’s content for five years.