Canada’s telecommunications regulator said Wednesday that it will impose a Google rate to recover the cost of enforcing a law that requires large Internet platforms to pay the news content on its websites.
The imposition of the tax on the search engine giant occurs at a time of greater tension between Canada and the United States for commerce, border security and a digital services tax on American technology companies.
The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said that the vast majority of its operations are financed by rates charged to the companies that regulate, and the cost recovery rule for the online news law will enter into force as of April 1. The position can vary from year to year and does not have an upper limit.
The CRTC ended the rule after a period of public consultations, during which Google intervened to argue against its implementation saying that “it was not a rational approach” to impose 100 percent of the costs on an entity.
Part of a global trend to make Internet giants pay for the news, Canada approved the law last year to address the concerns of the media industry that technology companies were to the news companies of the online advertising market.
Front burner18:38How Google News applause was avoided
On Wednesday, the Federal Government announced an agreement with Google on bill C-18: the online news law. The technological giant had threatened to limit the access of Canadians to the news on their platforms, similar to the only imposed goal. According to the agreement, Google will pay the news companies $ 100 million annually. But is it enough? Who got the best treatment? And what does it mean for the future of journalism in Canada? Alfred Hermida, a scholar of the digital media and professor at the UBC School of Journalism and co -founder of the Canadian conversation. For front burner transcripts, visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be available for the next day of work.
Only the Google goal of Alphabet and Facebook-Parrent complied with the threshold of a large enough company that has to pay news organizations.
Google, after months of negotiations with the Government, agreed to pay $ 100 million annually in an agreement with the editors to keep news in the search results. Meta, however, decided to block the news of its Facebook and Instagram platforms in Canada to avoid payments.
Google, among other comments in its presentation to CRTC, argued that the rule was “an additional regulatory load for a company that has continued to support the news ecosystem in this country.”
In a policy notice published on its website on Wednesday, the CRTC said that due to the structure of the online news law, recovery costs can only be collected on the digital platforms to which the law is applied.
Google declined to comment beyond its response presented during the CRTC consultation.
