The federal government has put a price tag on what it would like to see Google and Facebook spend under an act requiring the tech giants to compensate media for news articles.
Federal officials estimate Google would need to offer $172 million and Facebook $62 million in compensation to satisfy criteria they’re proposing for exemptions under the Online News Act.
Draft regulations released by the government Friday outlined for the first time how it proposes to level the playing field between Big Tech and Canada’s journalism sector.
“The goal of it is to make sure that those that benefit the most from the Canadian market fall under the bill,” Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge told The Canadian Press following the proposal’s release.
The government said companies will fall under the act if they have a total global revenue of $1 billion or more in a calendar year, “operate in a search engine or social media market distributing and providing access to news content in Canada,” and have 20 million or more Canadian average monthly unique visitors or average monthly active users.
For now, Google and Meta’s Facebook are the only companies that meet the criteria, though officials say Microsoft’s Bing search engine is the next closest to falling under the act.
“We know how technology evolves or how the market changes sometimes at a rapid pace and we want to make sure that this bill is relevant in five and 10 years,” St-Onge said.
Companies meeting the criteria can receive an exemption from the act if they already contribute to Canadian journalism an amount laid out by a government formula.
The formula is based on a tech
