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Ultimately, what do they want? (assume they can bargain together)

They likely want to implement a pay to link scheme for news articles. This would be similar to the way that every songwriter gets a small royalty when their song is played on the radio or on a streaming service. In the case of the songwriters, it is government sanctioned and therefore not an illegal cartel.

Who pays? Goog & fb?

Its funny, when i read the article it said "this is your last free article this month"

I would love to have fb pay - but i never will.

and this is how I would react if I was Google:

"awesome, ok.. so you know what? you win. you are right. we shouldnt link to you without paying you anything. So instead of paying you we've decided to remove all your links from our index. happy? no? but thats what you wanted! no..? ok i am confused.. what do you want?.. wait you want free money? ok.... then"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com