• fubo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That sounds like a serious concern that the Canadian legislature should have taken into account before passing the Online News Act.

    By imposing fees when a website user posts a link to a news article, the legislature thereby gave the websites a choice: ① Pay the fees, or ② stop doing the behavior that triggers the fees — namely, allowing users to post those links.

    In general, when you impose a tax on some action, people do less of that action. People buy fewer cigarettes when the cigarette tax is raised. Raising gasoline taxes leads (eventually) to people opting for more fuel-efficient cars. And if you tax websites for carrying links to news articles, many of those websites will choose to stop doing that.