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> What is news? That's a good question. A slightly different question that might help you to understand what is happening in Australia with this legislation i

> What is news? That's a good question. A slightly different question that might help you to understand what is happening in Australia with this legislation is "What was news?" Facebook and Google between them receive more than 80% of all digital advertising dollars spent in Australia. [1] This advertising revenue used to be known as "rivers of gold" when it flowed 80% to newspapers and television, in the decades before the internet existed. In those days, the advertising business was coupled to journalism, because journalism is how media businesses got their product into peoples homes and living rooms every day. 20 odd years ago, the Australian newspaper business began to be hollowed out by new competitors on the internet, such as Seek.com.au for job ads, Domain.com.au for property ads, carsales.com.au for automobile ads, eBay.com.au for the rest of the classified ads, and google and yahoo for display ads. The dozens of pages that used to make up classified ads in newspapers disappeared. As the rivers of gold dried up, the number of journalists employed in Australia declined dramatically. Whilst you are correct that Facebook and Google don't actually publish news, they do receive the rivers of gold in advertising revenue that once funded journalists wages. This new legislation pretends to redress the imbalance that lead to the decline in journalism by diverting advertising revenue back to the old man who owns most of the newspapers in Australia. [2] The old man's business doesn't employ half the number of journalists as it did twenty years ago, and the new legislation doesn't require him to hire any more. [1] https://www.adnews.com.au/news/chart-google-and-facebook-s-share-of-digital-ad-spend-just-got-bigger-in-australia https://www.adnews.com.au/news/chart-google-and-facebook-s-s... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/20/very-australian-coup-murdoch-turnbull-political-death-news-corps https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/20/very-australia...

PoignardAzur 6y ago
I think that's a terrible argument. Auto makers shouldn't have to pay a tribute to horse stables for putting them out of business. Refrigerator makers shouldn't have to pay a tribute to ice diggers. Uber shouldn't be required to pay a tax to licensed Taxis. E-learning sites shouldn't have to pay a tax to school tutors. No business is entitled to a comfortable monopoly. The idea that Google should pay a tribute to traditional media where the amount is entirely at the discretion of media giants because the internet can do everything the old press did better just serves to maintain entrenched old interests.
- flak48 6y ago
  I don't think the comment you replied to is arguing in favor of Australia's attempts to get Google/FB to pay the media companies
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    The comment author appears to be using the Govs argument in an attempt to facilitate debate, even though they themselves don't personally hold the position. In the "debate, not argument" school this is a good thing because it lets us move the debate forward in good faith. Likewise, the response is to the argument, not the person.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  The assumption behind all of your examples is that the new version is a better replacement for the old version. However, social media sites and search engines typically do not do their own journalism. They provide an effective mechanism for distributing information, but that mechanism adds no value until there is some information worth distributing. So, how much of the reward from people who ultimately receive and benefit from that information should be due to those who did the work to generate it, and how much should be due to those providing distribution services? Historically, being the middleman in these situations has been very lucrative. Most book publishers still take huge cuts while authors receive only a tiny fraction of the cover price from each sale. It's a similar story for traditional record labels, film production companies, academic journals and so on. The Internet has been a great equaliser when it comes to distribution of good quality content, allowing creators to reach their audiences more directly than ever before. The Internet has also shown how much easier it is for potentially interested consumers of new content to find it when it's available in well-known places, which shows that big marketplaces for content do still have value. The question here is really about balance, and whether middleman organisations should still be able to keep as much of the pie as they used to.
- ostenning 6y ago
  They shouldn't have to, but in West there is something called Corporate Socialism. I find it ironic that the Liberal Government which is a center-right political party enables this. In my opinion, news media has been dead in Australia for a long time, which has done a terrible disservice to the Australian public. It time to drop the dead weight.
fallingknife 6y ago
Redress what imbalance? News publications are entitled to a certain portion of add spend? That's news to me.
908B64B197 6y ago
Why don't the news outlet simply build their own search engines and social medias? If they don't like the existing ones they are free to compete. Google sure didn't get a "tax on Yahoo" law, Facebook didn't get legislators to force MySpace to share their revenue with them.
- tetris11 6y ago
  I imagine Google will welcome competitors as well as Microsoft welcomed competitors in the 90s, buying out anything that might divert revenue
rstuart4133 6y ago
> The old man's business doesn't employ half the number of journalists as it did twenty years ago, and the new legislation doesn't require him to hire any more. Rest assured, he won't be hiring any more. These are the figures: - news.com.au publishing (newspaper) revenues in 2019-2020: $1B. [0] - Amount Google is reportedly paying news.com.au: $30m/year. [1] - news.com.au decrease in revenue from 2019 to 2019: $119m. [0] I'm not sure what the legislation is meant to be achieving, but with numbers like that the one thing you can be absolutely sure it won't be doing is saving newspapers, or journalists. [0] https://newscorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/news-corp-2020-annual-report.pdf https://newscorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/news-corp-20... [1] https://theconversation.com/why-google-is-now-funnelling-millions-into-media-outlets-as-facebook-pulls-news-for-australia-155468 https://theconversation.com/why-google-is-now-funnelling-mil...

PoignardAzur 6y ago

I think that's a terrible argument. Auto makers shouldn't have to pay a tribute to horse stables for putting them out of business. Refrigerator makers shouldn't have to pay a tribute to ice diggers. Uber shouldn't be required to pay a tax to licensed Taxis. E-learning sites shouldn't have to pay a tax to school tutors. No business is entitled to a comfortable monopoly. The idea that Google should pay a tribute to traditional media where the amount is entirely at the discretion of media giants because the internet can do everything the old press did better just serves to maintain entrenched old interests.

flak48 6y ago
I don't think the comment you replied to is arguing in favor of Australia's attempts to get Google/FB to pay the media companies
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  The comment author appears to be using the Govs argument in an attempt to facilitate debate, even though they themselves don't personally hold the position. In the "debate, not argument" school this is a good thing because it lets us move the debate forward in good faith. Likewise, the response is to the argument, not the person.
Silhouette 6y ago
The assumption behind all of your examples is that the new version is a better replacement for the old version. However, social media sites and search engines typically do not do their own journalism. They provide an effective mechanism for distributing information, but that mechanism adds no value until there is some information worth distributing. So, how much of the reward from people who ultimately receive and benefit from that information should be due to those who did the work to generate it, and how much should be due to those providing distribution services? Historically, being the middleman in these situations has been very lucrative. Most book publishers still take huge cuts while authors receive only a tiny fraction of the cover price from each sale. It's a similar story for traditional record labels, film production companies, academic journals and so on. The Internet has been a great equaliser when it comes to distribution of good quality content, allowing creators to reach their audiences more directly than ever before. The Internet has also shown how much easier it is for potentially interested consumers of new content to find it when it's available in well-known places, which shows that big marketplaces for content do still have value. The question here is really about balance, and whether middleman organisations should still be able to keep as much of the pie as they used to.
ostenning 6y ago
They shouldn't have to, but in West there is something called Corporate Socialism. I find it ironic that the Liberal Government which is a center-right political party enables this. In my opinion, news media has been dead in Australia for a long time, which has done a terrible disservice to the Australian public. It time to drop the dead weight.

fallingknife 6y ago

Redress what imbalance? News publications are entitled to a certain portion of add spend? That's news to me.

908B64B197 6y ago

Why don't the news outlet simply build their own search engines and social medias? If they don't like the existing ones they are free to compete. Google sure didn't get a "tax on Yahoo" law, Facebook didn't get legislators to force MySpace to share their revenue with them.

tetris11 6y ago
I imagine Google will welcome competitors as well as Microsoft welcomed competitors in the 90s, buying out anything that might divert revenue

rstuart4133 6y ago

> The old man's business doesn't employ half the number of journalists as it did twenty years ago, and the new legislation doesn't require him to hire any more. Rest assured, he won't be hiring any more. These are the figures: - news.com.au publishing (newspaper) revenues in 2019-2020: $1B. [0] - Amount Google is reportedly paying news.com.au: $30m/year. [1] - news.com.au decrease in revenue from 2019 to 2019: $119m. [0] I'm not sure what the legislation is meant to be achieving, but with numbers like that the one thing you can be absolutely sure it won't be doing is saving newspapers, or journalists. [0] https://newscorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/news-corp-2020-annual-report.pdf https://newscorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/news-corp-20... [1] https://theconversation.com/why-google-is-now-funnelling-millions-into-media-outlets-as-facebook-pulls-news-for-australia-155468 https://theconversation.com/why-google-is-now-funnelling-mil...