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I had understood that the tiny snippets provided by platforms have long been considered consistent with fair use or fair dealing exemptions. Similarly, when RNZ does its morning roundup of what's on the country's front-pages and reads out the headlines.

If the licensing fee is set at a fixed rate high enough to 'save the media', expect platforms to block links rather than pay. Potential for unpredictable and high levies in Canada have had the platforms stop providing news altogether. And I understand that Meta no longer views news as being valuable to the site anyway: clicks away from Facebook don't help Facebook but do help the linked-to papers.

If the fee is set as per-use, expect platforms to pull back because they have no control over the costs - it's determined by how often users put up links, and could wind up being high.

If the fee is set at a level low enough that platforms are happy to pay, it's not likely to do much to help media.

And all of it is misguided. If there's public benefit, why foist the burden onto platforms to provide?

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You are correct on the fair use situation which I why I suggested that the aggregation of content references be included as protected material.

As things are going the move on the part of the major platforms is to move away from news but my proposal was directed against yet another Government bureaucracy trying to skew the market.

I know it sounds like economic Darwinism but mainstream media is going to have to adapt or die - in the same way that the human race is going to have to deal with "climate change".

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I'm very happy with an 'adapt or die' proposition. I worry though that moves that tell Facebook to block news full-stop wind up really hurting smaller outlets that rely on them for distribution. And a high licensing fee would tell Facebook to block news here.

National hasn't been big fans of the proposed Bill, ACT would hate it, and no clue where NZ First would stand on it. I'm guessing the Bill will just be allowed to die - which is the best option anyway.

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Thank you for this information on a complex subject. I need to reread it, probably several times. However, mainstream media has lost all integrity in providing us real truthful news, and making it up as it does has resulted in many readers having a jaundiced view of anything it produces. The Twitter Files exposure of how government interfered and censored truth does nothing to improve the situation. I pray a balanced and unbiased solution can be reached and truth in reporting can apply to the industry.

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