from Hacker News

California Assembly votes to pass the Journalism Preservation Act

by somid3 on 6/2/23, 2:10 PM with 99 comments

  • by avsteele on 6/2/23, 2:27 PM

    I'd recommend reading the actual bill if you want to see how (apparently) nuts it is.

    https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

    From my reading of the preamble:

    1) A 'digital journalism provider' (DJP, e.g. a newspaper) submits a notice to the platform (e.g meta) each month

    2) The platform must then remit to the provider some fraction of all its advertising revenue.

    3) The platform is forbidden from 'retaliating' (???) again the DJP by (for example) not linking to it in the future

    That third part cant possibly be constitutional.

  • by LatteLazy on 6/2/23, 3:54 PM

    I would not mind a bill that required contributions towards long, well researched, investigative pieces. However 99% of "news" articles I see these days are just re-writes of government/corporate press releases without question or "He/She said" pieces. I understand why, we're in an attention economy, and baseless nonsense with shock factor is quicker and more profitable than complex analysis. However encouraging such BS is bad enough, requiring people to fund it is actively harmful.

  • by Barrin92 on 6/2/23, 3:00 PM

    I'm not sold on the direct compensation from platforms to journalists just because as a mechanism it seems murky but the underlying rationale is I think correct. I'd prefer tech companies just get taxed much more aggressively and local news can draw and apply for public funds in some transparent way.

    But journalistic institutions have important functions. To pick a fairly modern example look at John Carreyrou at the WSJ blowing wide open the Theranos scandal despite the fact that Rupert Murdoch had significant financial stake in the company and owns the newspaper. There is a level of investment into investigative journalism and integrity and firewalls there that you do not have at social media companies. Most of them don't care at all, and if they pretend to you get the 'Twitter Files'.

  • by SnowProblem on 6/2/23, 4:14 PM

    I was reading Weaving the Web, the story of Tim Berners Lee and the creation of the web, there's a section on misunderstanding about links. In 1999. Wish this were still not a misunderstanding today.

    Myth Two: "Making a link to an external document makes the first document more valuable, and therefore is something that should be paid for." It is true that a document is made more valuable by links to other relevant, high-quality documents, but this doesn't mean anything is owed to the people who created those documents. If anything, they should be glad that more people are being referred to them. If someone at a meeting recommends me as a good contact, does that person expect me to pay him for making reference to me? Hardly.

  • by holler on 6/2/23, 3:54 PM

    This is ridiculous, and it passed 46-6 which is quite baffling but not surprising given it's California. I worked at a local newspaper in the past and I can't tell you how many people they employed for things not central to core journalism.

    Reflecting back now, it's not wonder they eventually downsized significantly and had to vacate the large building they'd been in for decades. They could have cut huge swaths of people, just focusing on journalism, and saved a ton of money.

  • by greatgib on 6/2/23, 2:56 PM

    > The bill is intended to shore up California’s struggling media outlets, including ethnic media and media serving so-called “news deserts.”

    I think that this illustrate well the shameful impact of lobbying. Because of their mediocrity, media are dying. This is normal free market that is working well. Instead they use of their influence to steal income from other business.

  • by beej71 on 6/2/23, 8:43 PM

    I don't get how this is compatible with copyright law or the First Amendment.

    Copyright law won't allow copyrighting a link URL.

    Fair use allows publishing short bits of copyrighted material (to varying degrees under varying circumstances).

    The First Amendment allows me to publish links.

    The First Amendment allows me to decide what I do or do not publish.

    If news agencies have a copyright case, they should make a copyright case and get royalties.

  • by tomschwiha on 6/2/23, 3:02 PM

  • by cgearhart on 6/2/23, 2:24 PM

    Seems really silly to only require that 70% of the fee is paid to staff. Why not get at the root of the problem and require the news org to reinvest at least 70% of their profit back into their business in order to even qualify for the fee? Or just provide public funding for public journalism? Or limit the ability of social media to display ads with news content?

    I dunno. This seems like a really lazy “solution”.

  • by baggy_trough on 6/2/23, 2:16 PM

    Does California never learn?

  • by mistrial9 on 6/2/23, 2:36 PM

    quick criticism here from the 'vested side of society without showing any alternatives.. where are the other solutions? 'local news dead, stock market goes up' headline for what, ten years now?

  • by ouid on 6/2/23, 3:45 PM

    Maybe to preserbe journalism, we should not enshrine into law the act of funding an institution that informs the people with one that lies to them.

    You want to save journalism? Make advertising illegal.