This is also happening in Canada! - Source
It makes no sense! But apparently, it was already tried:
Below is only a part that is publicly available. Don't have a Medium account to see more.
Canada will become newsless
Jul 6 2023
Vaclav Vincalek
The big news? The Canadian government has passed into law Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act.
In the words of the government: ‘This enactment regulates digital news intermediaries to enhance fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contribute to its sustainability. It establishes a framework through which digital news intermediary operators and news businesses may enter into agreements respecting news content that is made available by digital news intermediaries. The framework takes into account principles of freedom of expression and journalistic independence.’
Even though the bill covers generic ‘digital news intermediaries’, it is specifically targeted at Google and Facebook. (It only shows you how irrelevant Twitter and Bing are.)
Both Google and Facebook have threatened that they will remove any trace of Canadian news from their respective websites and adjacent products.
Both companies made the same threats in Spain and Australia. In Spain the local publishers disappeared for 7 years. In Australia, the deals were struck faster.
When this discussion happened in Australia, yours truly wrote this: ‘Governments are after you. They like nothing more than to show how good they are at punishing bad actors (with the exception of themselves). It helps politicians win re-election. As much money as you have, you are vulnerable. Australia will be a test case — and the first of many.’ and ‘Create transparency with your algorithms and pay your share to authors who helped you to make your billions.’
And for the record, Google submitted its brief to the Standing Committee when the bill was discussed, where it explicitly stated ‘we support the concept of a fund model … A fund could follow established and known models like that of the Canadian Media Fund … in accordance with predictable and transparent formula ..’. Google doesn’t have a problem with paying.