Link Taxes

Internet Freedom


4/13/2023
In Test, Google Removing California News Websites from Search as
Lawmakers Eye ‘Link Tax’
TIMES of SAN DIEGO



6/2/2023
Assembly Passes Bill to
Tax News Links on Facebook and Google
to Support Local Newspapers

“We support a thriving news media, but cannot support a link tax. Taxes on sending internet traffic from one site to another is not a sustainable business model for any party involved, and sets a dangerous precedent for governments and carriers to impose fees on users navigating the open internet.”
(emphasis added)

Matt Schruers, President
Computer & Communications Industry Association

TIMES of SAN DIEGO

Related:
Opinion: A Bill to Prop Up Legacy Media in California Is
Bad News for Journalism

Facebook to Remove News Content in California
if Lawmakers Require Paying Publishers

A California Bill Would
Break the Open Internet
& Harm Local News


“This would directly threaten
the free and open exchange of information online,
creating economic incentives
that would distort the market
and give more power to media gatekeepers.”

Florín Nájera-Uresti , Mike Rispoli
Free Press

Related:
Free Press Action


8/24/2024
Free Press is also a long time
valiant warrior for net neutrality
keeping the internet free and open
enabling anyone to share and
access information of their choosing
without interference.

2/18/2021
The Bizarre Reaction To Facebook’s Decision To Get Out Of The News Business In Australia

“This fight was not ‘Facebook v. Australia.’ Or ‘Facebook v. journalism’ even though some ignorant or dishonest people are making it out to be the case. This was always ‘Rupert Murdoch v. the open web.’ We may not like Facebook in the role of the defender of the open web (and it’s far from the best representative for the open web). But Facebook saying that it won’t pay a link tax is a defense of the open web…”
(emphasis added)

Mike Masnick

tech dirt

Related at tech dirt

6/11/2023
Would the normalization of link taxes ultimately chill free speech on the internet and in the civic town square of social media?



6/1/2023
Free Press Action Urges California Lawmakers to
Reject Journalism Bill That Won’t Save Local News

“The CJPA fails to properly address the causes of the state’s journalism crisis: namely, runaway media consolidation, mismanagement, changing consumer habits and a lack of market incentive to produce public-interest journalism…

Any legislation that primarily benefits TV conglomerates, hedge funds, out-of-state publications and clickbait profiteers will not fix the local-news crisis.”

Timothy Karr

Free Press

Related:
Free Press Action



8/25/2024
The EFF opposed Link Tax federal legislation.

“Linking is how we trace information back to its source. It’s how we verify what we’re being told, and stories with very few links are frequently criticized for being poorly sourced. Links are how small journalist enterprises credit reporting they are building on, how Wikipedia shows its sources, and how we all share things online.”

Electronic Frontier Foundation



8/19/2024

Did mainstream news media mainly carry the government’s message of lockdowns, forced injections, masking, and fear? Was there scientific censorship by mainstream media?

And now the mainstream media wants to be subsidized via link taxes?

Meanwhile, is independent news thriving as readers flee mainstream outlets in droves?

Related:
Americans’ Trust In Media
Remains Near Record Low

How Big Pharma and the Mainstream Media
Manipulate Politics and Distort Facts

Lockdowns: The Great Gaslighting
The lockdowns of 2020 were very real.
And few opposed them.

Video discussion of
article by The Hollywood Reporter
The Media Is Melting Down, and
Neither Billionaires Nor Journalists Can Seem to Stop It



6/29/2023
And They Wonder Why
No One Trusts the Media Anymore

“Nowhere do you see thoughts along the lines of ‘maybe we shouldn’t have lied so much,’ or ‘I wonder if our thinking the public is a bunch of chimpchumps colors our coverage?’ or ‘hmm, maybe it was not such a good idea to become the unquestioning propaganda organ for the elites, the powerful, the connected, the government.’ ”

Thomas Buckley
former mayor of Lake Elsinore

“The Point” Substack



8/23/2024

Did the LA Times axe a lot of reporters in February?

Will mainstream news pressure legislators to pass link taxes because they can’t cut it without government handouts?

Is the owner of the LA Times a biotech entrepreneur? Was he involved with the development of a a second-generation vaccine for Covid-19? Did he buy the LA Times in order to promote pandemic narratives? Was his purchase of the LA Times really a business investment for promotion of COVID vaccines and mandates?

Are citizens waking up to media narratives due to competition from independent news?

Related:

Big Pharma Owns The Corporate Media
But Americans Are Waking Up
video and transcript

Covid Shot Mandate Suit Moving Forward
“We are striking at the very heart of pandemic insanity.”

Times Bemoans Death of Print Media…
…Fails to Acknowledge
It Helped Kill It

Billionaire L.A. Times Owner Sits On $10 Billion Nightmare Stock

Chaos, Fury Engulf Los Angeles Times in
Historic Cuts to Newsroom



3/3/2022
Exclusive
The federal government paid hundreds of media companies
to advertise the COVID-19 vaccines
while those same outlets
provided positive coverage of the vaccines
Blaze media

Related discussion at The Right Way

“What did Chris Pandolfo find?
He discovered that nearly the entire corporate media took money from the Biden Administration to push the vaccines to their audiences without disclosing it.”

Emerald Robinson

FOLLOW THE MONEY



This is a study published at the National Library of Medicine…

1/5/2023
The pharmaceutical industry is dangerous to health.
Further proof with COVID-19

PMCID: PMC9610448 | PMID: 36324959

“Since the beginning of COVID-19, we can list the following methods of information manipulation which have been used:

falsified clinical trials and inaccessible data;

fake or conflict-of-interest studies;

concealment of vaccines’ short-term side effects and total lack of knowledge of the long-term effects of COVID-19 vaccination;

doubtful composition of vaccines;

inadequate testing methods;

governments and international organizations under conflicts of interest;

bribed physicians;

the denigration of renowned scientists;

the banning of all alternative effective treatments;

unscientific and liberticidal social methods;

government use of behavior modification and social engineering techniques to impose confinements, masks, and vaccine acceptance;

scientific censorship by the media.”

Fabien Deruelle, PhD
Independent Researcher, Ronchin, France

PubMed Central

Related:
Vax Lobbyist Count



“The media is nothing more nor less than a mouthpiece for the oligarchs who are really in control of our phony political system and our staged geopolitical theater that passes for our global reality.”

James Corbett
The Corbett Report

8/19/2024
In 2010, James was talking about the mainstream press – not independent news sources.



WHAT IS MASS MEDIA?

“The mass media serve as a system
for communicating messages and symbols
to the general populace.

It is their function
to amuse, entertain, and inform,
and to inculcate individuals
with the values, beliefs,
and codes of behavior
that will integrate them
into the institutional structures
of the larger society.

In a world of concentrated wealth
and major conflicts of class interest,
to fulfill this role
requires systematic propaganda.”

Herman and Chomsky
Manufacturing Consent

Related:
The Media Conspiracy