Thread by @doctorow

#Brazil's new #FakeNews law raises many concerns, but one of the least-understood and most dangerous is the #RemunerationRight, a #LinkTax that requires tech platforms to pay for the inclusion of text snippets when their users link to news articles:

eff.org/deeplinks/2022… 1/

If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2022/03/21/jef… 2/

The Remuneration Right was shoehorned into the legal proposal with little discussion or thought, and it shows. Structurally, the proposal is just a mess. 3/

[For example, it makes an exemption for users who post the "IP address" of a news article. It took us quite a while to figure out that they meant "URL."

These gaffes are just the start of the problems, though. The real issue is with the proposal's substance - or lack thereof. 4/

The proposed law doesn't define key terms like "journalism" or even "use," and it leaves the question of how the system will be administered to secondary regulation.

We know how this turns out, because this isn't the first time it's been tried. 5/

In France and Australia, link tax proposals became an opportunity for the biggest media companies and the biggest tech companies to cut back-room deals that froze out the independent press and domestic tech platforms. 6/

In France, the EU Copyright Directive's Link Tax resulted in a press organization doing a deal with Google requiring media companies to join Google's news product, and froze smaller press outlets out altogether. Today, it's is mired in litigation:

reuters.com/article/us-goo… 7/

In Australia, a media "bargaining code" that started as a system for all the press to get more transparency and a bigger share of ad money from tech was became a private deal between Rupert Murdoch, Google and Facebook that froze out independent press:

smh.com.au/business/compa… 8/

Brazil has its own giant media company, Globo, positioned to do the same. Remuneration Right supporters have found allies with Brazilian authoritarians who hope to revive the "traceability mandate" that effectively bans encryption on private chats:

eff.org/deeplinks/2021… 9/

The thing is, the press is right to be upset about the role plays in its finances, but they're wrong to worry about text snippets. 10/

The idea that quoting brief passages from the news is wrong, or should be subject to permission, is bonkers - the press itself relies heavily on this practice.

No, the real problem isn't that Big Tech steals journalists' content; it's that they steal publishers *money*. 11/

The ad-tech duopoly of Facebook and Google are mired in legal actions all over the world because of widespread ad-fraud, in which the pair, singly and in illegal conspiracy with one another, pocket money that is owed to the publishers.

techcrunch.com/2022/03/11/goo… 12/

If regulators and lawmakers want to improve relations between the press and tech platforms, they should clean up the ad markets. 13/

That would produce a universal benefit that would lift up independent journalists even more than the big media outlets; and it would weaken the tech platforms' importance to the media, making space for new business models and new ad-tech companies. 14/

Writing for @EFF, my colleague @veri_alimonti and I propose some measures that Brazil's lawmakers - and others - can do that will actually fund journalism and journalists, rather than reinforcing the dominance of Big Content companies: 15/

* Restrict ad-tech firms from providing "demand-side" and "supply-side" services in an ad sale - that is, end the practice of a single company serving as agent for both the buyer and the seller; 16/

* Mandate transparency about the process by which ads are sold, subject to independent audits, with meaningful penalties and a private right of action so media outlets can sue on their own; 17/

* Enforce privacy law to end or severely curtail surveillance advertising in favor of content-based ads, which will remove the "data-advantage" enjoyed by companies that illegally spied on us for decades. 18/

These are slower and more complex than a Remuneration Right, but they have a giant advantage over link-taxes: they will *work*. Doing something quickly without regard for the consequences is how we got into this mess in the first place ("Move fast and break things"). 19/

Cleaning up ad-tech embodies the idea of "move slow and fix things," and it's the antidote to the toxic practices of tech monopolists. 20/

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EFF
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creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.… 21/