• tal@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I don’t like the idea of link taxes myself.

    But even setting aside the question of whether link taxes are a good idea, I don’t understand why they’re making a – what to me sounds dubious – antitrust argument. It seems like a simply bizarre angle.

    If the Canadian government wants news aggregators to pay a percentage of income to news companies, I would assume that they can just tax news aggregators – not per link to Canadian news source, but for operating in a market at all – take the money and then subsidize Canadian news sources. It may or may not be a good idea economically, but it seems like it’d be on considerably firmer footing than trying to use antitrust law to bludgeon news aggregators into taking actions that would trigger a link tax by aggregating Canadian news sources.

    • zephyreks@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      This is the real problem. Corporate taxes are frighteningly low and Canada can no longer afford to subsidize domestic industries out of corporate tax revenue.