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By Oregon Small Business Association,
Recently, Oregon Senate Bill 686 (SB 686) has made it out of committee and is heading to the floor for a vote. This bill would require online platforms, such as Google and Facebook, to pay online news providers like The Oregonian or donate to the Oregon Civic Information Consortium, a state-created nonprofit.
Similar laws enacted in other countries, as highlighted by the Portland Tribune, have yielded poor results. For instance, after Canada implemented similar legislation, Meta blocked sharing news articles on its platform, leading to a 58% drop in web traffic for news publishers. Consequently, many news companies lost a significant portion of their audience, forcing numerous small news organizations to close their doors. Meta will do the exact same actions as stated “If faced with legislation that requires us to pay for news content that publishers voluntarily post and that is not the primary reason most people use Facebook and Instagram, we will be forced to make the same business decision in Oregon as we did in Canada and end news availability on these services.” Oregon would repeat the same situation, undermining the bill’s intent by destroying journalism within the state.
TechNet and the Technology Association of Oregon, they point out that the bill could inadvertently benefit major national and international news agencies. To be eligible for payment, the bill only requires a publisher to “provide information to an Oregon audience.” Eligible publishers and their journalists do not need to be based in Oregon. In fact, since journalists receive the same allocation share regardless of their location, the bill might encourage publishers to hire employees in lower-cost countries or states, defeating the bill’s purpose of supporting local journalism.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) highlighted that platforms either “pay an unknown annual fee to qualifying publishers for accessing the internet websites of the providers for an Oregon audience or donate to the Oregon Civic Information Consortium. Because of that, this proposal is a tax on content being linked to on websites or search engines. This approach undermines local publications seeking to engage with audiences, foster online communities, and generate ad revenue at a grassroots level.”
There are also significant legal questions surrounding the bill. A state legislative council document submitted by State Senator and Vice-Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules, Daniel Bonham, highlights potential challenges related to Article 1, Section 8 of the Oregon Constitution. The document suggests that Section 2 (1) of SB 686, which mandates online platforms to pay “at least $122 million annually” to compensate news providers, may be overbroad and could regulate aspects of online platforms’ expressive products that did not directly harm news providers financially. Furthermore, it’s uncertain how this bill would hold up in legal challenges under the Commerce Clause, as Oregon would be the first state to bring this issue into the legal arena.
In conclusion, this is a flawed plan that would restrict critical information for every single Oregonian and could lead to the decline of small news organizations. It threatens to destroy the information ecosystem that the bill aims to support. It promotes a culture of government handouts to nonprofits instead of adapting to the modern age, where platforms are essential providers of information. It is outdated and raises serious legal questions in Oregon and the United States. It may have an unintended consequence of exacerbating the business exodus from Oregon, as some businesses see the writing on the wall and worry if their industry is next.