House committee adopts 5-Year moratorium for platforms from news link negotiations

By Denis Carmel OTTAWA – The House Heritage Committee on Friday unanimously adopted an NDP amendment to the Online News Act that will give big tech platforms immunity from negotiations with news platforms for a period of five years. The proposed legislation, bill C-18, will force platforms like Facebook and Alphabet to negotiate payments to news organizations for linking to their articles on their websites. But the platforms have argued that having to negotiate with news organizations constantly, month after month, year after year is untenable. So, an NDP amendment was introduced and passed unanimously Friday that would see a...