<
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210226/11062646326/best-summary-australias-news-link-tax-bargaining-code.shtml>
"I've been somewhat amazed at the response to Facebook's decision in Australia
to first block news links, in response to a dangerous new law, and then to cave
in and cut deals with news organizations to pay for links. Most amazing to me
is that otherwise reasonable people in Australia got very angry at me,
insisting that I was misrepresenting the tax. They keep insisting it's not a
tax, and that it's a "competition" response to "unfair bargaining power."
Except, as I've discussed previously, there's
nothing to bargain over when
you should never have to pay for links. The links are free. There's no
bargaining imbalance, because there's nothing to bargain over. And, it's
clearly a tax if the only end result is that Google and Facebook have to fork
over money because the government tells them to. That's... a tax.
Anyway, that's why I'm happy to see The Juice Media, an Australian outfit that
is famous for making hilarious "Honest Government Ads", usually for the
Australian government (but sometimes for elsewhere) has put out a new "ad"
about the link tax in which they explain how it was a fight to take money from
one set of giant rich companies, and give it to another set of giant rich
companies, and not to do anything useful in between"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
