Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.Jan 10Pluralistic: Predistribution vs redistribution (Big Tech edition) (10 Jan 2026)
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/10/markets-are-regulations/
As mandatory online news payments become more common, so do their detrimental effects on small and local publications. @techdirt’s @mmasnick explains how hedge funds and out-of-state media will benefit from these policies during our recent panel
#NewsIndustry #LinkTaxes
https://customer-xpumu086o0vrj4bq.cloudflarestream.com/4a3a60ae4a853accc7f4cd0caa276010/watch
Sharing material used to be the norm for newspapers, and should be for LLMs
Even though parents insist that it is good and right to share things, the copyright world has succeeded in establishing the contrary as the norm. Now, sharing is deemed a bad, possibly illegal thing. But it was not always thus, as a fascinating speech by Ryan Cordell, Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences and Department of English at the […]
#ai #children #ecosystem #linkTaxes #llms #newspapers #panic #parents #reUse #selections
https://walledculture.org/sharing-material-used-to-be-the-norm-for-newspapers-and-should-be-for-llms/
Join us today @ 2:00PM EST for part one of a series unpacking the ongoing trend of mandatory payments for online news content both in the U.S. and abroad. Listen to a discussion around #LinkTaxes and what this development could mean for the future of the news and digital ecosystems.
This is a *much* better approach than the profit-sharing arrangements that are being trialed in Australia, Canada and France (these are sometimes called #NewsBargainingCodes or #LinkTaxes). Funding the news by guaranteeing it a share of Big Tech's profits makes the news into partisans for that profit - not the Big Tech watchdogs we need them to be.
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We don't want the news to be Big Tech's *partners* - we need them to be Big Tech's *watchdogs*. #LinkTaxes and other profit-sharing arrangements between the media and tech cut against the civic energy Stites wants to build.
(You can read more about this - along with policy prescriptions for halting Big Tech's rent-extraction from the news - in "Saving the News From Big Tech," my @EFF white-paper:)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech
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Download this whole series as a single PDF.Media is in crisis: newsrooms all over the world are shuttering and the very profession of journalism is under sustained ideological and physical assault. Freedom of the press is a hollow doctrine if the only news media is written or published by...
#Canada #C18 #LinkTaxes #BigTech #News #Media #Journalism #Meta #Google #TargetedAds: "The link tax laws passed around the world have typically been justified on the grounds that companies such as Google and Meta are are using links drive traffic to news sites, but keeping any profits from advertising in the process. In other words, online advertising means Google and Meta have taken control of the online advertising that used to be the mainstay of news publishers.
As a previous PIA article explained, today’s advertising system is based on constant surveillance of site visitors, but Google and Meta retain most of the revenue. In other words, if C-18 aims to fix the publishing industry’s financial challenges, the solution isn’t introducing link taxes that don’t address the real problem. Instead, news publishers could move to context-based advertising, which respects the privacy of visitors, and doesn’t hand most of the ad revenue to intermediaries like Google and Meta."
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/canadas-new-c-18-link-tax-law/
However, both the EU and the US - as well as Canada and Australia - have focused their news industry legislating on misguided #LinkTaxes, where tech giants are required to pay license fees to link to and excerpt the news. This is an approach grounded in the mistaken idea that tech giants are stealing media companies' content - when really, tech giants are stealing their *money*:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/18/news-isnt-secret/#bid-shading
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US Link Taxes Won’t Be Part of Year End “Must Pass” Legislation
The threat of link taxes in the US has been averted as they won't be part of the year end "must pass" bills.
Canada is certainly not alone when it comes to debating the completely insane idea of link taxes. In the US, there is a bill known as the JCPA (or Journalism Comp
https://www.freezenet.ca/us-link-taxes-wont-be-part-of-year-end-must-pass-legislation/
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