The power struggle between social media operators, media companies and the Canadian government over a planned media law is intensifying. The Online News Act is intended to create an ancillary copyright for press publishers on the internet, similar to the European model. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is now preparing to test press coverage blocking for up to five percent of its Canadian users.
The Canadian Senate is currently considering the draft law, which requires tech companies to pay publishers for the use of their content online. If passed, Meta has threatened to block media content completely. This comes after a similar dispute in Australia led to Facebook and Google blocking local news sites at the beginning of 2021.
Meta reportedly wants to eliminate potential technical sources of error in Canada before implementing a more extensive and permanent ban. The test will affect up to five percent of its 24 million Canadian users, with randomly selected affected persons potentially unable to see news links or video and photo formats. Media organizations affected by the blockade will be informed shortly in advance.
In Germany, the dispute between Corint Media and operators of social media platforms and search engines over appropriate remuneration continues. The collecting society asked Google for a license fee of 420 million euros for 2022 alone, which the US group rejected as “unfounded”. The proposal for Microsoft’s search engine Bing amounts to 1.2 million euros for the period since June 2021.
There are also calls from the publishing industry for strict enforcement of copyright and ancillary copyright against the operators of new voice bots and generative text machines, such as ChatGPT. However, politicians have been cautious in their reactions thus far.
