Tech giant Google has gone against the recently announced News media Bargaining Code by Australia, which would force digital giants to pay for news content, stating security of the users’ personal data.
Australia made this announcement last month after failing to reach an agreement despite having discussions for 18 months.
Google Australia Managing Director, Mel Silva, in an open letter to the community, said that the proposed changes will give big media companies an unfair advantage over all the other websites that appear on Google and would put their free services at risk.
She also said that with this change news firms will be able to demand details about how customers use Google’s products and they would be forced to hand over that, helping them to inflate their ranking as well.
“We have always treated all website owners fairly when it comes to the information we share about ranking, the proposed changes are not fair and they mean that Google Search results and YouTube will be worse for you”, said Silva.
In another letter, Gautam Anand, YouTube head of APAC said that the proposed law could affect all types of Australian creators and not just the news business. He also added that they would do everything to ensure that a level playing field is created for all kinds of Australian creators and not just a few large media companies.
The proposed measure will initially target Facebook and Google and would take fines worth millions of dollars for non-compliance. This would also for transparency in the ranking system by Google.
The regulation has huge local support. With the news media outlets suffering hugely in the digital economy fueled by the Coronavirus pandemic which further forced many Australian newspapers to close down in recent months, the tech firms have succeeded in getting an overwhelming amount of advertising revenue.
This initiative relies on competition law rather than copyright regulations and is expected to be introduced next year.
