Video: Australia’s “News Media Bargaining Code”

Brandon Berg says:

This kerfuffle is a beautiful illustration of the old saying, “One man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens.”

In formal logic, to assert that A implies B is to say that if A is true, B must be true. A modus ponens argument starts with the premises that A is true and A implies B, and concludes that B must be true. The canonical example is “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.”

A modus tollens argument starts with the premise that B is false and A implies B, so therefore A must be false as well. Going with the ancient Greek theme, we might say, “All men are mortal; Zeus is immortal, therefore Zeus is not a man.”

The Australian government passed a law saying that if a social media site links to news articles, it must pay for the privilege. If link, then pay up. The Australian government expected modus ponens: Facebook links, therefore they must pay. To their shock and dismay, Facebook responded with a modus tollens: We don’t want to pay, therefore we must not link!Report