BTLR’s Yale encouraged by Australian news compensation model; too reliant on big tech, says OpenMedia

An initiative explored this past month in a Senate private member's bill effectively “hitched our wagon to the continued growth of these big companies” like Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, according to OpenMedia executive director Laura Tribe. News compensation legislation like Australia’s -- where publishers are paid by Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to use their content -- creates news gaps as Facebook threatened to block its citizens from viewing or sharing news, according to Tribe. She added that a model seen in Europe -- where copyright law is used to have web giants pay for links or snippets of information shared -- will steer social media companies away from promoting the more expensive newspieces, leaving a greater void for misinformation to circulate. “It would effectively make the public interest piece more expensive if we follow the European model,” she said. “When you look at putting forward either of those models, at the end of the day, it doesn't get those companies where they need to be which is actually sustained support ... and when you look at the really big context of what we're trying to get at, it's how do you get people to access the news, read the news, and to support that so they continue to exist.” Tribe made the comments on a Tuesday panel discussion hostel by the Canadian Internet Governance Forum (CIGF), which also featured Friends of Canadian Broadcasting executive director Daniel Bernhard, University of Ottawa Canada research chair in Internet and E-commerce Law Michael Geist, and Janet Yale, chair of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel (BTLR). As opposed to Tribe, Yale said that she "quite like the Australian model, as the most viable option of the ones we've seen." "It does two things," she said. "It allows the publishers to make arrangements with the tech platforms, and in particular it allows them to negotiate collectively, something that might otherwise be considered contrary to competition law." Second, she pointed to the law's mandatory binding arbitration if the parties can not agree. Yale said she was encouraged by the recent announcement by Google to create the Google News showcase where it will license content from publishers. However, she pointed out no regulation allows for platform providers to have greater bargaining power over publishers. “This is Rupert Murdoch on the one side, Mark Zuckerberg on the other. Let's not pretend that this is anything other than that. And is home court for Murdoch, and so the Australian government went to bat for him,” Geist said in response to the debate. Bernhard, for his part, said the Australian model has erroneously been referred to as a "link tax," a term that obscures the nature of the proposal, which would see the tech giants pay a lump sum to publishers, rather than to the government as the word "tax" implies. -- Reporting by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca.

BTLR’s Yale encouraged by Australian news compensation model; too reliant on big tech, says OpenMedia

Broadcast | July 6, 2021

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BTLR’s Yale encouraged by Australian news compensation model; too reliant on big tech, says OpenMedia

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