Australia Says Law Making Facebook and Google Pay For News Has Worked (reuters.com) 13
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: An Australian law giving the government power to make internet giants Facebook owner Meta and Alphabet's Google negotiate content supply deals with media outlets has largely worked, a government report said. But the law, which took effect in March 2021 after talks with the big tech firms led to a brief shutdown of Facebook news feeds in the country, may need to be extended to other online platforms, the review said.
Since the News Media Bargaining Code (PDF) took effect, the tech firms had inked more than 30 deals with media outlets compensating them for content which generated clicks and advertising dollars, said the Treasury department report, published late Thursday. "At least some of these agreements have enabled news businesses to, in particular, employ additional journalists and make other valuable investments to assist their operations," said the report. "While views on the success or otherwise of the Code will invariably differ, we consider it is reasonable to conclude that the Code has been a success to date."
The report mostly recommended that the government consider new methods of assessing the administration and effectiveness of the law, and did not suggest changing the law itself. But it did note the law lacked "a formal mechanism to extend the Code to other platforms", and suggested the government order the competition regulator, which led the design of the law, to "prepare reports on this question." Google director of government affairs and public policy in Australia Lucinda Longcroft said the company had "furthered our significant contribution to the Australian news industry" by signing deals representing 200 mastheads across the country and "the majority of these outlets are regional or local."
Since the News Media Bargaining Code (PDF) took effect, the tech firms had inked more than 30 deals with media outlets compensating them for content which generated clicks and advertising dollars, said the Treasury department report, published late Thursday. "At least some of these agreements have enabled news businesses to, in particular, employ additional journalists and make other valuable investments to assist their operations," said the report. "While views on the success or otherwise of the Code will invariably differ, we consider it is reasonable to conclude that the Code has been a success to date."
The report mostly recommended that the government consider new methods of assessing the administration and effectiveness of the law, and did not suggest changing the law itself. But it did note the law lacked "a formal mechanism to extend the Code to other platforms", and suggested the government order the competition regulator, which led the design of the law, to "prepare reports on this question." Google director of government affairs and public policy in Australia Lucinda Longcroft said the company had "furthered our significant contribution to the Australian news industry" by signing deals representing 200 mastheads across the country and "the majority of these outlets are regional or local."
Google News is Spotify for journalists (Score:2)
Upload your news to Google News for wide distribution and ... 0.0001 cents per click.
Musicians have always been hungry. And journalists are always drunk.
Not sure what this means for actual journalists, rather than editors and proprietors, but I know they're be some scribes moving from Chardonnay to "beer" made with powdered malt and Vegemite.
Perspective from an Australian... (Score:3, Interesting)
As an Australian, and with many friends who work in the media industry, I can verify that this scheme has worked well.
It hasn't reversed the shrinkage in the news industry, but it does appear to have arrested it.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that for writers this has been a good thing (and god knows writers need a good thing, the internet has been a calamity for many writers).
I DO have concerns that these laws could have serious negative ramifications for things like Mastodon and other non-corporate distributed social networks. I know in australia mastodon is centered around a particulra instance that is essentially supported by one guy and his patreon account. Newscorp turning up demanding bucks could have catastrophic consequences.
I r
Wrong Wrong and Wrong (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As an Australian, and with many friends who work in the media industry, I can verify that this scheme has worked well.
It hasn't reversed the shrinkage in the news industry, but it does appear to have arrested it.
It's worked so well that I rarely see news sources from Australia any more. Given how bad the Murdoch owned papers were (read, most of them) it's actually been an improvement.
As an Android user, Google tends to be one of my more frequented aggregators for news.
There is a rot that is killing news media in Australia, but it's not Google or Facebook. Rent seeking will not stop it's demise.
Signed,
An Australian who moved to the UK.
If you cut off the oxygen, everything sudden works (Score:3)
So basically both Facebook and Google threatened or actually did shut down news services, when those threats were realized the legacy media came to the table. Sounds a bit of a pyrrhic victory to me that the government is claiming.
Digging a bit deeper, it seems like Google requires companies to sign up for Google News Showcase and will only pay Australian publishers for stories when the Google editors select them. Works okay for bigger companies, but smaller companies are complaining they can't seem to join or afford it, because the deals are veiled in utmost secrecy and only apply to the biggest stories from the big names.
I'm sure Facebook has worked out something similar where basically the money is going into a specific channel that Facebook wants it to go to.
Re: If you cut off the oxygen, everything sudden w (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In effect, all this goes against U.S. laws that prohibit the payment of bribes to foreign entities in order gain or maintain access to a particular market or country.
It's not a bribe if it's law.
Unlike a Westerner, Pichai's responses have been too weak to fight back against the extortion of and demands of bribes from an American company by Australia, and by a few large countries in Western Europe (these include Germany and France).
If you want to do business in a country, you have to abide by that country's laws.
Efforts (if any) by the U.S. government to protect American companies from being coerced to pay bribes have been flaccid.
There isn't anything that the US government can do about it. Other than trying to coerce that foreign country to drop those laws. But that would, frankly, be unethical behaviour on the part of the US government, so I'm glad they didn't stoop to that level. The US govt has already forced DMCA-like laws into Australia. The copyright term has also been extended to be US-like. I think that's enoug