U.S. news publishers take big tech to court
Australia model more likely in Canada
Struggling U.S. news publishers have been piling into the courts to launch antitrust cases against Google and Facebook Inc., but the head of Canada’s largest newspaper chain says that path is unlikely in Canada given the government’s plans to address imbalances between big tech and publishers.
Last week, publishers of 125 newspapers across 11 U.S. states filed a lawsuit against the tech giants, accusing them of monopolizing the digital advertising market and restricting the monetization of local news.
The case came several months after an antitrust lawsuit launched in January by West Virginia-based news group HD Media against the tech giants was hailed as the first of its kind.
Even London, U.k.-based The Daily Mail has sought legal recourse in the United States, filing a lawsuit of its own in New York last week. Meanwhile, Texas and nine other states are continuing with a lawsuit they began in December alleging collusion between the tech giants.
While court actions pile up in the U.S., the European Union is considering new laws and Australia has pioneered the use of legislation to push Google and Facebook to pay for using local news, an option Canada is studying.
The latter outcome is better than going to court, according to Andrew Macleod, president and chief executive of Postmedia Network Inc., Canada’s largest newspaper chain and publisher of Financial Post.
“We’re highlighting the fact that jurisdictions around the world are moving very quickly on this file,” Macleod said by phone last week. “We’re confident that the federal government will follow through with actions based on what they’ve said to date publicly.”
Gillian Hadfield, a professor of law at the University of Toronto Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, noted that winning antitrust lawsuits may prove a tall order because the complex automated systems the tech giants use in digital advertising “outgun” that kind of conventional legal approach.
“The one prediction I will make about the antitrust lawsuits is that they will be incredibly expensive and incredibly slow and probably the entire technology will have moved on by the time anything is resolved,” Hadfield said by email.
Federal Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said he’s aiming to put forward new legislation this year to address the unequal market between news producers and the tech giants.
“To address this imbalance, one-off initiatives, such as those proposed by digital platforms, won’t be enough,” Guilbeault said in an emailed statement. “A more sustainable solution is required to protect our democracy while levelling the playing field for everyone. We’ve already had conversations with France and Australia in this regard and we follow the outcomes of their own initiatives with close attention.”
David Soberman, professor of marketing at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, said newspapers will become sustainable again, if only as digital entities, as the tech giants realize where their bread is buttered.
“If eventually you reach a point where those news organizations don’t exist or aren’t viable any more, Facebook basically shoots itself and it makes itself less attractive as a platform from which people can get news,” Soberman said by phone. “The argument isn’t whether at some point there is going to be a division of revenue. There is. It’s a just a question of how the pie is going to be cut.”
To Macleod, fixing an uneven playing field that would never be allowed in financial markets, for instance, is the best way to boost news.
“Imagine digital media producers are like farmers and we’re bringing our produce to market and the single largest farmer on the planet happens to be Google and Facebook,” he said. “Not only do they own all the products and goods in their supermarket but they also own all the mechanisms for monetization. Try to imagine a small farmer trying to compete with that farm. It’s completely impossible and it’s a market failure.”