New Zealand is following in Canada’s footsteps as it becomes the latest country to indicate it will soon table legislation to compel tech platforms, such as Facebook and Google, to pay news organizations for content.
The Reuters report says that New Zealand’s legislation will be modelled on Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code and Canada’s Bill C-18, the Online News Act.
Currently, Google and Facebook earn 80 per cent of all digital ad revenue in Canada — ad revenue that used to go to Canadian news organizations and journalists. Since 2008, 468 news outlets have closed in Canada, most of them community news outlets.
As the story notes, Google has presented proposed amendments to the legislation in Canadian legislators. Facebook, however, has threatened to remove news off its platform to avoid potentially sharing revenues with publishers.
Facebook has made similar threats in the U.S. if Congress were to pass legislation that could enable news outlets to negotiate with tech firms to pay for news on their platforms.