While many nations and trade groupings have or are developing ways to protect personal data and constrain digital giants in Facebook and Google, traditional media groups are also looking for assistance.
NewsCorp and other media groups in Australia first demanded an ACCC Australian Competition and Consumer Commission investigation of digital platforms use of media snippets and content, then demand that the same platforms should pay for this service.
However, many in traditional media, the ACCC and government do not seem to understand how digital works, the reliance elsewhere too on digital click throughs, that advertising has migrated from printed etc. to digital and middle aged down to youth have also migrated…..
‘Australia to make Facebook, Google pay for news in world first
Colin Packham
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia will force U.S. tech giants Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google to pay Australian media outlets for news content in a landmark move to protect independent journalism that will be watched around the world.
Australia will become the first country to require Facebook and Google to pay for news content provided by media companies under a royalty-style system that will become law this year, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said.
“It’s about a fair go for Australian news media businesses. It’s about ensuring that we have increased competition, increased consumer protection, and a sustainable media landscape,” Frydenberg told reporters in Melbourne.
“Nothing less than the future of the Australian media landscape is at stake.”
The move comes as the tech giants fend off calls around the world for greater regulation, and a day after Google and Facebook took a battering for alleged abuse of market power from U.S. lawmakers in a congressional hearing.
Following an inquiry into the state of the media market and the power of the U.S. platforms, the Australian government late last year told Facebook and Google to negotiate a voluntary deal with media companies to use their content.
Those talks went nowhere and Canberra now says if an agreement cannot reached through arbitration within 45 days the Australian Communications and Media Authority would set legally binding terms on behalf of the government.
Google said the regulation ignores “billions of clicks” that it sends to Australian news publishers each year.
“It sends a concerning message to businesses and investors that the Australian government will intervene instead of letting the market work,” Mel Silva, managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, said in a statement.
“It does nothing to solve the fundamental challenges of creating a business model fit for the digital age.”
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“UNFAIR AND DAMAGING”
Media companies including News Corp Australia, a unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWSA.O), lobbied hard for the government to force the U.S. companies to the negotiating table amid a long decline in advertising revenue.
“While other countries are talking about the tech giants’ unfair and damaging behaviour, the Australian government … (is) taking world-first action,” News Corp Australia Executive Chairman Michael Miller said in a statement.
A 2019 study estimated about 3,000 journalism jobs have been lost in Australia in the past 10 years, as traditional media companies bled advertising revenue to Google and Facebook which paid nothing for news content.
For every A$100 spent on online advertising in Australia, excluding classifieds, nearly a third goes to Google and Facebook, according to Frydenberg.
Other countries have tried and failed to force the hands of the tech giants.
Publishers in Germany, France and Spain have pushed to pass national copyright laws that force Google pay licensing fees when it publishes snippets of their news articles.
In 2019, Google stopped showing news snippets from European publishers on search results for its French users, while Germany’s biggest news publisher, Axel Springer, allowed the search engine to run snippets of its articles after traffic to its sites to plunged.’
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Education Training Society 
”Google the name Rod Sims’: News Corp boss praises ACCC chair for new digital rules. News Corporation’s global chief executive Robert Thomson has praised Australian competition regulator Rod Sims and told investors content deals the Rupert Murdoch-controlled company has in place with Google and Facebook were beginning to boost profits.
“I recommend that anyone seeking enlightenment Google the name Rod Sims and read a few of his recent interviews,” Mr Thomson told Wall Street analysts on a conference call. “There are obviously regulatory changes to come in Australia, and the commercial landscape is not yet fully formed, but it will be a landscape far more hospitable to journalism and to news media.”….
The comments came after the publishing, real estate and subscription video empire reported a $US1.5 billion ($2.1 billion) net loss for the year to June 30, dragged down by a $US1.69 billion write-down on the book value of its Australian subscription video service Foxtel and News America Marketing, its marketing business.
Last week, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which is chaired by Mr Sims, unveiled a new regulatory framework in Australia that will force digital giants Google and Facebook to strike deals with media companies to pay them for content…..
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/news-corp-s-profits-slump-as-advertising-falls-in-pandemic-20200806-p55jak.html?
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De-classified: What really happened to newspapers. The tech giants are often blamed for declines in revenue and the demise of traditional media, but is that really the case? Nic Hopkins, Google News Lab lead for Australia and New Zealand, looks at what really went wrong in the old business model for newspapers and whether it can be fixed.
In the mid-1990s the status of newspapers as the main source of news to society felt both indisputable and permanent.
The Internet was a novelty. We accessed the web on dial-up modems, surfed pages using Netscape and searched for information on Yahoo!, Excite and Lycos. Around the same time, across the Pacific, Amazon had only just launched an obscure online bookstore.
In 1995, I began my career as a journalist at The Advertiser in Adelaide. The web was so niche that there were fevered debates about whether we would need one “Internet terminal,” or perhaps two, for an entire newsroom.
Newspapers back then could afford to take their time with technology – there was no rush. They were unassailable and spectacularly profitable, thanks largely to classified advertising. Rupert Murdoch once described classifieds as “rivers of gold”.
Today, as we all know, the landscape is vastly different. The print rivers of gold have dried up, print circulation has sharply declined. On the face of it, the news business has never looked so vulnerable. To me, and anyone else who has worked in print or simply loves newspapers, this has been a painful process. My dad worked in newspapers – it’s in our blood.
https://mumbrella.com.au/de-classified-what-really-happened-to-newspapers-641959?
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