Bob Edlin: What happened to $66bn......

Come on PM – surely someone can tell you what happened to $66bn (and if officials are baffled, let’s give Google a go)

The PM huffed and puffed, when asked in Parliament this afternoon about the state of the economy.

He bridled, too.

David Farrar: Scheme to levy fees on search engines and social media sites

How annoyed would NZers be if NZ news media were no longer findable on search engines and social media?

Readers will be aware that the Government’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill has seen both Meta and Google warn that rather than pay a levy under the proposed law for links to news stories, they would block NZ news stories from Google and Facebook.

Curia was asked to poll 1,000 New Zealanders on:

David Farrar: Will the Government see sense?

Google announced:

As a significant longtime supporter of New Zealand’s news industry, we are deeply concerned about the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. This Bill proposes a “link tax” that would require Google to pay simply for linking to news articles. While Google supports efforts to foster a sustainable future for New Zealand news, this Bill is not the right approach. We have outlined these concerns transparently in public submissions and in ongoing consultation with the Government.

Dr Eric Crampton: Canada’s example shows how ‘link tax’ bill will fail

New Zealand moves inexorably from the ‘faff around’ to the ‘find out’ phase of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill process.

On Friday, Google’s New Zealand blog noted that if the bill becomes law, Google would be “forced to stop linking to news content on Google Search, Google News, or Discover surfaces in New Zealand and discontinue our current commercial agreements and ecosystem support with New Zealand news publishers.”

Google described the Bill as setting a ‘link tax’.

Merja Myllylahti: AI search tools and chatbots may make NZ news less visible and reliable – new study

Evidence is mounting that the new generative AI internet search tools provided by OpenAI, Google and Microsoft can increase the risk of returning false, misleading or partially correct information.

Despite the implications of this for the news industry and an informed democracy, the New Zealand government has decided to leave AI considerations out of its plans to revive the previous government’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.

Eric Crampton: The 'shakedown' news legislation that is heading to parliament

Shakedown rackets are, thankfully, illegal.

Except when government legislates them. In that case, all bets are off. And if I were Facebook, I’d be off too – or at least thinking about it.

The Government finally released the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill this week. The bill aims to improve news funding by requiring payments from those who link to news online.

Eric Crampton: Canada a cautionary tale for big tech paying for news

Donald Trump convinced himself and a lot of Americans he could build a wall at America’s southern border and make Mexico pay for it.

It was an obviously terrible idea. And, unsurprisingly, it did not go well. Hundreds of miles of walls were built. But they weren’t very effective. And the money to pay for it largely came out of the US defence budget. Some parts of the wall cost $46 million per mile.

A lot of New Zealand’s newspapers have convinced themselves and the New Zealand government that they can have a whole lot of new newsmedia funding and make Big Tech platforms pay for it.

It is also an obviously terrible idea.

Seton Motley: Silicon Valley’s ‘News’ Services Bad News for Less Government Everywhere

For decades now, all of America’s major institutions – have been broadly, unquestionably Leftist, and rigidly opposed to any deviance from the entrenched doctrine.

Colleges and universities, Hollywood and entertainment, the Sciences and the News Media – all deeply in Leftism’s thrall.

And then there is the Silicon Valley – now the biggest, baddest, broadest institution of them all. Because of their dominance of the Internet – they have their hands in all of the legacy institutions.