A search for “Australia News” on the Google homepage, arranged on a desktop computer in Sydney, Australia, on Friday, January 22, 2021.
David Gray | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Australia has passed a new law that will require digital platforms such as Facebook and Google to pay local media and publishers to link their content to news feeds or search results.
The move was widely expected and comes just days after the government introduced some last-minute changes to the bill, officially known as the Mandatory Negotiating Code for Digital Media and Platforms.
“The code will ensure that news media companies are sufficiently remunerated for the content they generate, helping to support public interest journalism in Australia,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said in a joint statement. .
They added that the government was “delighted to see the progress made by both Google and, more recently, Facebook in concluding trade agreements with Australian media companies”.
The law will be reviewed by the Treasury within a year of its inception, officials said.
What did Facebook and Google do?
Both Facebook and Google fought against the law last year.
In essence, Australia will become the first country in which a government-appointed arbitrator can decide on the final price that any of the platforms will have to pay to Australian news publishers, provided that a trade agreement cannot be reached. independent.
The decision will come in a decision in favor of either party – the digital platform or the publisher – with no room for a middle ground, according to experts.
In this week’s amendments, the government said that the parties involved would be given a two-month mediation period to trade transactions before they were forced to enter arbitration as a last resort.
Facebook announced on Monday that it would restore Australian news pages, overturning a previous decision to block access to Australian news content in retaliation against the then-proposed bill.
Facebook’s vice president of global news partnerships, Campbell Brown, said on Tuesday that the Australian government had clarified that the technology company would retain the ability to decide if news appeared on its platform so that it would not automatically be subject to forced negotiation.
Google initially threatened to withdraw its search function from Australia. However, in recent weeks, it has entered into a number of prominent trade agreements with Australian publishers, including the Murdoch NewsCorp family press conglomerate.
Australia’s new law could set a precedent for how other countries regulate Big Tech. Countries like France have taken some steps to get tech companies to pay for the news, while others like Canada and the UK are taking the next steps.