Making tech giants pay for news unlikely to be a game-changer

IN WHAT is being touted as a world first, Australia has proposed a new law that will compel American tech giants Facebook and Google to negotiate with print and broadcast news organisations and pay them for using their content.

If the two sides cannot reach agreement, arbitration will kick in - to eke out a deal or impose one. A bill giving the government intervention powers was tabled last week and is expected to be passed sometime next year. US-based tech firms are resisting, arguing, inter alia, that they are the ones bestowing a benefit to local mass media firms, not the other way round.

The proposal comes after years of complaints from local newspapers and broadcasters with an online presence that their content was being purloined, and that this had enabled the American tech giants to siphon off advertising revenues. It has been claimed, for instance, that 53 per cent of all advertising expenditure in Australia is spent on Google. Facebook gets about 28 per cent. Only the crumbs go to the country's own mass media companies.