Now Reading: Australia to force Big Tech to fund more local news
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Australia to force Big Tech to fund more local news
Australia is tightening its media bargaining laws, requiring digital platforms such as Google, Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn to sign commercial deals with at least eight local news organisations, up from six under…
The Story in Brief
Australia is tightening its media bargaining laws, requiring digital platforms such as Google, Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn to sign commercial deals with at least eight local news organisations, up from six under an earlier proposal. The revised legislation, expected in Parliament on Thursday, caps any single deal at 25 per cent of a platform's levy liability, with the levy set at 2.5 per cent of Australian advertising revenue.
The government says the changes will direct more advertising revenue to Australian news outlets, including smaller and diverse ones. Five per cent of the funds raised will go to the non-profit newswire Australian Associated Press. Australia's 2021 law was among the first globally and has influenced Canada, New Zealand and the UK.
The Indian Opinion
The popular narrative pits plucky local journalism against rapacious global tech platforms. But ordinary Indian readers might ask: where is our equivalent of this law? Australia's scheme extracts a visible tax on tech giants' ad revenue and directs it to newsrooms, including a mandated share for the non-profit newswire AAP. Without such a framework, Indian news outlets remain dependent on the same platforms they compete with. The test for India will be whether the next government even tables a draft bill, let alone passes it.
Source: timesnownews.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
