What can Canada learn from Australia's bid to make big tech pay for news?
www.ctvnews.ca
Canadian lawmakers are locked in a dispute with internet technology companies over a law that would compel them to pay news publishers for content, years after a similar regulatory saga played out in Australia.

Some reflections on the Australian experience and what they might mean for Canada.

After Google’s move on Thursday, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez sent a written statement calling the companies’ moves “deeply irresponsible and out of touch … especially when they make billions of dollars off of Canadian users” with advertising.

Australia’s regulatory experiment – the first of its kind in the world – also got off to a rocky start, but it has since seen tech companies, news publishers and the government reach a middle ground.

  • Godort@lemm.ee
    242·
    1 year ago

    There is no way the general public would adopt RSS. The barrier to entry is just too high right now. Technology that delivers news needs to be idiot-proof and require basically 1-2 steps

    Eg:

    • click on the blue-green swirl
    • type “Facebook”

    Or:

    • turn TV on
    • change channel to news

    Don’t get me wrong, RSS is great, but it’s also used exclusively by the computer-literate and it has been that way for basically 25 years.

    • ahal
      14·
      1 year ago

      RSS does not necessarily mean clunky UI and difficult to use. There are some pretty beautiful podcast apps with great content discovery features out there :)

      No reason a news app that reads RSS needs to be more complicated than opening Facebook.

      • Lorax
        7·
        1 year ago

        I use Feedly on iOS to follow all my favourite sites and it’s great! I combine it with Pocket to read stuff offline too and it’s a killer combo. Never liked social media’s “push” content and preferred having the freedom to “pull” what I want.

    • jerkface
      3·
      1 year ago

      You just click on an RSS link and it opens in your reader where you can subscribe or just consume directly. How hard is it to work a hyperlink?!