> They operate on a vague sense of envy that someone might be making more money than a preferred class

They operate on the principle that without revenue the people doing the actual work of journalism will go out of business.

Do you think the regulators are wrong on that point?

A link tax is fine in principle and can be good policy in a number of situations. In practice such a tax needs to be set in such a way that all parties make money for their efforts. The rates given in the Canadian and Australian taxes were basically made up by media companies and represented a significant inflation of the value of their content.

If government regulators think we need more paid journalists then they could simply subsidize them, or even hire them directly like the BBC.

A link tax could be construed as a way to do that, particularly in countries in which these companies operate but do not really pay tax.

Isn’t a tax on aggregators’ ad revenue effectively that? It’s not saying that Google or Facebook can’t make plenty of money, only that they need to share some of their profits with the people whose work allowed them to make that profit in the first place.

Okay. If that’s the case, let the newspapers and Google negotiate. We already see who is hurt more when Google walks away

That appears to be in progress, so it looks like regulation is working.

You mean forcing Google to pay Rupert Murdoch who pushed for the legislation in Australia?

They might be wrong with how high the rates are set, though, as large tech companies truly do seem to be getting out of this space, no longer considering it worth it.

Apple doesn’t seem to be, or have I missed something?

Apple doesn't run a search engine or a social network though? Do they even sell ads on news content?

Seems completely different to me.

Well, in that case the newspapers should be able to offer something of enough value to get people to pay for it.

I haven’t seen that be the case. Can you provide specific examples?