Imitate Australia, Canada Make Laws That Require Google And Facebook, Pay Content To News Makers, In Indonesia When?

Google and Facebook have to pay content to news creators, in Canada and Australia. (photo: doc. pixabay)

JAKARTA – The Canadian government on Tuesday, April 5, laid out details of a proposed law that would force platforms like Facebook and Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content. This is a move similar to Australia's groundbreaking law passed last year.

"The news sector in Canada is in crisis," Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said at a news conference, introducing the bill proposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government.

The "Online News Act," or House of Commons bill C-18, would require digital platforms that have a bargaining balance, measured by metrics such as a company's global revenue, with news businesses to make fair deals, which regulators will then assess. .

If the deal does not meet the set of criteria detailed in the law, the platform will have to go through a mandatory bidding process and a final bid arbitration process overseen by Canada's Radio-television and Telecommunications regulators.

The legislation would work similarly to that in Australia, which requires Meta Platforms' Facebook and Alphabet Inc's Google to pay media companies for content on their platforms in a reform that has been disseminated, as models for others to emulate.

The Canadian news media industry has pressured Facebook and called on the government to better regulate technology companies, to allow the industry to recoup the financial losses it suffered in the years when Facebook and Google continued to gain a larger share of the advertising market.

More than 450 news outlets in Canada have closed since 2008, including 64 media shutdowns in the last two years.

Facebook and Google have voluntarily agreed to invest about 1 billion Canadian dollars (Rp 11.4 trillion) each, over three years, in journalism initiatives globally. Rodriguez said the government was holding discussions with both companies.

"They were open to the rules ... the conversation was very honest, honest and good," he said.

Both Google and Facebook, in separate statements, said they were reviewing the proposed legislation and looked forward to cooperating with the government.

The legislation would cover news businesses operating in Canada, including newspapers and news magazines with a digital presence, and allow them to bid individually or in groups.

If it's already been implemented in Australia and Canada soon, then how about in Indonesia. Until now, the Indonesian government and the DPR have not seriously responded to regulations that require international media platforms to pay for news content from the press and media in the country. There had been suggestions from the Press Council and PWI, but so far there has been no follow-up.