The heavy lobbying by tech giants such as Google, Facebook and others have made the federal government reconsider the enforcement of its strict new rules regarding the way they interact with media corporations.
Based on what was planned, the social media companies were to be made to pay the Australian media for the news that was made public through their platforms.
However, since then, Google have threatened to depart the Australian market if there are no changes made to the new draft created by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which they have described as “unworkable.”
According to the argument made by the tech companies, the draft is “one-sided”, taking into consideration only the traffic it creates for social media outlets but not the readers who are redirected into the news corporation’s websites.
After the heavy resistance by the tech giants, the federal government decided to gauge the resistance of the media outlets themselves and how open they would be in relaxing some of the rules in this proposed new law, with treasurer Josh Frydenberg pointing out that consultations are ongoing.
He refused to comment however if there would be a change in the bargaining procedure between media corporations and tech companies.
The government has their work cut out for them however, as the media outlets will not respond positively to any attempt made to soften the blow on the tech giants as they believe they have an unfair profit from news content which they don’t produce.
On the other hand, Facebook has threatened to block all content by Australian media corporations from its platform.
Google has pointed out that it directed over three billion people to Aussie news outlets in 2018, which worth a total of $218 million.
The draft code is said to be introduced before the end of the year, as ACCC chairperson Rod Sims has already given his final advice to the government and now the process has moved to the Treasury with the parliamentary drafting office who are to give it its complete form.
