We appear to be standing our ground!
Not my preferred choice of source but NatPo has more detail than some of the alternatives I saw. It includes some numbers as well as comments about the difference between Meta’s and Google’s approaches. Hint: they’re not the same, so there’s already cracks in the effort to make an example out of Canada.
Link taxes only serve to strengthen the monopolies. News companies are now going to be dependent on Facebook and google (the only ones who have to pay) and news companies and governments will want to keep the status quo as much as possible.
A general tax on large tech companies going to something like the Canadian media fund is a lot more reasonable.
We can not afford to tie the sustainability of such a vital resource to the success of two specific monopolistic foreign corporations.
News orgs are already dependent on Facebook and Google. This is just a patch to actually make this status quo sustainable. Patching things up instead of doing major reforms is the Canadian way, but it’s better than doing nothing. 🤷
The quickest way to make a permanent solution is to come up with a temporary solution.
A better than nothing temporary quick fix will become permanent and halt all progress or possibility of a better more permanent fix.