Google and Facebook may face risk of big fines under new Australian legislation

Google and Facebook may face risk of big fines under new Australian legislation

The drafted legislation provisions under Australia's new law would risk the giant tech players to pay hefty multimillion-dollars fines for journalism they display

If Google and Facebook fail to comply with the proposed legislative provisions of the new Australian Law then these tech giants would risk themselves for multimillion-dollar fines.

Australia would become the first country that would have a digital platform for compensating news media for journalism content, under its News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code (Code).

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said, "We are not seeking to protect traditional media companies from the rigor of competition or technological disruption, which we know benefits consumers." Rather they aimed at creating such a platform where market power is not exploited and if exploited, then there should be appropriate compensation for the same.

Violating the laws of the Code such as failing to negotiate in good faith would be liable to be punished through a fine of $7.4 million or a fine may be imposed up to 10 per cent of annual turnover.

If after a period of three months of negotiations a news business and a platform cannot agree on a particular price for news then a panel of three-member arbitration would be appointed to decide for payment binding. The regular payment terms can be decided between the platform and the media business based on the amount of news content.

Google had previously commented that the proposed laws would result in "dramatically worse Google Search and YouTube put free services at risk and could lead to users' data "being handed over to big news businesses".

The Government was showing concern and came up with the idea of coming up with a new legislature as Google was taking 53 per cent share and Facebook took a share of 28 per cent without paying for the news that both these platforms share with their users respectively.

This legislation would be a significant step to maintain the fairness and unbiased attitude towards media news, according to Michal Millar, executive chairman of News Corp Australia.