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The exposure draft doesn’t give Google/Facebook the right to opt out by “discriminating” against (ie. dropping) protected news sources. Refusing to comply with
by sjy 6y ago
The exposure draft doesn’t give Google/Facebook the right to opt out by “discriminating” against (ie. dropping) protected news sources. Refusing to comply with this could be punished with an infringement notice under Australian law. https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill%20-%20TREASURY%20LAWS%20AMENDENT%20%28NEWS%20MEDIA%20AND%20DIGITAL%20PLATFORMS%20MANDATORY%20BARGAINING%20CODE%29%20BILL%202020.pdf https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill...
- goseeastarwar 6y agoWhat's the word for racketeering, but when the government does it?
- DigitalSea 6y agoTaxation.
- coldcode 6y agoIf this is true, how do you enforce it? Send goons to California to beat it out of them? If Google has no presence in Australia they can simply block the whole country. Or replace the home page with a "Your country is out of order" 404.
- sjy 6y agoGoogle has a significant presence in Australia, including an office, many employees, data centres, and bank accounts for accepting payments from Australian customers. It would be very unusual for a company like Google to blatantly violate Australian laws and refuse to pay the fines, so it’s unclear how the Australian government would respond if that happened.
- Waterfall 6y agoHow do they have no encryption in Australia and yet Google still have offices there? Seems very strange to me, don't even know how it works.
- vertis 6y agoIt seems likely to me that Google will fight that part of it in court. Paying for the content...battle lost. Being forced to surface the content, not so much. I mean, that's like the government saying that not only do you have to pay a toll when you use CityLink (okay, user pays) but it is mandatory to use that road as the only option, and that you must use it every day. I really don't see how that can stop Google from dropping news from the search results completely. Or coming to an arrangement with Fairfax, where they pay a tiny amount, and nothing to NewsCorp.
- sjy 6y agoI am sure they will fight to minimise their costs one way or another. Rather than challenging the validity of the law, another strategy might be to submit to the arbitral process and come up with a strong argument that, for the purposes of section 52ZP(2)(b), the "benefit (whether monetary or otherwise) of the registered news business’ covered news content to the digital platform service" is negligible, and for (2)(d), any "remuneration amount would place an undue burden on the commercial interests of the digital platform service." https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill%20-%20TREASURY%20LAWS%20AMENDENT%20%28NEWS%20MEDIA%20AND%20DIGITAL%20PLATFORMS%20MANDATORY%20BARGAINING%20CODE%29%20BILL%202020.pdf https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill...
- ankit219 6y agoGoogle and FB both argued that they send traffic worth of 200M to these publishers? What if they start charging for clicks? Earlier the argument was that they were doing it for free and not getting anything out of it. Now, since they have to pay, its only fair that they charge for the services (ie the traffic through clicks) they provide too
- Majromax 6y ago> The exposure draft doesn’t give Google/Facebook the right to opt out by “discriminating” against (ie. dropping) protected news sources. It doesn't permit digital service corporations from discriminating against protected news sources on account of their participation in the system. It does seem to permit actions that affect all news sources equally. However, more frustrating and worrisome to me is that the exposure draft doesn't seem to define what conduct by Google/etc triggers these provisions. Some clauses apply to news content "made available" by the platform, but there's no definition in this bill of what "made available" means. That could be read to require some sort of hosting of the content (e.g., rehosting an article or using a long extract), or it could be read to include mere linking. That's a huge difference: Hacker News could be a 'digital platform service' under the latter definition, but not the former.
- baybal2 6y agoYes, The text of the law does not seem to cover this option. > in comparison to other news content They can stop showing news as such.
- Ajedi32 6y agoHow will they determine what counts as "news"? Are there be significant penalties if whatever algorithm they come up with to decide what counts as "news" has any false negatives? If so, that might make "stop showing news" an unworkable approach.