The agreement between Canada and Google is part of the Online News Act, which aims to support a struggling Canadian news sector that has seen ad dollars flee and hundreds of publications shuttered in the past decade.
After years of tough negotiations and pressure tactics, which saw several social media platforms block news content in Canada to avoid having to compensate media companies, Ottawa and Google recently announced a “landmark” agreement, in which the tech giant will pay compensation to Canadian media companies in exchange. Loss of advertising revenue.
“Canada has accomplished something historic,” Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale Saint-Onge told reporters.
One official said most of the money would go to print media because they “really rely” on online platforms to distribute their content.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company which was also affected by the new legislation, still opposes the text, which it called “fundamentally flawed.”
“Need to make Aatmanirbhar News”
In India too, there have been some discussions about sharing advertising revenues.
In February this year, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Kumar Modi mooted an idea where tech giants would have to share the advertising revenue, which they earn from publishing news reports, with media houses that are original content publishers.
Speaking in the Rajya Sabha during the Budget session, Modi said that newspapers and TV channels are losing advertising revenue after big technology companies entered the market.
He added that print and electronic media companies spend thousands of crores of rupees on creating news content and the main source of income for traditional print and electronic media is advertising revenue.
The MP also mentioned that Google India’s advertising income during 2021-22 stood at Rs 24,927 crore. He also said that Facebook’s advertising revenue in 2021-22 stood at Rs 16,189 crore – representing a 75% increase over the previous year.
“Big tech companies don’t spend this money on content creation. But offer ready-made content for free… Atmanirbhar Bharat needs Atmanirbhar news industry,” he said, adding that a provision in this regard should be included in the Digital India Act.
What is the Digital India Act?
The proposed Digital India Act will replace the 23-year-old Information and Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act), and is expected to regulate platforms, harms to users, ethical use of technology, among other issues.
The law has been discussed since March this year, and while there have been talks about releasing a draft of the bill in June, the bill has not yet been published.
On November 30, Minister of State for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that a bill may be introduced after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think we will be able to catch up with the legislative window before the elections because we need a lot of consultation and discussion on this topic,” he said, adding that the government has a roadmap for legislation. Policy objectives and policy principles for safety and trust.
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