They can always pull out of Canada, geoblock their services and install VPN blockers as a way to thumb their noses at Canada.
I wonder how much they actually make here?

As a freelance writer for print-based periodicals, I hold my own copyright, and only give away rights through a signed contract. When the internet came into its own, parties of all kinds would lift my stories without asking and reprint them on their web sites, in their newsletters, even verbatim on mass mailouts to their own e-mail lists. When I happened to spot violations - occasionally I'd Google "By Saul Chernos" or even phrases from my stories - I sent a polite e-mail or occasionally phoned and offered them the choice of removing my copyrighted material, paying me for its reuse, or linking to the web site of the periodical in which my article appeared. I actually collected on some of these; other removed the copy, and over the years most simply linked to the original.

That third option - linking to the original article, and thus driving traffic to my client periodical - has always struck me as key. My client has paid me for my article. I am generally (depending on any contracts signed with the client) free to repurpose or even reprint my article elsewhere. (I choose to significantly repurpose at the very least because it sucks to read the same article in two different publications).

A link to my article, if done properly, essentially takes the internet viewer to the web site hosting the article. It drives traffic to my client's site, and stands to help increase advertising potential there. More eyeballs for my client, and those eyeballs have at least temporarily shifted away from Facebook.

Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe the game has changed (I'm getting older and paying less attention to the politics of writers' issues). But logic seems to tell me this: If Facebook links to an article, and that link takes the viewer off Facebook and onto my client's site, isn't it my client who stands to benefit? That set of eyeballs found my article while on Facebook, but Facebook didn't actually reprint my article. In fact, Facebook defacto delivered my article to a set of eyeballs that might otherwise not have seen my article, or perhaps even known about my client's periodical.

Facebook and other social media behemoths are flush, and profiting much better than periodicals are in this internet era. But perhaps there's an argument to be made that print publications have, like broadcasters, utterly failed to properly adapt to and succeed in the new digital environment. There were some pretty big media chains in the 1990s, and they were eclipsed by upstarts who didn't have old-school baggage clogging their brains.

The real battle for professional content creators is to be paid fairly by their clients, and to collect royalty payments where their copy is reproduced or reused. That's been brutal. Publications by and large haven't raised their rates in decades. Some are as low as .05-.25 a word. A three source, 1000-wrd story at .50 a word earns the writer $500, with time spent coming up with the idea, researching basic facts and storyline, checking to see if sources will talk on the record, doing interviews, transcribing, writing, fact checking, and sometimes more tasks or expenses in the equation. Hell, every trades person who's done work on my home or car has earned more per hour than a decent writer will earn. And all kind of users, most notably universities and other educational institutions, have been studiously trying to avoid paying royalties. (Writers survive either by becoming world renowned authors or by supplementing their periodical writing with corporate writing).

I hate Facebook for many reasons (I find social media highly problematic on many fronts). But this isn't one of them. I'm curious who agrees with me, and why; and - even more - who doesn't, and why.

RadioActive wrote:

You're right that these links drive traffic to the sites, where I could read your work and see the ads on display that helped pay for your efforts. Why simply linking to an article, with perhaps a single headline and a cutline that explains the story, and inviting you to click through for more info is somehow seen as stealing content is beyond me. How else are most people going to find a story that interests them? You can't check every site non-stop. 

Not to mention, the vast majority of news links (~90% apparently) posted are re-shares of the news orgs' original posts linking to their own articles. Social sharing is obviously a net benefit.
 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/google-online-news-act-1.7043330

Hansa wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

=12pxNow Rogers has asked the CRTC to force American streamers to give up 2% of their earnings in Canada to help them pay for news and content. To me, this is way, way over the top. 

This is just a form of corporate tax and 2% is hardly punitive- why shouldn't foreign corporations doing business in Canada have to pay Canadian taxes or their equivalent? 
 

They absolutely should pay all taxes that apply to Canadian businesses. 

Adding another tax to bail out legacy competitors is punishing success.
 

Canadian broadcasters, of course, are all for C-11, seeing a potential big payday that will benefit them. 

But on Wednesday, Spotify testified in front of the CRTC and warned the kind of legislation that requires out of the country streaming companies to play by those rules may have far reaching and unforeseen consequences. This is the other side of the coin that giants like Rogers either don't realize - or more likely, don't care about.

And they warned if the Commission insists on going through with this, companies like Spotify may be forced to cut back on its Canadian investments in other areas. 

“We can’t be the only jurisdiction in the world that is asking you for contributions,” Joanne Levy, commissioner for Manitoba and Saskatchewan, told Spotify representatives in her questioning following their opening remarks.

“I’d like to know a little bit more about what’s happening in other jurisdictions.”

But Olivia Regnier, senior director of public policy for Spotify, called it “a bit of an exceptional situation.”

“Actually, you are the only country in the world that is looking at those contributions, at least at this stage,” she replied.

“We actually hope that this is not going to spread to other countries because it will be a real difficulty.”

Mandatory CanCon contribution could prompt investment cuts, Spotify tells CRTC