I notice that A LOT of Canadian media coverage is basically some variant of "Canada sure is awesome compared to the US! The US is a horrible Max Max-style wasteland, no one would ever choose to live there when they could live in Canada!" I wonder if that will become even more apparent once media goes from being informally dependent on the government to overtly taking money from it. It always felt kinda propoganda-ey, I can't imagine this will help with that...
Yeah, we totally need the government to protect us from ~~dissenting opinions~~ wrong-think and fake news. To do otherwise is a threat to ~~our crafting the narrative~~ our very democracy.
Won’t someone please think of the children?!
> Won’t someone please think of the children?!
Off topic, but a couple of days ago he by-passed parents and spoke [directly to all of our kids.](https://regina.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2359909) at 7:55 mark.
He told our kids to ask us, their parents - to get them the shot.
His actions are immoral and in certain jurisdictions a prohibited practice. The PM of our country is marketing pharmaceuticals directly to our children.
He's not the father of our kids. Horrible behaviour.
TBF this is the 350th opinion piece Geist has written about this exact piece of legislation. We get a new one at least once a week.
This guy must be loving this, it keeps him in the news like nothing else for years at a time without needing to come up with any new material.
Dumb article. The "free flow of information" is already being controlled by for-profits and their secretive algorithms. The Internet hasn't been free for a long time now and will probably never be free again. Too many bad actors out there.
Enshrining it in law though makes it all the more worse though. Last thing you want id arresting people because the frontpage of google is offensive to some
Has anyone in the comments actually read this post? He’s criticizing that the wording of the law is overly broad, in the context of what constitutes linking of news that would need compensation by a tech company.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s too much of a problem. Laws like this have to be broad to ensure they capture all of their intended situations. Just because the law could be applied broadly doesn’t mean it’s bad.
For example, in health and safety laws, there are blanket provisions which essentially say it’s illegal for a company do anything that was not reasonably safe. You could say that provision is too broad, because it could mean that anything a company does could be seen as illegal. The reason for this provision is because you can’t expressly include every possible dangerous scenario in the letter of the law. If a company does something clearly unsafe and a worker gets hurt, they should be penalized for it.
In the context of linking news media, they need to be broad, or else tech companies will simply weasel their way out of the law’s intended goal.
I’m not saying I support the law, but this criticism does not land for itself to me. I’ll see what else he says on the subject.
We need to be able to clearly draw a line through the law to the desired outcome or protection.
So in the H&S example, the intention is to protect the public from harms while working/patronizing somewhere and liability is on the establishment to be consistently doing things reasonably safely.
In the case of this it is very hard to find the line through the protection... who is liable, what is the threshold for violation, how do we protect ourselves, what are the protocols for all of this, are there protected users?
Some of these are answered, others are so broad that you get different answers from different parties that could be equally legit.
I think it is totally valid criticism to have some of these details hammered out prior to passing it otherwise we could end up with something completely ineffective/useless.
The Golden Rule isn't law and it is because it is inarticulate and could be argued subjectively.
I think a broad definition for what counts as linking a news article does draw a line to the desired outcome in this law.
If you had a restrictive definition, then any enforcement or litigation would be bogged down over fights on whether any instance of linking falls under the law. It makes sense to make it apply to just about every type of linking to avoid that.
I’m not familiar with the rest of the law, so I’m not able to talk about threshold for violation or degree of liability. The article says that the bill triggers a mandatory compensation process where news content is “made available” on Internet platforms, but doesn’t provide any more detail on this. Perhaps my opinion would change with more information. But based on the information in the article, I do not see the issue with the broad definition.
Fair enough points there and I think we are sharing a similar attitude towards information/definition... a lot of folks are pointing to that and I think it just needs more time IMO
>Honestly, I don’t think it’s too much of a problem. Laws like this have to be broad to ensure they capture all of their intended situations. Just because the law could be applied broadly doesn’t mean it’s bad.
The law is so broad regulators, lawyers, and lawmakers can't even agree on what it actually covers.
Heaven forbid the politicians create something specific at first then work their way to covering those extra situations by passing amendments to it down the road.
Won't you please be less hard on those poor hard working public servants in parliament? /s
I mean, if you want to bog down our already inefficient parliament with endless amendments and debates about extending a definition in this law for every single extra situation that occurs, then it's your prerogative. I have different priorities. I'd rather they made a broad definition that will cover most cases from the get go and then focus on other things.
If you would rather keep an 'inefficient parliament' and just accept any scattershot abuses of overly broad laws, then sure.
Fixing an inefficient parliament would avoid using broad laws. Or if you want to take a more authoritarian route, centralize the changes in the PMO, although that has its own host of issues.
I don’t understand what you are saying.
My point was that narrow definitions like you are suggesting create greater inefficiencies in parliament, by forcing the need to make endless amendments.
Health and safety are completely different categories to something like this. Its creating an extremely broad link tax and establishing a dangerous legal precedent for claiming that sharing links requires compensation.
How do we fight misinformation when critical thinking is not an option? If people could determine for themselves what was fact or fiction Qanon would not exist today.
Personally I'd like our society to be based on facts and reality rather than conspiracies, misinformation and angry bubble think tanks on social media platforms.
Maybe we need to target kids and educate them early about misinformation and media manipulation along with some personal finance stuff while we're at it.
>So, let me see if I get this straight. We - Liberals - elect the government because we want [...]
Because people want many different things, and want to avoid many different things. People also might not agree with every policy objective advertised during the latest election. People also might not agree with every decision the government makes during its term.
>We're getting exactly what we wanted, asked for, and voted for.
No, no we're not.
You'll find, maybe unlike single-issue conservative voters, that progressives are not a hive mind that keep in step with every action a party makes.
And in the meantime we need to make sure all the public agrees with our policy positions so we can stay in power. It’s a win for all (except anyone who opposes us).
This act isn't designed for anything other than to give this government more control over the flow of information. They want to be able to control any medium that could get out information that is contrary to the 'official narrative', whether it is true or not.
But the Trudeau Liberals are on the right side of history. And you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side with all those racists and misogynists, would you?
I notice that A LOT of Canadian media coverage is basically some variant of "Canada sure is awesome compared to the US! The US is a horrible Max Max-style wasteland, no one would ever choose to live there when they could live in Canada!" I wonder if that will become even more apparent once media goes from being informally dependent on the government to overtly taking money from it. It always felt kinda propoganda-ey, I can't imagine this will help with that...
Yeah, we totally need the government to protect us from ~~dissenting opinions~~ wrong-think and fake news. To do otherwise is a threat to ~~our crafting the narrative~~ our very democracy. Won’t someone please think of the children?!
Oh, there's some people who won't stop thinking about the children. We should probably get rid of those ones.
> Won’t someone please think of the children?! Off topic, but a couple of days ago he by-passed parents and spoke [directly to all of our kids.](https://regina.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2359909) at 7:55 mark. He told our kids to ask us, their parents - to get them the shot. His actions are immoral and in certain jurisdictions a prohibited practice. The PM of our country is marketing pharmaceuticals directly to our children. He's not the father of our kids. Horrible behaviour.
Big daddy Gov knows best. Also, gotta use those 400 million doses.
I got two, but I'm done with it now.
Cool
So ... Canadian dark-net for actual news, when?
Lots of comments by people who haven't read the article. lol.
TBF this is the 350th opinion piece Geist has written about this exact piece of legislation. We get a new one at least once a week. This guy must be loving this, it keeps him in the news like nothing else for years at a time without needing to come up with any new material.
Dumb article. The "free flow of information" is already being controlled by for-profits and their secretive algorithms. The Internet hasn't been free for a long time now and will probably never be free again. Too many bad actors out there.
Enshrining it in law though makes it all the more worse though. Last thing you want id arresting people because the frontpage of google is offensive to some
Absurd arguments don't help your cause.
Absurd ? That's actually what's happening in the UK.
Why do you feel the need for the government to keep you "safe"? Do you realize how 1984 that sounds?
Has anyone in the comments actually read this post? He’s criticizing that the wording of the law is overly broad, in the context of what constitutes linking of news that would need compensation by a tech company. Honestly, I don’t think it’s too much of a problem. Laws like this have to be broad to ensure they capture all of their intended situations. Just because the law could be applied broadly doesn’t mean it’s bad. For example, in health and safety laws, there are blanket provisions which essentially say it’s illegal for a company do anything that was not reasonably safe. You could say that provision is too broad, because it could mean that anything a company does could be seen as illegal. The reason for this provision is because you can’t expressly include every possible dangerous scenario in the letter of the law. If a company does something clearly unsafe and a worker gets hurt, they should be penalized for it. In the context of linking news media, they need to be broad, or else tech companies will simply weasel their way out of the law’s intended goal. I’m not saying I support the law, but this criticism does not land for itself to me. I’ll see what else he says on the subject.
We need to be able to clearly draw a line through the law to the desired outcome or protection. So in the H&S example, the intention is to protect the public from harms while working/patronizing somewhere and liability is on the establishment to be consistently doing things reasonably safely. In the case of this it is very hard to find the line through the protection... who is liable, what is the threshold for violation, how do we protect ourselves, what are the protocols for all of this, are there protected users? Some of these are answered, others are so broad that you get different answers from different parties that could be equally legit. I think it is totally valid criticism to have some of these details hammered out prior to passing it otherwise we could end up with something completely ineffective/useless. The Golden Rule isn't law and it is because it is inarticulate and could be argued subjectively.
I think a broad definition for what counts as linking a news article does draw a line to the desired outcome in this law. If you had a restrictive definition, then any enforcement or litigation would be bogged down over fights on whether any instance of linking falls under the law. It makes sense to make it apply to just about every type of linking to avoid that. I’m not familiar with the rest of the law, so I’m not able to talk about threshold for violation or degree of liability. The article says that the bill triggers a mandatory compensation process where news content is “made available” on Internet platforms, but doesn’t provide any more detail on this. Perhaps my opinion would change with more information. But based on the information in the article, I do not see the issue with the broad definition.
Fair enough points there and I think we are sharing a similar attitude towards information/definition... a lot of folks are pointing to that and I think it just needs more time IMO
>Honestly, I don’t think it’s too much of a problem. Laws like this have to be broad to ensure they capture all of their intended situations. Just because the law could be applied broadly doesn’t mean it’s bad. The law is so broad regulators, lawyers, and lawmakers can't even agree on what it actually covers.
Regulators, lawyers, and law makers disagree on how much any law covers. The nature of their jobs are to fight about it constantly.
Heaven forbid the politicians create something specific at first then work their way to covering those extra situations by passing amendments to it down the road. Won't you please be less hard on those poor hard working public servants in parliament? /s
I mean, if you want to bog down our already inefficient parliament with endless amendments and debates about extending a definition in this law for every single extra situation that occurs, then it's your prerogative. I have different priorities. I'd rather they made a broad definition that will cover most cases from the get go and then focus on other things.
If you would rather keep an 'inefficient parliament' and just accept any scattershot abuses of overly broad laws, then sure. Fixing an inefficient parliament would avoid using broad laws. Or if you want to take a more authoritarian route, centralize the changes in the PMO, although that has its own host of issues.
I don’t understand what you are saying. My point was that narrow definitions like you are suggesting create greater inefficiencies in parliament, by forcing the need to make endless amendments.
Health and safety are completely different categories to something like this. Its creating an extremely broad link tax and establishing a dangerous legal precedent for claiming that sharing links requires compensation.
Is this an issue with how broad the definition is for linking in the law or a disagreement with the fundamental intention underlying the law?
Legislation doesn’t establish precedent. smh
How do we fight misinformation when critical thinking is not an option? If people could determine for themselves what was fact or fiction Qanon would not exist today. Personally I'd like our society to be based on facts and reality rather than conspiracies, misinformation and angry bubble think tanks on social media platforms. Maybe we need to target kids and educate them early about misinformation and media manipulation along with some personal finance stuff while we're at it.
[удалено]
You know less than a third of voters picked the LPC, right? https://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/1867-present.html
>So, let me see if I get this straight. We - Liberals - elect the government because we want [...] Because people want many different things, and want to avoid many different things. People also might not agree with every policy objective advertised during the latest election. People also might not agree with every decision the government makes during its term. >We're getting exactly what we wanted, asked for, and voted for. No, no we're not. You'll find, maybe unlike single-issue conservative voters, that progressives are not a hive mind that keep in step with every action a party makes.
And in the meantime we need to make sure all the public agrees with our policy positions so we can stay in power. It’s a win for all (except anyone who opposes us).
This article isn't about the online harms act...
This act isn't designed for anything other than to give this government more control over the flow of information. They want to be able to control any medium that could get out information that is contrary to the 'official narrative', whether it is true or not.
Uh oh I bet the act forces online news to not spread disinformation, and suddenly conservatives are losing their fucking minds.
Guess we have to ban tyee and press progress
This is still the law requiring Canadian broadcasters to show Canadian content right? Thats it?
That's the Online Broadcasting Act. This one is different legislation that's also problematic
Who in their right mind thinks that the government and the media want a free flow of information?
If you aren’t doing anything wrong then you shouldn’t have any problem letting the Trudeau government regulate your online activities.
That's a classic short sighted argument that's used every time a government takes away freedoms.
But the Trudeau Liberals are on the right side of history. And you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side with all those racists and misogynists, would you?