Podcasting “Big Tech Isn’t Stealing News Publishers’ Content”

“…It’s stealing their money.”

This week on my podcast, I read my Medium column, “Big Tech Isn’t Stealing News Publishers’ Content,” on how the news industry’s focus on charging tech firms to link to them is totally misguided, and misses the real issue: the rigging of the ad market.

https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-isnt-stealing-news-publishers-content-a97306884a6b

Countries all over the world — France, Australia, Brazil and now Canada (Bill C-11)- have fallen in love with the idea that the answer to the news media’s woes is to create a new licensable copyright over “snippets” of news that users post to social media.

Every country’s copyright system has a suite of “limitations and exceptions” (like fair use and fair dealing) that ensure that copyright is compatible with free expression. The right to quote the news historically fell squarely in this category: after all, it’s only the news if we’re talking about it (otherwise it’s a secret).

For decades, our public squares have been moving online. The pandemic accelerated and cemented this process. Today, when we talk about the news, we probably do so on an online platform, and, thanks to monopolization, the number of platforms where this takes place is vanishingly small and they are extraordinarily profitable.

Governments (correctly) observe that democracies need a free press, and they (correctly) observe that the news media is in trouble, and they (correctly) conclude that monopolies in the tech sector have something to do with this.

Then they come to the (alarmingly wrong) conclusion that the way to resolve all these issues is to create a new paracopyright that lets news companies charge for the right to talk about the news.

What’s wrong with this conclusion? Well, it’s a disaster from a human rights perspective, for starters. Remember, if you have the right to license discussion of the news, you have the right to withhold that license — that is, the right to decide who can debate, explain and analyze your own reporting.

But it also seriously misapprehends the way that tech firms rip off the news business. Quoting the news isn’t a copyright…