Google Must Pay to Media

Pay to media 

Lately Australia announced that it will now make technology giants such as Facebook and Google to pay news companies for using news articles and content from news publishing media.The government reiterated in a statement that it was meant to ensure a level playing field and came after an 18 months rigorous comprehensive talk.France’s top competition authority also asked Google to negotiate with media stakeholders, both publishers and agencies, for using snippets on its search engine and news aggregator and pay them proportional remuneration for the best possible viable and sustainable environment.Australia and France are right and they have taken a welcome step for the sustainable growth of all stakeholders.A disproportionate and baised milieu is unfair that has been built around the digital news landscape.Media organisations or media house invest vast pool of resources including manpower, editorial gatekeeping, overhead costs and distribution.Big digital platforms such as Facebook and Google take their content and publish it on their platforms without any remuneration which is unfair.

In a clear-cut direction French authority also said,"Google's practices caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector.”France's competition authority ruled on that Google must pay French publishing companies and news agencies for reusing their content.The U.S. tech firm said it would comply with the French competition authority verdict, which followed a complaint by unions representing French press publishers.“Google's practices caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector, while the economic situation of publishers and news agencies is otherwise fragile,” France's 'Autorite de la Concurrence' said in a statement.

The main cause of concern is that they pretend not to be mediacompanies,means means they neither have the legal accountability that media organisations have,nor do they incur the same levels of expenditure on news gatherings in various fields.But they monopolise the revenue they earn from companies from advertisement in the digital news world. This has made several genuine media organisations and media houses unviable  reducing their profitability,forcing them to scale down their operations or even close down.This situation is harmful for democracy as well as right of citizens turn,that is ominous foe our democratic framework.This crisis has become even more acute during the global lock down that stumped world economy after the covid-19 pandemic.Media companies now face additional challenges because this disproportionate attitude of Tech giants.Traditional printing platforms,are facing the brunt in  circulation of newspapers and has dipped because of unfounded fears about the possibility of the infection spreading through newspapers.Revenue generation is hit due to the curtailment of advertisement spend by private companies as well as the government.Government should make amendements and tale concrete steps to curb this menace like situation.It is the opportune time to get Facebook and Google to meet their legal obligations,it is no surprise that there is a vast proliferation of fake news on some of these platforms in the absence of stronger accountability rules.It is also ripe time to get them to pay the proportionate share of compensation to those platforms whose content they use and leverage to build their own audiences and profits.Taking a cue from these European countries India must carefully consider other global examples and put a stop to the reckless and unfair trade practices adopted by digital intermediaries.

Last year, Google said it would stop showing news snippets from European publishers on search results for its French users, to comply with a new European copyright law.“Since the European copyright law came into force in France last year, we have been engaging with publishers to increase our support and investment in news”, Richard Gingras, vice president of News at Google, said in a statement.

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Milan Tomic

Hi. I’m Designer of Blog Magic. I’m CEO/Founder of ThemeXpose. I’m Creative Art Director, Web Designer, UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, Industrial Designer, Web Developer, Business Enthusiast, StartUp Enthusiast, Speaker, Writer and Photographer. Inspired to make things looks better.

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