Why Canada's Online News Act To Regulate Intermediaries Could Give Boost To Indian Digital Publishers

The 'Online News Act' of Canada will require digital platforms that have a bargaining imbalance to make fair deals with digital news publishers.

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New Delhi: With Canada passing the Online News Act, which will regulate digital news intermediaries and enabled publishers to bargain fair revenue or advertising sharing, the move comes as a boost for Indian newspapers and digital news publishers, media observers feel. Canada's Online News Act has been created with a view to enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace.

The Act applies to those digital news intermediaries and giants like Google who have a "significant bargaining power imbalance" over news businesses, depending on certain factors, such as whether the intermediary occupies a prominent market position. The order envisages provisions of fair compensation to the news businesses for the news that is made available by the intermediary.

According to the Canadian Order, the rule would ensure that platforms like Facebook and Google negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers fairly for their content.

According to media reports, Google earns a huge amount of advertisement revenues on the content generated by the digital editions of publishers. There have been complaints that there is no fair sharing of revenues by Google in this regard, which sometimes causes financial losses to news publishers in India.

Google has been under the scanner for anti-competitive practices in Australia, France, Canada, and the EU. Publishers and governments across many parts of the world are now taking proactive measures to ensure fair play. The Canada move is a step in that direction, and is finding resonance in India and many other parts of the world.

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Australia already passed a similar law last year. The law makes it mandatory for Google and Facebook to pay original news publishers for content on their platforms.

According to media observers, such an act by Canada also encourages and empowers Indian lawmakers and the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to implement fair play and support the growth of media at a time when search engines can be manipulated through fake news as well as an inherent bias.

The Canada order has come at a time when CCI has issued notice to Google on the basis of a complaint registered by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) in this regard. It may be noted that the CCI has ordered an inquiry against Google for alleged abuse of its dominant position in the digital advertising market on a complaint filed by DNPA.

DNPA members include Jagran New Media (Dainik Jagaran Group), Amar Ujala, Dainik Bhaskar, India Today, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Times of India, Eenadu, Malayala Manorama, ABP Network, Zee Media, Mathrabhumi, Hindu, NDTV, Lokmat, Express Network etc.

DNPA filed a complaint against Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, Google India Private Limited, and Google Ireland Limited (Google/OPs) under Section 19(1)(a) of the Competition Act, 2002 alleging violation of Section 4 of the Act.

DNPA believes that more than 50 per cent of the total traffic on the news websites is routed through Google, and being the dominant player in this field, Google, by way of its algorithms, determines which news website gets discovered via search. It further averred that the content produced by news media companies creates the context for the audience to interface with the advertiser; however, online search engines (Google) end up leveraging the revenue or returns much more than publishers.