Five years ago, Australia found a way to get recalcitrant tech giants to start paying for news adding value to their sites.
Its News Media Bargaining Code worked. The policy forced Google and Meta to negotiate with publishers. It saved newsroom jobs. And it encouraged other nations and states to pursue similar legislation.
On Tuesday, Australia’s government proposed a new version that could once again inspire policymakers looking for ways to ensure the survival of their local news industries.
The revised version would apply to Google, Meta and TikTok. It’s expected to provide news organizations with $144 million to $179 million a year, about the same as the peak years of the original policy, the Associated Press reported. Around $700 million has been paid altogether since 2021.
Australia’s proposal is far from perfect. It must be improved to be sure it doesn’t leave out small and midsize publishers, as its former competition regulator Rod Sims wrote in The Guardian. It’s also strangely silent on AI companies’ pilferage and regurgitation of news content.
But the proposal and debate it will spur are welcome developments. They could reinvigorate a global effort by the news industry and supporters to address a skewed market impeding its chances of success online.
I particularly like that Australia’s approach is based an understanding that news content has value, and news organizations must be compensated for its use.
Just like movies, music, books and other copyrighted material, professionally published news shouldn’t be free for the taking. That’s especially the case for trillion-dollar companies that benefit from the presence of trustworthy news content on their platforms.
Quantifying that value is tricky and can high-center policy discussions. Australia leaves that to publishers and platforms to negotiate compensation deals themselves, rather than impose a particular scheme.
The “Australia model” also uses a market-based, carrot-and-stick approach to encourage those negotiations.
If those negotiations succeed, the government doesn’t get involved. If tech companies drag their feet or refuse to participate, as they’ve done elsewhere, Australia would collect a tax equal to 2.25% of their Australian revenue. That would fund grants the government would make to news organizations, based on the number of journalists they employ.
The tax-and-grant scheme is new. The original policy required arbitration if companies couldn’t or wouldn’t negotiate deals.
“It’s a strong, strong proposal, albeit maybe flawed in some respects, but I think it’s a good step in the right direction,” said Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, a trade group that’s advocated for similar policies in the U.S.
“I think it continues to push us toward the expectation and the legal right to receive payment for our content and that’s always a good thing, right? And then the devil’s in the details.”
In an interview, Sims said the draft proposal includes changes that appear to give tech companies more bargaining power. But he’s still looking into its changes and intent.
“I’m delighted they’re pressing on with the case, I’m just absolutely delighted, but I’ve got those queries,” he said.
Google and Meta still oppose the policy. They pitched an epic fit when Australia drafted its initial policy, saying it would break the internet (wrong!) and threatened to leave the country.
The companies made similar threats when Aussie-style policies were proposed in Canada, California and Oregon. Allies, including nonprofits and a few news outlets that received tech grants, also sowed division and uncertainty.
Along the way, the companies went ahead and paid a few large publishers but they didn’t want to pay the rest. Meta even blocked news on its platforms in Canada to avoid paying.
Canada passed a similar policy but agreed to collect around half of what was originally sought. Oregon’s policy failed in its legislature by a single vote last year. California’s policy died after Gov. Gavin Newsom cut a deal with Google, resulting in a deeply problematic, underfunded grant program.
But steadily, people are coming to understand that tech companies need to pay up.
Vendors are building tools to facilitate payment when AI companies scrape news content, though their effectiveness is uncertain and fees seem high, according to a new report by the Open Markets Institute’s Center for Journalism & Liberty.
Courtney Radsch, co-author and the center’s director, said AI compensation “seems like a huge hole” in Australia’s draft proposal but she said it’s still advancing important principles that should apply to tech platforms.
Such as, “you can’t just take other people’s work and products and sell it, which is essentially what they’re doing.”
“I feel like Australia is kind of implicitly recognizing that businesses operating in their country have to … adhere to a certain set of practices and requirements,” she said. “And part of that is, if you’re in the information business with search and social media, you have to contribute to the sustainability of the public interest represented by journalism.”
Perhaps Australia’s success could prompt the U.S. Congress to consider a new version of the bipartisan Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, a similar policy introduced in 2021.
Lately our federal government seems more interested in attacking the media and shredding the First Amendment.
If it decides to strengthen this foundation of democracy, and address harm that unfair tech competition does to publishers, Australia has a few good suggestions.
This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress.
