Facebook and Google will now have to pay news outlets in Australia for their content, after Australian legislators passed a law requiring tech firms to pay for content from news outlets within Australia.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook was party to discussions on the amendments to the laws.
During the negotiations, Facebook blocked users in Australia from using Facebook to share news. The service was restored on Tuesday following the agreements.
Per the new changes, Australia will exempt Facebook from the code if Facebook signs enough agreements with local news outlets to compensate them for news content.
All the tech firms affected by the new code have one month to achieve compliance. The amendment satisfied Rod Simms, who prepared the code in his role as competition regulator. Sims believed that the law would serve to reduce the imbalance between news outlets in Australia and tech giants Facebook and Google.
“All signs are good,” Sims explained. “The purpose of the code is to address the market power that clearly Google and Facebook have. Google and Facebook need media, but they don’t need any particular media company, and that meant media companies couldn’t do commercial deals.”
Australians were not too excited about Facebooks ban on sharing news because government as well as non-profit pages were also affected. Even public health organizations crucial to keeping people informed about the Covid-19 pandemic were not spared.
The effect of the new law will be to institute a groundbreaking protocol for handling disputes in Australia. Other governments will be keenly following the new process.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that Bing would replace Google’s search engine if Google opted to pull out of Australia in protest of the new rules. Morrison even spoke personally to Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft to discuss the scenario.
A conglomerate of 161 regional newspapers in Australia known as County Press Australia is apprehensive that smaller publications in smaller towns may not benefit from the deals committing tech firms to pay for news content.
Sims said he expected platforms Google and Facebook to first make deals with businesses in large city, but that all journalism outlets would benefit eventually.
“I don’t see any reason why anybody should doubt that all journalism will benefit,” he said.
“These things take time. Google and Facebook don’t have unlimited resources to go around talking to everybody. I think this has got a long way to play out,” he added.