Conflict Between Facebook, Google and Publishers Spotlighted Amid CCP Virus Crisis

Shadow Communications Minister Michelle Rowland is the latest voice in a growing chorus of executives and politicians pushing tech giants Google and Facebook to compensate media publishers for re-using their content.

In recent weeks, Australian media companies have been caught between a “rock and a hard place” as they deal with falling advertising revenues. This has been caused by two things, the ongoing loss of market share (pdf) to the digital giants; and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

“Its actually a perverse situation where the media is actually getting good ratings because people are at home and ready to consume,” said Rowland.

However, media companies could not sell advertising because “the economy has shut down” and at the same time they were losing revenue to the digital platforms.

French Ruling Against Google

Rowlands comments follow a ruling against Google by the French competition regulator, Autorité de la concurrence issued on April 9.

The injunction requires Google to negotiate with media publishers in France on a remuneration model for re-using content.

Negotiations must begin within three months and any deal will be backdated to include content released from late 2019 onward.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher supported the move saying the tech giants needed to find a way to pay Australian content producers and publishers.

Google and Facebook in Australia

In July 2019, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released the Digital Platforms Inquiry report, which made recommendations on a framework for regulating the digital media space.

The federal government acted on the report by establishing a new special unit within the ACCC to monitor the state of competition in digital media. Another initiative was to ask media entities, along with Facebook and Google, to negotiate a voluntary code to address the issue.

The ACCC will update the government on progress in May 2020. If no agreement is finalised by November, the government will consider implementing a mandatory code.

In an interview with Radio National on April 2, Michael Miller, executive chairman of News Corp Australia admitted that progress was slow and they couldnt show they had “even got to the first base.”

Fiona Martin, senior lecturer in Convergent and Online Media at the University of Sydney, told the Epoch Times in an email that Google has traditionally been slow to respond to government attempts to regulate it.

“When Spain introduced a similar law in 2014, Google shut down its local Google News service and removed Spanish media outlets from its feeds,” she said.

Martin said Google tended to change its corporate behaviour only when it was forced by “hard regulation or fines.”

She cited a €50 million fine (AU$86 million) imposed on Google by French data regulators in early 2019 for Googles failure to abide by privacy laws.

Martin held little hope a voluntary code would be reached locally saying the “dire economic state of Australian media companies” would make an agreement unlikely and the federal government would eventually have tRead More – Source