Why India needs a policy for fair revenue-sharing between Big Tech and digital publishers

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Take Google and Facebook. The two aggregate and distribute news and content that others create, and directly or indirectly monetise the resulting traffic, while the publisher gets little or inadequate share. This lopsided system has sparked a debate worldwide on whether and how revenue should be shared between the original producers and distributors of content.

In 2021, Australia adopted the News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC), a law designed to have large technology platforms that operate in the country pay local news publishers for the news content made available or linked on their platforms. Australia was the first country to do so. If parties could not negotiate a settlement, the act said, arbitration would settle the case.

If Facebook or Google broke any agreements, they could be fined up to A$10 million ($7.4 million) in civil penalties. NMBC was drafted by the government and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), and led to several successful deals. In France, the French Competition Authority (FCA) investigated a matter of abuse of dominance against Google for unfair transaction conditions on publishers.

Google offered to resolve 'the copyright dispute over digital content and revenue sharing' and agreed to negotiate with news platforms. It also dropped the appeal against a ₹500 million fine. Spain, however, has a different story.

When the government imposed a monthly fee to be paid to newspapers by Google in 2014, it shut down its news platform. In 2021, the country changed its copyright law under European Union regulations. The copyright law requires platforms to negotiate deals with publishers for revenue sharing; resultantly, Google reopened its Google News platform in Spain in June 2022.