I can sort of see what you're saying, but they've taken the letter of the law to the absolute extreme, which obviously no person or business ever does. To illustrate their point and perhaps help with bargaining power, they have bowled over pages like AFF who aren't looking to be paid for sharing their news, charities posting links to their own content and emergency services providing critical updates to communities. While all of these could deliver news and post links to 'mainstream media' – how hard would it be to only block 'mainstream media' links and not absolutely everything like they have done? I imagine very easy for them to code.
What they have done instead is throw all the toys out of the cot, to make a point that I think has actually backfired substantially on them. It shows them to be the thuggish evil company they are that couldn't negotiate in 3 months and instead seemingly spent that entire 3 months making a list of every Australia group/page to wipe/block all at the same time. Pretty insane thing to do... and while I despite the EU, I'm sure they'll be looking at what's going on down under and making moves based on what they've seen all too soon. Probably opened one mighty can of worms.
Google on the other hand, they threatened, realised what a mistake that would be and came to the table. And they're the "do no evil" company that frequently does
Exactly, I'm not sure why no one in government wants to close all the loopholes and just hit them with their actual tax bills. I think most of them route through Singapore and not Ireland down here though?
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