A search for ‘Australia News’ on the Google homepage, hosted on a desktop computer in Sydney, Australia, on Friday, January 22, 2021.
David Gray | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Australia has passed a new law requiring digital platforms such as Facebook and Google to pay local media outlets and publishers to link their content in news feeds or in search results.
The move was widely anticipated and comes days after the government made some last-minute changes to the bill, officially known as the mandatory bargaining code for news media and digital platforms.
“The code will ensure that news media companies are fairly rewarded for the content they generate, supporting public interest journalism in Australia,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Secretary of Communications Paul Fletcher said in a joint statement.
They added that the government “welcomed the progress of both Google and more recently Facebook in reaching commercial deals with Australian news media companies.”
The law will be revised by the Treasury within a year of its entry into force, officials said.
What have Facebook and Google done?
Both Facebook and Google have been fighting the law since last year.
Essentially, Australia will become the first country where a government-appointed arbitrator can decide the final price either platform will pay to Australian news outlets, provided a commercial deal cannot be reached independently.
The decision will come by a ruling in favor of either party – the digital platform or the publisher – with no room for middle ground, experts said.
In this week’s amendments, the government said affected parties will be given a two-month mediation period to broker deals before resorting to arbitration as a last resort.
Facebook announced on Monday that it will restore news pages in Australia, reversing an earlier decision to block access to news content in Australia in retaliation against the then-proposed bill.
Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president for global news partnerships, said on Tuesday that the Australian government has clarified that the tech company retains the ability to decide whether to publish news on its platform so that it is not automatically subject to forced negotiations.
Google initially threatened to take its search function from Australia. However, in recent weeks it has struck a number of prominent commercial deals with Australian publishers, including the media conglomerate NewsCorp, a family-owned Murdoch-based company.
Australia’s new law could set a precedent for how other countries regulate Big Tech. Countries like France have taken steps to make the tech companies pay for news, while others, such as Canada and the UK, are considering their next steps.