Google and Facebook must share ad revenue with Australian news agencies

Australia’s competition bureau will force Facebook and Google to share advertising revenue with Australian news agencies, after negotiations between the digital giants and media companies broke down.

Media experts in Canada say this is another step on the path that many countries are on, with debates over media competition and government oversight boiling.

The Australian government has asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to draft a mandatory code that will include penalties and dispute resolution mechanisms.

The code was originally meant to be drafted by digital companies and news agencies and finalized in November 2020. It was a response to the commission’s report released in December which included 23 recommendations to improve media competition in Australia.

This follows an April 13 ruling by France’s competition bureau that ordered Google to enter into a reimbursement agreement with French news agencies and publishers for the free use of excerpts of their work on its site.

Dwayne Winseck, a professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication, said he viewed the two events as part of a larger momentum in the international media landscape. Many other countries are on the verge of making a similar move, he said.

“This stuff is boiling,” Winseck said. “I just see it as steps along a path that is now cleared through the forest.”

John Hinds, CEO of advocacy group News Media Canada, sees it as “very good news” which he hopes will create global momentum after the decision in France.

Canada is poised to make changes itself, but Winseck said those won’t happen right away. A government-commissioned independent study of Canada’s media and communications environment, released in January, recommended a new regulatory system to oversee big tech companies and “content producers.”

Winseck said five years from now, the international media landscape could look very different after more countries follow Australia and France in resolving competition and copyright issues stemming from the internet and its biggest companies. .

Hinds said what Australia is doing could serve as a model for Canada, which for several years has been looking for ways to strengthen its own media landscape amid falling advertising revenues.

In an email on Monday, a spokesperson for Canada’s competition bureau said the bureau was aware of the mandatory code being developed by its Australian counterpart.

However, Canada’s Competition Act does not provide the authority to create such a code. Legislative policy authority rests with the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. But if the companies “engage in anti-competitive behavior, the bureau will not hesitate to take appropriate enforcement action,” the spokesperson wrote.

Although each country approaches the issue a little differently, Winseck said they all have one thing in common: “Each of these countries says it’s time for the state to step in.”

Winseck said recent moves by Australia and France could “increase the political pressure” for other countries, including Canada, to go ahead with their own changes.

However, the punitive government-imposed methods chosen by France and Australia make Winseck and others somewhat skeptical. They say forcing the digital giants to pay may not be the best way forward.

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and a leading researcher on internet and e-commerce issues, said he thinks the path Canada has taken so far – by For example, the Local Journalism Initiative, which directly funds local journalists – is “more appropriate. ”

“For me, it’s a different approach than playing what feels more like a blame game,” he said, referring to France and Australia.

“It reflects the Canadian government’s review that there is a problem, there is a need for support. But he has taken, so far anyway, an approach that emphasizes public support for the public good.

With files from The New York Times