Australia to make Facebook, Google pay for news in world
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[July 31, 2020]
By Colin Packham
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia will force U.S. tech giants Facebook Inc <FB.O>
and Alphabet Inc’s <GOOGL.O> Google to pay Australian media outlets for
news content in a landmark move to protect independent journalism that
will be watched around the world.
Australia will become the first country to require Facebook and Google
to pay for news content provided by media companies under a
royalty-style system that will become law this year, Treasurer Josh
Frydenberg said.
"It's about a fair go for Australian news media businesses. It's about
ensuring that we have increased competition, increased consumer
protection, and a sustainable media landscape," Frydenberg told
reporters in Melbourne.
"Nothing less than the future of the Australian media landscape is at
stake."
The move comes as the tech giants fend off calls around the world for
greater regulation, and a day after Google and Facebook took a battering
for alleged abuse of market power from U.S. lawmakers in a congressional
hearing.
Following an inquiry into the state of the media market and the power of
the U.S. platforms, the Australian government late last year told
Facebook and Google to negotiate a voluntary deal with media companies
to use their content.
Those talks went nowhere and Canberra now says if an agreement cannot
reached through arbitration within 45 days the Australian Communications
and Media Authority would set legally binding terms on behalf of the
government.
Google said the regulation ignores "billions of clicks" that it sends to
Australian news publishers each year.
"It sends a concerning message to businesses and investors that the
Australian government will intervene instead of letting the market
work," Mel Silva, managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand,
said in a statement.
"It does nothing to solve the fundamental challenges of creating a
business model fit for the digital age."
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Newspapers are seen for sale at a shop in Sydney, Australia, July
31, 2020. REUTERS/Loren Elliott
"UNFAIR AND DAMAGING"
Media companies including News Corp Australia, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News
Corp <NWSA.O>, lobbied hard for the government to force the U.S. companies to
the negotiating table amid a long decline in advertising revenue.
"While other countries are talking about the tech giants' unfair and damaging
behaviour, the Australian government ... (is) taking world-first action," News
Corp Australia Executive Chairman Michael Miller said in a statement.
A 2019 study estimated about 3,000 journalism jobs have been lost in Australia
in the past 10 years, as traditional media companies bled advertising revenue to
Google and Facebook which paid nothing for news content.
For every A$100 spent on online advertising in Australia, excluding classifieds,
nearly a third goes to Google and Facebook, according to Frydenberg.
Other countries have tried and failed to force the hands of the tech giants.
Publishers in Germany, France and Spain have pushed to pass national copyright
laws that force Google pay licensing fees when it publishes snippets of their
news articles.
In 2019, Google stopped showing news snippets from European publishers on search
results for its French users, while Germany’s biggest news publisher, Axel
Springer, allowed the search engine to run snippets of its articles after
traffic to its sites to plunged.
(Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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