Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has unveiled new details of a law seeking to force tech companies to pay news providers, but meta platform company Said it would continue to prevent Canadian users from viewing news reports on Facebook.
Draft regulations published on Friday said Meta and Alphabet Corporation News outlets are required to pay at least 4% of their annual Canadian earnings in return for providing links to news articles. That means the law forces Alphabet’s Google to pay Canadian journalism about C$172 million ($127 million) a year, while Meta’s Facebook needs to pay C$62 million a year, according to government estimates.
The regulations are intended to be an olive branch that addresses companies’ complaints that the law, dubbed the “Online News Act,” exposes them to unknown financial liabilities. The bill stipulates that platforms must negotiate payments with news providers.
facebook has blocked user In Canada, people can’t post or view links to news stories — cutting off an important source of web traffic for many news companies. A spokesman for Meta said the draft rules would have no impact.
Rachel Curran, Meta’s director of public policy, said: “Because this legislation is based on the false assertion that Meta benefits unfairly from the news content shared on our platform, today’s proposed regulations will not affect the end of our Journalism as a business decision,” Canada, said by email.
the alphabet also has being threatened Cut off Google News links in Canada. A company spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Administration officials said the rules had not been shared with the companies before Friday and they would try to engage them in the coming weeks.
“Canadians rely on digital platforms for news and information, but these technology platforms must act responsibly to support the sharing of news that they and Canadians benefit from,” Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said in a release.
The law is expected to come into effect on December 19.
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