Today’s editorial “Canada’s digit publishers need a level playing field” is typical of recent editorials from “The Record’s View” – one sided, self serving, generally leftist and error filled. (The Hamilton Spectator and The Toronto Star all have similar editorials today.) Their “View” – or more accurately, TorStar’s “View” is that search engines like Google and social media companies like Facebook “scrape content we publish” and then “Do not pay us for this content.” Now, I could go into a line by line dissection of this editorial, but hey – it’s Saturday morning and I’ve got way better things to do. But I do want to point out that the their main argument and the example they provide is just flat out wrong. Not misleading or arguably inaccurate, just wrong. Here is what the editorial says: “Think about this for a moment. Suppose you have a business that produces something that has value. You sell it and that’s how your business survives, and hopefully prospers. But what if someone comes along and takes the product of your work, and gives it away to the same people who might otherwise pay for it? …You haven’t got a chance. That’s not only unfair, it is bad for the economy.” “Facebook and Google take it without permission and use it, paying nothing for doing so.” No – this is obviously a false characterization of how Google operates. If I go to https://news.google.ca I see a list of news items from various online publishers like TheRecord.com, cbc.ca, aljazeera.com etc. All I see is a title of the online article, the website domain and the time is was published. I can then click on the link and go to the website and read the article. Just how does this compare with “…someone comes along and takes the product of your work, and gives it away…”. If I open up a store and someone steals gadgets I make, that’s theft. But if someone stands across the street and points to my store and says: “Hey look – Rita sells gadgets.” – how is this stealing? The example they provide is just false. Period. The main issue here is that Google and Facebook have a huge advantage over digital publishers since they know various data points about me and TheRecord does not. For example, if I go to Google (or Facebook) and search for a new bedroom set, they tag this data point to my account or through a tracking cookie. The next time I use Google, they directly target incoming ads based on my previous searches and sales on bedroom furniture suddenly appear on websites I view. (This may be creepy, but highly effective.) Digital media sites can’t do this since they do not have the ability to specifically target custom advertisements to individual users. But so what? This vastly superior business model is helping millions of companies use their scarce advertising dollars to better serve their customers. This is wrong? Funny how the editorial didn’t mention this rather important point. Of course, Google and Facebook aren’t the only sites that use this model. News aggregator sites like drudgereport.com, citizenfreepress.com, slashdot.org and reddit.com have used this model for years. So, what does TheRecord suggest on how to fix this “problem”. “The publishers are not looking for handouts. There is no public money and no impact on taxpayers. They’re seeking fairness. We pay millions of dollars each year to employ people who generate local journalism, and we pay to publish that content. By any measure, it is wrong for someone else to take that content and use it for their own purposes without compensating the source.” Oh, right – the government should force Google to pay to link to an article on a media site. Again, how is linking to an online article at TheRecord somehow “wrong”? Strange how they also forgot to mention that Trudeau just gave $600 Million of taxpayers money to “generate local journalism”. TheRecord should be thankful that Google and Facebook actually link to articles on their websites and drive traffic to them. Now they somehow want Google and Facebook to actually pay them to do something they can’t or won’t do themselves. Pathetic.
