The Department of Heritage has announced proposed regulations to implement the Online News Act, which include estimates that the legislation could raise $172 million per year from Google and $60 million from Facebook.
“Those are estimates based on publicly available information and obviously the regulatory process is designed to be able to discuss this and consult with affected parties more openly and adjust the formula as needed,” a senior official from Heritage Canada said during a technical briefing on Sept 1.
“But the formula has been designed to be consistent with the modelling that the government department is throughout the Parliamentary process.”
“The Online News Act requires these dominant platforms to bargain fairly with news businesses—both big and small. The consultation on the proposed regulations today helps to provide clarity for platforms and news organizations while opening a dialogue toward real results,” she said.
During the briefing, the Heritage Canada official said the bill would apply to platforms that meet three criteria: they must earn a total global yearly revenue of $1 billion or more and operate in the search engine or social media market “involving the distribution and access of online use content in Canada.” They must also have 20 million or more Canadian average monthly unique visitors or average monthly active users.
After a platform determines that the act applies to them, they must notify the CRTC within 30 days.
The official added that the compensation provided by tech giants could also include non-monetary contributions such as training or advertising inventory.
“These are some of the things that the platforms indicated are part of their relationships with these businesses. As noted it will be necessary to put a dollar amount on those, and obviously both parties negotiating the agreement will need to be in agreement with that,” the official said.
‘Viable Framework’
When asked by reporters what would happen if a tech giant decided not to negotiate with news outlets, the Heritage Canada official said a news business could come forward and seek mandatory bargaining from the platform.“As we have seen, there is a question of whether platforms remove themselves entirely from the digital news marketplace to avoid being subjected to the act,” he said.
“The government remains focused through this regulatory process on putting forward what it sees as a reasonable, viable framework for digital news intermediaries for platforms to come to the table and bargain fairly with us.”
