Canada joins tech giants fight, mulling new media laws

Canada is joining the pushback against tech giants like Facebook and Google, revealing it is considering laws like Australia’s to make them pay for news.

Ottawa is mulling several approaches to tackling the tech giants, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault says. Picture: AFP

Canada is readying legislation that would force social media companies to compensate Canadian news publishers, following Australia’s looming world-first media bargaining code, as the regulatory push expands internationally.

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault told MPs of the plans last week, according to The Globe and Mail, and said that Canada was looking closely at developments in Australia.

Chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Rod Sims at the National Press Club in Canberra. Picture by Sean Davey.

He’d tweeted last month that “we stand in solidarity with our Australian partners” and that “when facing the web giants, we must stand united.”

The Canadian government has reportedly not settled on whether to follow Australia’s approach, which deals with a market power imbalance with an arbitration process, or France’s path which has been to force Google to pay for news by deeming news snippets at copyrighted material.

Canada is also proposing to create a new regulator to oversee how Google and Facebook grapple with illegal content like hate speech and child pornography, reports say.

“We know there’s a problem. We’ve recognised it for some time,” Mr Guilbeault told The Globe and Mail, in relation to the news industry.

“We will table a bill in the spring.”

ACCC chair Rod Sims has previously revealed he’d been in contact with his international counterparts about Australia’s news media bargaining code.

And Scott Morrison will seek to build support from world leaders for Australia’s news media bargaining code when he meets his overseas counterparts and attends international forums this year, declaring a sustainable media landscape is vital to a functioning democracy.

“I would like to see more alignment between the world’s economies on these sorts of things (the media bargaining code),” the Prime Minister said on Monday. “We want to work (with) the companies on these sorts of things; we want a practical outcome. But the world has changed.

“Digital technology has affected that, and we’re trying to ensure that our regulatory system keeps pace with that change to ensure that journalists can do their jobs, not just in taxpayer-funded organisations but commercial ones too.”

The legislation was introduced to parliament late last year, and would force the tech giants into mediation with publishers over the value of their news, and hit them with fines of up to $10m if they ­fail to comply. It’s now before a Senate committee.

The Prime Minister’s remarks follow revelations that he fielded a call from Microsoft boss Satya Nadella last week, during which the US-based chief executive said his company was well equipped to further expand its Bing search ­engine in the Australian market should Google follow through on its threat to leave the country ­because of the news media code.

Under the media code legislation — which is likely to be passed by the Senate, possibly as early as this month — Google would be required to pay compensation to media companies for the use of their content, a scenario the tech giant says is “untenable”.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher, who also participated in the Zoom call between Mr Morrison and Mr Nadella, said it was likely that other tech players would fill the void by Google should the company choose to exit the Australian market.

Originally published as Canada joins tech giants fight, mulling new media laws