Not a Metà fan, at all, but I don’t understand why they are being called “unreasonable” and “irresponsible” for blocking news from Canadian newspapers. As they (currently) don’t have an agreement with Canadian newspapers, or perhaps don’t want one, which also seems like a legitimate position to me, the only responsible thing is not to use or link to articles from said newspapers, isn’t it?

The Canadian government thought they could just force these companies to subsidize their failing news industry, and instead, when the outcome is "alright, fine, you win, we won't pay you in order to make you relevant, we won't 'profit' off of your news any longer, have fun in the dumpster" they're "blocking news."

There's nothing unreasonable or irresponsible about this decision at all, what's unreasonable is passing a law trying to squeeze money out of the only places in the world left that still make you relevant and then getting mad when they don't want to be abused.

They had made agreements with torstar prior to this bill passing. They abandoned those agreements when the bill passed. Its hard to avoid the conclusion that they are specifically taking issue with being legally compelled to make such agreements.