Google and Facebook were close to hitting major trade deals to pay Australian media for news ahead of Australia creating laws around the world that would force the digital giants to fund journalism, a minister said Monday.
Parliament plans to consider the draft laws Tuesday after a Senate committee last week recommended no changes to the rules that Google and Facebook have condemned as inoperable.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, one of the ministers in charge of the legislation, said he had talks at the weekend with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, Alphabet Inc. chief executive. and its subsidiary Google. Frydenberg had also spoken to Australian news media officials.
“We have come a long way, I think, in the last 48 to 72 hours and I think we will see important commercial contracts that could be very beneficial to the landscape. domestic media and that journalists will see a financial reward for the original generation of content, as it should be, and this is a progressive redevelopment, Frydenberg told Nine Network television.
No other country has stepped in as we have. It has been a difficult process. It’s still going on, so let’s not get on with it on our own. But the talks so far have been very promising indeed, Frydenberg said.
Frydenberg later said the contracts of Australian Broadcasting Corp. were very close.
Google and Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Google has stepped up its campaign against the proposed law, telling a Senate committee that scrutinized the draft that its platform is unlikely to be available in Australia. if the news media bargaining code was introduced.
Facebook has threatened to prevent Australians from sharing news if the platform had to pay for news.
While the digital giants are able to afford the cost of paying for the Australian news they link to, they are concerned about the international fashion that Australia could set.
Google has been under pressure from authorities elsewhere to pay for news. Last month, he signed a contract with a group of French publishers, paving the way for the company to make digital copyright payments. Under the agreement, Google negotiates individual licensing contracts with newspapers, with payments based on factors such as the amount published daily and monthly on a website.
In Australia, the platforms can enter into payment agreements with media businesses before the code is enacted.
The legislation would create a settlement panel to make binding decisions regarding payment in cases where a news platform and industry cannot agree on a news price.
The panel would usually accept the best offer at the platform or with the publisher, and they would rarely set a price between them. This should discourage both the platforms and the businesses from making unrealistic requests.
Google announced two weeks ago that it had started paying seven Australian news websites under its own model, News Showcase. Google is paying affiliated publishers to provide paid content to News Showcase users through the module it launched in October.
Google has reached payment terms with more than 450 publications worldwide through the News Showcase.
Supporters of the Australian government’s stance are thanking the proposed laws to bring Google to the negotiating table.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Industry Status staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from syndicated feeds.)
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