EU planning to follow Australia and make Google, Facebook pay for news content

The European Union is reportedly mulling on going after big tech companies, including Google and Facebook, by asking for news content payments. The EU is said to have warned that it may copy Australia for its new media law.

EU’s possible new law on news publishing

The members of the European parliament issued a warning directed at tech firms regarding the EU’s plans to revamp its media policies. The new law may force Google and the others to pay for news just like what the Australian legislation is set to implement.

Moreover, the Financial Times mentioned that the MEPs are working on the European Union’s digital market's legislation and stated that the revisions might match the set binding rules for licensing agreements in news media. For the license, it was said that some of the requirements could include asking tech companies to inform publishers about how the news stories are ranked on their respective platforms.

Maltese MEP, Alex Saliba, stated that Australia’s media bargaining code actually fixed “acute bargaining power imbalances” with news publishers. Thus, the EU is also considering making its own version and implementing it as a policy.

“With their dominant market position in search, social media and advertising, large digital platforms create power imbalances and benefit significantly from news content,” Saliba told FT. “I think it is only fair that they pay back a fair amount.”

Why the digital news publishing laws are being revamped

As per the Daily Mail, the Copyright in the Digital Single Market is being revised to make sure that it will be a well-functioning marketplace for copyright as intended. This is also to protect press publications by lessening the “value gap” between the revenues earned by web platforms and content creators.

With these revisions on internet copyrights that the Australians started last month, Google threatened to pull out from Australia. Facebook also warned that it would remove news content from Australia if the new code is passed.

But then, the Australian officials are unfazed, and they are determined to make tech companies pay for news. And today, it seems that the EU is in agreement with this and may soon publish a similar law to collect payments for news stories.