EU warns Google, Facebook it may follow Australia’s media laws revamp

Google and Facebook have been told new EU laws could force them to pay for news along the lines of Australian legislation.

Google has been told that Europe could copy Australia’s proposed media legislation. Picture: AFP

Members of the European parliament have warned Google and Facebook that new EU laws could force big tech companies to pay for news along the lines of Australian legislation.

Google has threatened to block its search engine in Australia if the government passes a law that forces it to pay newspapers and other media organisations for their content.

Facebook has also warned that Australians will be stopped from sharing news if the country’s legislation is passed in its present form.

In a move to challenge the dominance of US internet search and social media platforms the European parliament could amend new EU legislation to include aspects of the Australian law.

MEPs working on the EU’s digital services and markets legislation told the Financial Times that amendments could follow to set binding rules for licensing agreements.

Conditions could include requirements for internet giants to inform publishers about how they rank news stories on their sites. Alex Saliba, a Maltese MEP, said that the Australian clampdown had corrected “acute bargaining power imbalances” with publishers.

“With their dominant market position in search, social media and advertising, large digital platforms create power imbalances and benefit significantly from news content,” he told the newspaper. “I think it is only fair that they pay back a fair amount.”

EU copyright laws agreed in 2019 give publishers the right to demand payment for extracts of news content that appear in Google search rankings or Facebook and other social media postings but the requirements are seen as weak.

One model might be France where courts have intervened to force Google to negotiate with news publishers as a precondition to licensing deals.

“It’s time to oblige online platforms to engage in fair negotiations to remunerate the news content they obtain from press publishers and advise them on algorithm changes that would affect content ranking,” said Stephanie Yon-Courtin, an MEP with the Renew group and a former adviser to the French competition authority.

Andrus Ansip, an Estonian MEP and former European commissioner who worked on the copyright directive, said the EU’s new digital services legislation could be used “to bring more clarity”.

“We will never accept this situation when somebody is using content and authors are not remunerated at all,” he said.

A European Commission spokesman said the new legislation should “not reopen or undo the work” of previous laws such as the copyright directive which must be implemented by June this year. “The commission remains committed to ensuring its correct implementation and practical application,” he said. “We will keep discussing with all the relevant stakeholders, including press publishers and platforms, to make sure that the objectives of the copyright directive are achieved.”

Google said existing EU legislation “aims at striking the right balance” and said the company was “willing to pay to further support journalism”.

The Times