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Cory Doctorow

Creating a new pseudocopyright to control who can discuss the news is a terrible idea, one that will make the media companies beholden to the tech giants at a time when we desperately need deep, critical reporting on the tech sector. In Canada, where #BillC18 is the latest link tax proposal in the running to become law, we're already seeing that conflict of interest come into play.

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12 comments
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

As #JesseBrown and @Paulatics - veteran reporter turned senator - discuss on #Canadaland, the #TorontoStar's sharp critical series on the tech giants died a swift, unexplained death after the *Star* began receiving license fees for tech users' links:

canadaland.com/paula-simons-bi

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Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Meanwhile, in #Australia, the #NewsBargainingCode stampeded tech giants into "voluntary" negotiations with the media companies, allowing #RupertMurdoch's #Newscorp to claim the lion's share, and then conduct layoffs across its newsrooms.

While in #France, the link tax depends on publishers integrating with #GoogleShowcase, a product that makes Google *more* money from news content and makes news publishers *more* dependent on Google:

politico.eu/article/french-com

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Meanwhile, in #Australia, the #NewsBargainingCode stampeded tech giants into "voluntary" negotiations with the media companies, allowing #RupertMurdoch's #Newscorp to claim the lion's share, and then conduct layoffs across its newsrooms.

While in #France, the link tax depends on publishers integrating with #GoogleShowcase, a product that makes Google *more* money from news content and makes news publishers *more* dependent on Google:

Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

A link tax only pays for so long as the tech giants remain dominant and continue to extract the massive profits that make them capable of paying the tax. But legislative action to fix the ad-tech markets, like #MikeLee's ad-tech breakup bill (cosponsored by both #TedCruz *and* #ElizabethWarren!) would shift power to publishers, and with it, money:

lee.senate.gov/2023/3/the-amer

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Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

With ad-tech intermediaries scooping up 50% or more of every advertising dollar, there is plenty of potential to save news without the need for a link tax. If unrigging the ad-tech market drops the platforms' share of advertising dollars to a more reasonable 10%, then the advertisers and publishers could split the remainder, with advertisers spending 20% less and publishers netting 20% *more*.

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Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Passing a federal privacy law would end surveillance advertising at the stroke of a pen, shifting the market to context ads that let publishers, not platforms, call the shots. As an added bonus, the law would stop #Tiktok from spying on Americans, and also end Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft's spying to boot:

pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik

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Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Mandating competition in app stores - as the Europeans are poised to do - would kill Google and Apple's 30% "app store tax" - the percentage they rake off of every transaction from every app on Android and Ios. Drop that down to the 2-5% that the credit cards charge, and every media outlet's revenue-per-subscriber would jump by 25%.

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Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Add to that an #EndToEnd rule for tech requiring them to deliver updates from willing receivers to willing senders, thus newsletter you subscribed to would stay out of your spam folder and every post by the media you followed shows up in your feed:

pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e

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Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

That would make it end tech giants' sleazy enshittification gambit of forcing creative workers and media companies to pay to "boost" their content (or pay $8/month for a #BlueTick) just to get it in front of the people who asked to see it:

doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1

The point of enshittification is that it's bad for everyone *except* the shareholders of tech monopolists. Jeremy's Razors are bad, winning a 2.7 star rating out of five:

facebook.com/JeremysRazors/rev

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That would make it end tech giants' sleazy enshittification gambit of forcing creative workers and media companies to pay to "boost" their content (or pay $8/month for a #BlueTick) just to get it in front of the people who asked to see it:

doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1

The point of enshittification is that it's bad for everyone *except* the shareholders of tech monopolists. Jeremy's Razors are bad, winning a 2.7 star rating out of five:

Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

The company charges more for these substandard razors, and you are more likely to find out about them, because of targeted, behavioral ads. These ads starve media companies and creative workers and make social media and search results *terrible*.

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Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

A link tax depends on #BigTech staying big, dribbling a few crumbs for media companies, compromising their ability to report on their deep-pocketed beneficiaries, in a way that advantages the biggest media companies and leaves small, local and independent press in the cold.

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Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

By contrast, a privacy law, ad-tech breakups, app-store competition and end-to-end delivery would shatter the power of Big Tech and shift power to users, creative workers and media companies. These are solutions that don't just keep working if Big Tech goes away - they actually hasten that demise! What's more, they work just as well for big companies as they do for independents.

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Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Whether you're the *Times* or you're an ex-*Times* reporter who's quit your job and now crowdfunds to cover your local school board and town council meetings, shifting *control* and the *share of income* is will benefit you, whether or not Big Tech is still in the picture.

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Image:
freeimageslive.co.uk (modified)
freeimageslive.co.uk/free_stoc

CC BY 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/b

eof/

Whether you're the *Times* or you're an ex-*Times* reporter who's quit your job and now crowdfunds to cover your local school board and town council meetings, shifting *control* and the *share of income* is will benefit you, whether or not Big Tech is still in the picture.

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Image:
freeimageslive.co.uk (modified)
freeimageslive.co.uk/free_stoc

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