Google and Facebook threatened to restrict or eliminate news services to Australian users, as part of responses to a proposed News Media Fairness Code by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The Australian Government has now passed forthcoming legislation that will target the news publishers that Google owns. The Australian government has passed a new law that requires Google and Facebook to agree to news organizations pay them for their content, or risk being sued by Google's news organization Facebook. Soon, major technology companies such as Google and Facebook will be required to pay a fee to news publishers for using their original content.
After falling out with the government, Facebook blocked users from seeing and sharing news stories on the Facebook platform because of a law forcing the tech companies to pay news publishers for using their content. The more vociferous of the two tech giants as Facebook, which temporarily blocked users and publishers from sharing news content on the main Facebook social network, only to back down once the Australian government agreed to a set of changes to a proposed law. The two tech companies previously played down the business implications of sharing news content and pointed instead to the benefits media outlets derive from using their platforms.
Media companies, including Murdoch News Corp, helped convince Australian Parliament to approve a law now forcing Facebook, and Google to pay significant amounts - sometimes tens of millions of dollars - to news organizations whose titles often appear in headlines on Facebook and Googles platforms. If Bill C-18 becomes law, platforms such as Facebook and Google can expect a share of profits that they earn on news stories to flow back to the organizations behind the content -- although it would be up to a designated regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, to determine which outlets receive a share of that pie.
The digital platforms certainly seem determined that they will not be forced to pay for news content across their core services, including Google search and Facebook, News Feed. News companies are different in that they directly compete in the digital ad marketplace with digital platforms, something that no other online businesses do -- and without their significant market power. Facebook (FB) and Google have been fighting publishers over the way their content is displayed for years, and media companies argue that these two technology companies should pay them for that privilege.
A group of medium-sized publishers staged a coordinated protest because Facebook and Google refused to pay them for their work under the News Media Bargaining Code, a new law introduced last year that would have forced tech giants to pay for the news that is in the public interest. Media companies, including Murdoch News Corp, helped convince Australian Parliament to approve a law now forcing Facebook, and Google to pay significant amounts - sometimes tens of millions of dollars - to news organizations whose titles often appear in headlines on Facebook and Googles platforms. If Bill C-18 becomes law, platforms such as Facebook and Google can expect a share of profits that they earn on news stories to flow back to the organizations behind the content -- although it would be up to a designated regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, to determine which outlets receive a share of that pie.
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