Oh wow, Canada’s heritage minister thinks it is “immoral” that big media conglomerates do not get paid money for people sharing links to their stories?

He seems to think the Internet should work like a top 40 radio station – which is a really bad idea.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7316532/facebook-regulation-canada-steven-guilbeault/

There are a bazillion legitimate problems with social media platforms, but the idea that it is “immoral” to copy-paste links to websites for free is not one of them.

Every media outlet in Canada freely chooses to post their stories on FB & Twitter. No one forced them to do that.

Hell, if we’re seriously going down this road, then why shouldn’t everyone get money for their tweets?

Why does Global News get compensated if someone tweets a link to their story, but Twitter users don’t get compensated if Global News embeds their tweet in one of their stories?

For more context, Canada’s big media industry is lobbying the government to rewrite copyright laws to treat news like entertainment content.

Except news content is already protected and public interest journalism is not the same as a Hollywood movie.

https://nmc-mic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Joint-Public-Declaration_EN-Final_2020-02-11.pdf

Mark my word, Canada’s media establishment is naively leading us to a future where:

1. Things of legitimate public interest don’t get reported because they’re shielded by copyright / paywalls;

2. Information inequality means fewer and fewer can afford to access “trusted” news.