Australia Says No Further Facebook, Google Amendments As Final Vote Nears


Australia Says No Further Facebook, Google Amendments As Final Vote Nears

Talks between Australia and Facebook over the weekend yielded no breakthrough.

Canberra:

Australia will not alter legislation that would make Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google pay news outlets for content, a senior lawmaker said on Monday, as Canberra neared a final vote on whether to pass the bill into law.

Australia and the tech giants have been in a stand-off over the legislation widely seen as setting a global precedent.

Other countries including Canada and Britain have already expressed interest in taking some sort of similar action.

Facebook has protested the laws. Last week it blocked all news content and several state government and emergency department accounts, in a jolt to the global news industry, which has already seen its business model upended by the titans of the technological revolution.

Talks between Australia and Facebook over the weekend yielded no breakthrough.

As Australia’s senate began debating the legislation, the country’s most senior lawmaker in the upper house said there would be no further amendments.

“The bill as it stands … meets the right balance,” Simon Birmingham, Australia’s Minister for Finance, told Australian Broadcasting Corp Radio.

The bill in its present form ensures “Australian-generated news content by Australian-generated news organisations can and should be paid for and done so in a fair and legitimate way”.

The laws would give the government the right to appoint an arbitrator to set content licencing fees if private negotiations fail.

Newsbeep

While both Google and Facebook have campaigned against the laws, Google last week inked deals with top Australian outlets, including a global deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

“There’s no reason Facebook can’t do and achieve what Google already has,” Birmingham added.

A Facebook representative declined to comment on Monday on the legislation, which passed the lower house last week and has majority support in the Senate.

A final vote after the so-called third reading of the bill is expected on Tuesday.

Lobby group DIGI, which represents Facebook, Google and other online platforms like Twitter Inc, meanwhile said on Monday that its members had agreed to adopt an industry-wide code of practice to reduce the spread of misinformation online.

Under the voluntary code, they commit to identifying and stopping unidentified accounts, or “bots”, disseminating content; informing users of the origins of content; and publishing an annual transparency report, among other measures.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Releated

Daft Punk Split Up, Ending One Of The Era’s Defining Dancefloor Acts

Their 2013 single “Get Lucky” featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers was their biggest hit of all. Paris, France: Electronic music stars Daft Punk have split up, their publicist confirmed on Monday, ending one of the era’s defining dancefloor acts. The French duo released a video titled “Epilogue” excerpted from their 2006 film “Electroma”, in […]

Prince Philip doing ‘OK’, says Prince William – Times of India

LONDON: Prince William said Monday that his 99-year-old grandfather Prince Philip is doing “OK” after spending nearly a week in hospital. Questioned by journalists while visiting a vaccination centre in eastern England, second-in-line to the throne William, 38, said: “Yes, he’s OK, they’re keeping an eye on him.” He then gave a wink. Prince Philip, […]

%d bloggers like this: