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Australia to Force Internet Giants to Pay Publishers

posted by Fnord666 on Monday April 20 2020, @04:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the here-we-go-again dept.

lentilla writes:

The Australian federal government has decided to force Internet giants to pay for content they collect from local publishers. Treasurer Mr Frydenberg says "It's only fair that those that generate content get paid for it".

According to this article appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald: 'The ACCC [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission] will be asked to draft a new industry approach for consultation in July with a definition of the "news content" to be covered by the mandatory code, with the expectation the search and social media giants will have to pay for content.'

Students of history will recall that German publishers tried something similar in 2013. Google responded by removing links to these articles rather than pay the publishers for the privilege of linking. The result: "visitors from web search fell 40 percent; from Google News, they fell 80 percent". Two weeks later and the group of publishers decided to give search engines a free licence to index their content.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday April 20 2020, @06:33AM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 20 2020, @06:33AM (#985025) Journal

    What makes Aussies think they are that important?

    First at all, it's not Aussies, it's Aussie publishers, with almost all of it meaning Murdoch (News Corp) or Nine MSN (Fairfax) [wikipedia.org].
    Then... I don't know about important, but it's not that hard to have two entities stupid enough to waste their time in trying what others failed.

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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday April 20 2020, @11:09PM (1 child)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Monday April 20 2020, @11:09PM (#985269)

    Those two dominate the media in New Zealand too, and despite 25 years of mismanagement continue to make $10's of millions in profit every year.

    It is clearly not enough though, as they are pushing to be allowed to merge, which would give most towns in New Zealand one media outlet. I'm pretty sure we will be having this debate shortly too.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 21 2020, @12:04AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 21 2020, @12:04AM (#985279) Journal

      I'm pretty sure we will be having this debate shortly too.

      The .au govt made a sensible decision this time around on the line of "Not gonna give you money now". We'll get to see how this will play into the future.

      It is a bit worrisome that Murdock and his ilk has so much leverage in the political life of Australia - see https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/malcolm-turnbull-on-how-the-liberal-party-operates/12167030 [abc.net.au] - see at about 14:50 for about 2-3 mins.

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      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford