Roundup: Google signs a deal to avoid transparency

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With days to go before the Online News Act would start applying, Google has come to an agreement that sees it pay $100 million per year into a fund, rather than to have individual deals with news outlets. This is one of the things that seems to escape most of the critics of the Act—this was about ensuring that the deals that Google and Facebook were already signing with news outlets were subject to transparency and had an arbitrator—the CRTC—at the ready in the case of disputes. This was never a “link tax” or some such nonsense, it was about putting structure into the same deals that were already being made, and it was the transparency that they objected to. This deal ensures that they are not subjected to that transparency, because it’s one lump sum, which is the real takeaway from this deal.

Of course, none of this fixes the underlying problem with is the domination of the ad tech space where Google and Facebook control all aspects of it and are siphoning money at each stage, which is why they have starved news outlets of advertising revenues. Of course, nobody wants to talk about that aspect. To deal with this, there still needs to be stronger anti-trust action, particularly in the US, but this deal is a start, nevertheless.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians claimed that they launched missiles from their Black Sea fleet against “military targets,” but nothing has been verified. Ukraine’s foreign minister says that the EU has delivered about 300,000 of its promised munitions shells so far.

Good reads:

  • An indictment in the US points not only to the attempted assassination of a Sikh leader in New York, but plans for three others in Canada (vindicating Trudeau).
  • The federal government is pausing their contract with the International Commission on Missing Persons after Indigenous groups complained.
  • The head of the Royal Canadian Navy put out a video warning about the dire state of the institution, with aging equipment and not enough sailors.
  • Senior Government Sources™ say that the government will move ahead with a sole-source contract to Boeing for new surveillance planes.
  • Spotify gave a sob story to the CRTC about how they couldn’t afford to contribute to Canadian content because they’re too poor (while paying artists almost nothing).
  • The National Assembly in Quebec likes to crow about secularism until someone points out that statutory holidays around Christmas are discriminatory.
  • Dow Chemical announced a net-zero petrochemical project near Edmonton with thanks provincial and federal incentives.
  • Kevin Carmicheal reflects on our country’s productivity problems, and whether pension fund investments are really the solution to them.
  • Kathryn May delves into the effect that the ArriveCan hearings are having on the public service, and what it’s saying about IT contracting in general.

Odds and ends:

https://youtu.be/EBtpMwUrtu8 

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One thought on “Roundup: Google signs a deal to avoid transparency”

  1. Another attack by the Media in English Canada on Quebec for being clear minded about Christmas. The H.R. Commission is nothing more than a bunch of woke nonsense with no credibility.

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