In A First, Australia Clears Law Forcing Facebook, Google To Pay For News

The amended legislation is aimed at addressing the market power that Google and Facebook possess, and both platforms have announced to invest $1 billion over three years to support news industry.

FILE PIC/AFP

In a first, the Parliament in Australia cleared the amendment in a law for making giants like Facebook and Google pay to media companies for their news content.

What’s the new law?

The Parliament on Thursday passed amendments to the popular News Media Bargaining Code as per the agreemen reached between Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. As per the news agency, the Australia'’s laws are ready to take effect even as the laws'' architect said there is still time before the digital giants strike deals with media. Also Read: Realme Narzo 30 Pro 5G, Narzo 30A, Buds Air 2 To Launch Today; Here's How To Watch The Live Event

In response to the changes, Facebook will lift a ban on Australians accessing and sharing news. The amended legislation is aimed at addressing the market power that Google and Facebook possess. On the amendment, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair said “both platforms need media, but they don''t need any particular media company, and that meant media companies couldn''t do commercial deals”.

The rest of the laws were cleared earlier which will get implemented now. It is to be noted that Google has already struck deals with major Australian news businesses in recent weeks including News Corp and Seven West Media.

Treasuer Frydenberg is upbeat regarding the progress by Google and Facebook in reaching commercial deals with Australian news businesses.

Meanwhile, Facebook in line with the serach engine Google informed it plans to invest $1 billion to "support the news industry” over the next three yearsm as per news agency PTI.   The social networking giant, which has been working towards reaching a consensus with Australia over the law shared it has invested $600 million since 2018 in news.

On the other hand Google in October announced that it would pay publishers $1 billion over the next three years. News companies want Google and Facebook to pay for the news that appears on their platforms. Governments in Europe and Australia are increasingly sympathetic to this point of view. The two tech companies suck up the majority of US digital advertising dollars, which — among other problems — has hurt publishers. On Tuesday, Facebook said it would lift a ban on news links in Australia after the government agreed to tweak proposed legislation that would help publishers negotiate payments with Facebook and Google.

Facebook remained under criticisim for its ban, which also temporarily cut access to government pandemic, public health and emergency services on the social networking site.