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SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia on Tuesday finalized plans to make Facebook Inc and Google pay their media outlets for news content, a global first move to protect independent journalism that internet giants have opposed. firmly.
Under the laws that go to parliament this week, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said Big Tech firms must negotiate payments for content that appears on their platforms with local publishers and broadcasters. If they cannot reach an agreement, a government-appointed arbitrator will decide for them.
“This is a huge reform, it is a world first and the world is watching what happens here in Australia,” Frydenberg told reporters in the capital Canberra.
“Our legislation will help ensure that the rules of the digital world reflect the rules of the physical world … and will ultimately support our media landscape.
The law amounts to the strongest grip on market power by tech giants globally, and follows three years of investigation and consultation, which finally spilled over into a public dispute in August when American companies warned it could prevent them from offering their services. in Australia.
Facebook Australia Managing Director Will Easton said the company would review the legislation and “participate in the next parliamentary process with the aim of landing on a viable framework to support Australia’s news ecosystem.”
A Google representative declined to comment, saying the company had not yet seen the final version of the proposed law.
Until recently, most countries had stayed on the sidelines as advertisers redirected spending to the world’s largest search engine and social media website, depriving newsrooms of their main source of revenue and causing widespread closures and job losses.
But regulators are beginning to test their power to control the two megacorporations, which take more than four-fifths of Australia’s online ad spending between them, according to Frydenberg.
Google said in October that it plans to pay publishers around the world a billion dollars for its news over the next three years.
The new product called Google News Showcase will be launched first in Germany, where it has signed German newspapers such as Der Spiegel, Stern, Die Zeit and in Brazil with Folha de S.Paulo, Band and Infobae.
Google said last month that it had also signed copyright agreements with six French newspapers and magazines, including the national newspapers Le Monde and Le Figaro.
“It is very ambitious and very necessary,” said Denis Muller, an honorary fellow at the Center for Advanced Journalism at the University of Melbourne, referring to the Australian law.
“Taking their news content without paying for it, in exchange for a very questionable ‘reach’ reward, appears to be a very unfair and uneven arrangement and ultimately democratically damaging.”
News Corp Australia Chief Executive Michael Miller said the law was “an important step in the decade-long drive to achieve fairness in the relationship between Australian media companies and global tech giants.” In May, News Corp stopped printing more than 100 Australian newspapers, citing declining advertising.
In changes to the bill announced earlier this year that could favor tech companies, the final version of the law would not affect news content distributed on Facebook’s Instagram subsidiary or on Google’s YouTube. Facebook and Google could also include the value of clicks their platforms direct to news websites in negotiations.
But Frydenberg was added to the list of media companies that tech giants must negotiate with, saying that public broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corp and specialized public broadcaster SBS would be included, along with the industry’s mainstream media. such as News Corp and Nine Entertainment Co Holdings Ltd.
(Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Richard Pullin and Philippa Fletcher)
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