Australia to require Facebook and Google to pay media companies

The Australian government will draw up rules of conduct for large tech platforms, including the obligation for those media companies to pay for news items, for example. Initially, it would be a voluntary code of conduct.

The mandatory code of conduct will include data sharing, publishing lists of news items and sharing revenue based on news. Failure to comply with the rules will result in fines and other sanctions. “It’s fair that those who create content get paid for it,” Australian Treasury Secretary Josh Frydenberg told ABC.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission should have a draft code of conduct ready for consultation by the end of July. The competition authority was initially tasked with drafting a voluntary code of conduct, but the ACCC stated that it was unlikely to be followed. In 2018, the authority concluded that Google and Facebook had significant market power, which entailed risks to competition.

The previous planning was that the authority would negotiate the voluntary code of conduct with the tech companies until November, but the Australian government states that the corona crisis is leading to financial problems in the media sector, which means that a mandatory code must be accelerated. Earlier this month, Google was obliged in France to pay media companies for copying short texts of articles in, for example, Google News.