Skip to main content

New top story from Time: How Australia May Have Just Saved Journalism From Big Tech

https://ift.tt/2ZFsFQf

On Feb. 18, Australians woke up to find that all the local news stories that they had shared on Facebook had abruptly disappeared. The social media giant’s global cull of Australian news hit not only media companies, but also from a wide range of governmental organizations, including the some state and local health departments and the Bureau of Meteorology.

Facebook claimed it had no choice in the face of a proposed media law that would force the tech giants to pay for the use of local media content. Both Google and Facebook opposed the new law.

There was an outcry and much hand-wringing about the future of journalism and the news business. But in fact, Facebook’s blockade represents a significant victory in the fight for the survival of a free press. It was not a stunning blow, but a retreat, after the social media company was abandoned by Google, which backtracked on its threat to pull out of Australia and signed deals to pay Australian media companies. Google’s deals represent a moonshot moment for saving journalism.

Australia started this audacious attempt to rescue the free press from Big Tech in 2017 after regulators said companies like Facebook and Google exerted an outsized control of the flow of news to the public. With unusual bipartisan support, the government introduced a law last summer to force Big Tech companies to pay publishers for the use of their content in news feeds, summaries and search engines.

Read more: The U.S. Exported QAnon to Australia and New Zealand. Now It’s Creeping Into COVID-19 Lockdown Protests

The Australian government argued if the tech companies didn’t start paying for journalism it would spell the end of the free press. In the past 15 years, Australian media advertising revenue dropped by 75%; 125 regional newspapers went online-only in 2020, leading to large job losses. It’s a universal story—in the U.S., more than 200 counties no longer have a newspaper. Meanwhile, Google and Facebook’s advertising revenues have skyrocketed, partly on the back of content created by media outlets.

The digital giants say that paying for links in search and social posts would kill the free and open web. (And create a precedent for every other industry on the planet that uses the web.) The Australian government, and media companies, say the law is about paying for content, not links.

Instead of pushing the digital platforms to pay more to the media by beefing up copyright laws, as Europe is doing, Australia devised an antitrust law that would improve media companies’ bargaining power and treat each negotiation as if it were a financial settlement in an antitrust lawsuit.

The law uses two “traps” created to redress what regulators say is a major power imbalance between the Big Tech and media companies. First, the law deploys a final-offer arbitration method—which compels both sides to submit a final offer to an arbitrator if they can’t come to an agreement, and empowers the arbitrator to pick one. This measure supercharges price negotiations to favor news companies. The regulator also inserted a poison pill: If a negotiation fails, the tech company cannot boycott that publisher’s content. It must host all Australian journalism on its network or carry none at all.

The mobs that mobilized at the U.S. Capitol in January, fueled by misinformation and fake news, focused the world on the outsized influence the tech companies were having on the flow of information. But long before that, global regulators were circling. There have been more than 100 government-led inquiries around the world into Big Tech in the past three years and many investigations are only just reaching the more dire conclusions.

With Google’s historic decision to pay up—reportedly signing deals worth tens of millions a year—Big Tech may perhaps finally have turned on itself. Google and Facebook have never liked each other, but they enlisted in this fight against Australia’s government together. If its media code passed unchecked into law, they said as recently as January, they would both hit the eject button. Google threatened to close all search; Facebook threatened to cut off all news.

But the Big Tech threats just hardened the politicians’ resolve. Into this impasse walked Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella via video link. Without a shred of antitrust irony, he called Prime Minister Scott Morrison to pledge Microsoft would quickly step in if Google walked out. It would scale up its Bing search engine, it would sign up for the code, it would pay up for journalism. Its president Brad Smith posted a long treatise in praise of the importance of public interest journalism.

Within hours, Google’s talks with publishers were back on. Within days, the biggest deals ever seen to pay for journalism were announced. All of Google’s new agreements sit outside the ground-breaking code but all have been signed because of it. Google has worked out how to live with a law it didn’t like because it realized that the idea of paying for news is here to stay in Australia—and it wanted to stay, as well.

Despite the high drama of shutting down news, Facebook still has sizable payment offers on publishers’ tables and there they remain with doors ajar. In the sweep of media history, whichever way they resolve it won’t mean much, because Google won the day and the free press won the war.

Google’s deals are about five times the value of those it recently signed in France under the new E.U.’s copyright approach. Australia’s reaching for antitrust weaponry presents a model for other countries of how to use competition laws to unlock big enough payments for journalism to survive.

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MTA Board of Directors Welcomes Lydia So

MTA Board of Directors Welcomes Lydia So By Stephen Chun Lydia So, a championed public servant, advocate for the AAPI community and an accomplished urban planner, designer and architect, has joined the SFMTA’s Board of Directors. She was appointed in June 2023 and sworn in by Mayor London Breed on Aug. 23, 2023, at Central Subway’s Chinatown Rose Pak Station, in line with her personal connection with the Chinatown community.   So was born in Hong Kong and is fluent in Chinese (Cantonese). She is the founder of the architecture firm SOLYD Architecture, Management and Design. She is a former Historic Preservation Commissioner for the San Francisco Planning Department where she voted in favor of the Potrero Yard Modernization Project that is expected to bring hundreds of housing units to our city while maintaining the functions of the SFMTA. She was the first Chinese American Historic Preservation Commissioner, implemented the Planning Department’s Racial and Social Equity po...

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J बिग बॉस 14: सलमान का फार्महाउस, 16 प्रतिभागी, देखिए धमाकेदार लिस्ट

सलमान खान के शो बिग बॉस के नए सीज़न को लेकर काफी समय से अटकलें चल रही हैं और अब इस सीज़न को लेकर काफी खबरें बाहर आ चुकी हैं। सबसे पहली बात तो ये कि ये सीज़न सलमान खान अपने from टेलीविजन की खबरें | Television News in Hindi | TV Serials Update in Hindi – FilmiBeat Hindi http:/hindi.filmibeat.com/television/bigg-boss-14-details-salman-khan-s-panvel-farmhouse-16-contestants-see-list-090656.html?utm_source=/rss/filmibeat-hindi-television-fb.xml&utm_medium=23.11.231.151&utm_campaign=client-rss

How Improving Muni Also Makes Life Better for Drivers

How Improving Muni Also Makes Life Better for Drivers By Andrea Buffa Photo credit: We Ride Australia If you mostly drive to get around San Francisco, you may be wondering, “what has the SFMTA done for me lately?” San Francisco is a “ transit first ” city, so at the SFMTA we focus our resources on making it easier for San Franciscans to get around by public transit as well as by biking, walking and personal mobility device. While it may seem like adding transit lanes and protected bike lanes doesn’t have anything to do with driving, in fact, it does.  Since San Francisco doesn’t have room to give more space to roads, we have to change the way we use the limited space on our existing streets. (Not that adding more roads reduces traffic anyway – check out this article .) City Traffic Engineer Ricardo Oleo puts it this way: “When you have a city like San Francisco that was built with density in mind, having everyone drive is not a viable option. There’s not enough room to have th...

SFMTA Staffers Share their Favorite SF Bike Rides

SFMTA Staffers Share their Favorite SF Bike Rides By Eillie Anzilotti Happy Bike Month, San Francisco! To celebrate, we’re sharing some of SFMTA staffers’ favorite rides through the city. From protected bike lanes to quick-build projects to Slow Streets, the JFK Promenade, and the Great Highway, all of the routes roll through projects that the SFMTA has completed in the last several years to make biking through San Francisco easier, safer, and joyful. We hope you get some inspiration for your next ride--and share your favorite route with us! For easy trip planning, we’ve included each ride below on an interactive map .   Jeffrey Tumlin, Director of Transportation: “I explore all of San Francisco by bike, but this is a standard trip: Starting from the Castro, I head up the Slow Street on Noe, where I like to admire the trees and people watch in Duboce Park. Then, I ride north on Scott to Fell Street along the Panhandle. When I reach the new JFK Promenade, it’s amazing how ...

Public Artwork Unveiled Inside New Station in Yerba Buena

Public Artwork Unveiled Inside New Station in Yerba Buena By Enrique Aguilar Have you had a chance to explore the Central Subway's new stations? Special weekend service is Saturdays and Sundays, from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. midnight, through the end of the year. Ride the trains and be mesmerized by beautiful artwork at each new station.  Muni customers will encounter public art when using the four new Central Subway stations to reach their destinations. The art was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission and funded by the City’s Art Enrichment Ordinance, which allocates 2% of the total eligible costs of public works projects for public art. Public art helps draw out the identity of a space, aids in understanding a neighborhood's historical or cultural significance, and builds a connection between the visitor and surrounding community.  The Yerba Buena/Moscone Station includes artwork by Catherine Wagner, Leslie Shows and Roxy Paine. The installations can be found on th...

Muni Service Changes Starting June 13

Muni Service Changes Starting June 13 By Mariana Maguire Beginning Saturday, June 13, the SFMTA will increase Muni service and frequency, add select routes into service and extend some current routes to continue to support essential trips. A key goal of these service increases is to support the community’s economic recovery by providing more connections to neighborhood commercial districts as businesses begin to reopen. We are also adding more frequent service on targeted routes to help address crowding and improve onboard physical distancing. These service changes will improve transit access through Chinatown, SoMa and the Excelsior neighborhoods, identified by the Muni’s Service Equity Strategy as neighborhoods that rely on transit service the most based on the percentage of households with low incomes, private vehicle ownership and race and ethnicity demographics. Although Muni continues to be for essential trips only, many people have no choice but to use transit to r...

Safer and Easier Parking in Every City-Owned Facility

Safer and Easier Parking in Every City-Owned Facility By Pamela Johnson Parking at any of our 22 city-owned facilities is now easier and safer than ever. Late last month we completed the Parking Access Revenue and Control Systems (PARCS) project. This four-year effort replaced aging parking equipment with modern technology and significant operational upgrades. Customer using new PARCS kiosk at North Beach parking garage Patrons will notice enhanced lighting, new wayfinding signs, audible alarms, cameras, gate arms, and payment machines with two-way digital intercoms . Behind the scenes is an all-new parking management system and 24/7 command center, connected to every machine. Can’t find your ticket to pay for parking?  No worries! Thanks to license plate recognition technology, cameras located at every facility’s entrance capture patrons’ plate numbers as they arrive . If a customer loses her ticket, the manager is able to re-issue a ticket based on her license plate...

How Muni is Tackling the 10 Worst Delay Hot Spots Across SF

How Muni is Tackling the 10 Worst Delay Hot Spots Across SF By Cassie Halls The SFMTA has had its fair share of ribbon-cutting ceremonies  over the last two years. These celebrations draw attention to some of our biggest projects. Also attention-worthy are some of the more incremental efforts happening at the agency. One such effort led by the Muni Forward team is the Transit Delay Hot Spots Program , launched in February 2020 . Muni Forward is known for corridor projects such as the L Taraval Improvement Project , 16 th Street Improvement Project , and M Oceanview Transit and Safety Project . These efforts are increasing the already sizeable 80 miles of transit reliability upgrades since 2014. There are also other ways we’re working to slash travel times and improve reliability across the Muni network. The Transit Delay Hot Spots Program aims to tackle the 10 worst “delay hot spots” each year, where buses crawl between stops at four miles an hour or less. We’re looking cl...

With Memorial Day Around the Corner Muni is Still for Essential Trips

With Memorial Day Around the Corner Muni is Still for Essential Trips By Erin McMillan With Memorial Day weekend right around the corner, many of us are eager to get outside and enjoy the sunshine and wide open spaces. But as we enter the biggest holiday weekend since the shelter-in-place order, it’s still important to be acutely aware of how our individual actions can and will affect our communal ability to address the impacts of COVID-19. While we hopefully will arrive at a new normal soon, the shelter-in-place order is still in effect and it’s still important as ever that we remember to physically distance ourselves while out in our neighborhoods and to only make essential trips.   In early April, we temporarily reduced Muni service to our Core Service network which serves the highest ridership lines and supports essential trips to places like hospitals, healthcare facilities, grocery stores, restaurants and other essential services. Thanks to increasing staffing availabili...

SFMTA Supports San Francisco Small Businesses Through Construction and COVID-19

SFMTA Supports San Francisco Small Businesses Through Construction and COVID-19 By Sophia Scherr Local small businesses are what give San Francisco its eclectic and unique charm. Running a small business in San Francisco isn’t an easy feat either, especially over the past year. Therefore, it’s imperative that SFMTA’s projects not only provide resources to businesses that are impacted by construction but are also responsive to COVID-19 concerns as well. Through our partnership with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD), we have been able to provide an additional layer of support to businesses along project corridors including the Geary Rapid Project , Van Ness Improvement Project and L Taraval Improvement Project .  The SFMTA project teams have made it a standard practice to include dedicated support as part of every major capital project. OEWD staff undertake door-to-door outreach and provide information and assistance with grant applications and other city re...