Australia big pro-journalism move: Google & Facebook will have to pay for news content

Global digital platforms Google and Facebook will be forced to pay for news content in Australia, government said on Monday as coronavirus pandemic causes a collapse in vertising revenue. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said competition watchdog, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, kwn as ACCC, would release in late July draft rules for platforms to pay fair compensation for journalistic content siphoned from news media.

Frydenberg said he believed that Australia could succeed where or countries, including France and Spain, h failed in making Google and Facebook pay.

“We’re very conscious of challenges and complexity of ensuring a mandatory code. Many or countries have tried it without much success,” Frydenberg told Australian Brocasting Corp. “We think we can be world leing.”

“We do want rules of digital world to reflect as much as possible rules of physical world,” he ded.

ACCC h attempted to negotiate a voluntary code by which global giants would agree to pay tritional media for ir content. But parties couldn’t agree on “this key issue of payment for content,” Frydenberg said. Google was netting 47% of online vertising spending excluding classified s in Australia, and Facebook was claiming 24%, he said. Google and Facebook did t immediately respond to a request for comment. Media companies have stopped printing dozens of newspaper mass across Australia because pandemic shutdown has caused vertisers to stop spending.