This is the Kader Daily Podcast for Thursday, November 30th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown. The link tax is an intuitive idea

as print news outlets are failing, charge, tech platforms for the privilege of linking to news sites,

and thus compel those companies to shoulder some of that burden.

The problem is it doesn't actually help anyone.

Heato's Paul Matzco explains how Canada is now learning the grim lessons of link taxes.

We talked about this in the past in relation to your paper, but just to recap, what is a link tax?

Yeah, so link taxes, they're a government-mandated subsidy from big tech to big ink that really can rip at the fabric of the

internet. So if you want if you're a Google or Meta or a big online platform

you're supposed to pay for the privilege of sharing links with

searchers with internet users. That's the idea of the link tax and there's a

complicated mechanism for making sure that money changes hands.

What's happened recently is that you might have heard the family friendly saying

mess around and find out.

We'll censor that a little bit for family friendly version.

Family friendly version, yes, yes.

Canada recently this summer decided to mess around with the link tax

and now they're finding out what happens when you do so.

And what happens...

Let's back up a little bit the idea of a link tax is that

publishers are having problems those that are rooted in print media, gathering news, reporting news, and so they are in dire financial

straits, not just in the United States, not just in Australia where this idea has become popular but presumably also in Canada

...