Australia to charge tech companies for news content if they do not pay

SYDNEY (Dec 12): Australia's centre-left government said on Thursday it planned new rules that would charge big tech firms millions of dollars if they did not pay Australian media companies for news hosted on their platforms.

The move piles pressure on global tech giants such as Facebook-owner Meta Platforms and Alphabet's Google to pay publishers for content or face the risk of paying millions to continue operations in Australia.

"The news bargaining initiative will ... will create a financial incentive for agreement-making between digital platforms and news media businesses in Australia," Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones told a press conference.

The platforms at risk will be significant social media platforms and search engines with an Australian-based revenue in excess of US$250 million (RM1.1 billion), he said.

The charge will be offset for any commercial agreements that are voluntarily entered into between the platforms and news media businesses, Jones added.

Tech companies condemned the plan.

"The proposal fails to account for the realities of how our platforms work, specifically that most people don't come to our platforms for news content and that news publishers voluntarily choose to post content on our platforms because they receive value from doing so," a Meta spokesman said after Jones' remarks.

A spokesperson for Google said the government's decision "risks ongoing viability of commercial deals with news publishers in Australia".

The proposed new rules come as Australia toughens its approach to the mostly US-domiciled tech giants.

Last month it became the first country to ban children under the age of 16 from social media, in a move seen as setting a benchmark for other governments' handling of Big Tech.

Canberra also plans to threaten the companies with fines for failing to stamp out scams.

Google, ByteDance through TikTok, and Meta through its various platforms would fall within the scope of the charges under the new rules. However X, formerly Twitter, would not be covered, Jones said.