The Australian Parliament passed its Media Negotiation Code by law. What is Congress waiting for?
Lawmakers from both American parties have been making a lot of noise about cracking down on Big Tech, but the actual legislation with any hope of approval remains out of sight. The obvious first step is to copy the Down Under law, which will force Facebook and Google to pay media companies for news content that technology companies earn a lot of money from.
Both companies tried to intimidate Australians from moving forward, and Facebook even blocked Australian news from their websites last week, along with an “accidental” blocking of vital public information from the government. But it did not work.
Yes, Facebook won some concessions, but the law still sets a milestone in the first legislation to force Big Tech to share the huge profits it makes from third-party intellectual property. The Pew Research Center reports that employment in American newspapers has dropped more than 50 percent since 2008, driven by the decline in advertising revenue – even with Google and Facebook together collecting about three-quarters of all online advertising revenue.
Canada now wants to follow Australia; Germany, France, Finland and others are also interested.
The House Judiciary Committee is beginning to examine legislation that would allow small US news organizations to collectively negotiate with Google and Facebook, but that is little without a bipartisan push towards a law like Australia’s.
If anything can provide the Washington “unity” that the president is always talking about, it is an effort to make Big Tech pay for what it now exploits for free.