Highlights:
- Govt of India will soon force tech giants like Google, Facebook to pay for borrowing original content
- The Minister of State for IT and Electronics, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said India is currently thinking about making changes in its content policies
- This same process has already been adopted by countries including Australia, Canada, France and Spain
Big tech companies operating in India like Google, Facebook will soon have to start paying the New Publishers for the original content they use. The Government of India has hinted that it will make changes to the content policies following which tech firms who are in the Content business like Amazon, Meta, Apple, Twitter, Amazon, Google, Facebook and others will have to pat the Indian newspaper and the digital new publishers a share of the revenue for using their original content.
Countries like Australia, Canada, France and Spain have already adopted this process.
Rajeeb Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for IT and Electronics, said that the Indian government is currently considereing a revision of the IT laws to facilitate the changes.
Chandrasekhar said, “The market power on digital advertising that is currently being exercised by the Big Tech majors, which places Indian media companies at a position of disadvantage, is an issue that is seriously being examined in the context of new legalisations and rules,” while speaking with the Time Of India.
The IT & Electronics minister added that the original content creators are not getting the benefit from the growth of social media and tech platforms in India have failed to share the revenue with the original content creators.
He said, “The news publishers have no negotiating leverage at all, and this needs to be tackled legislatively. This is an important issue for us.
Back in 2021, Chandrasekhar said that the government is not planning to make the tech giants pay for the local news.
Earlier this year, Australia passed a new media law where forces the big tech companies to pay for the local news and by doing so became the first country to pass such a law. Right before the law came into effect, Facebook blocked news content in Australia after a dispute with the government over paying for content.
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Then Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called Facebook’s move to ban news content in Australia “arrogant” and “disappointing”.
In a joint statement, Josh Frydenbery and Communication Minister Paul Fletcher said, “The code will ensure that news media businesses are fairly remunerated for the content they generate, helping to sustain public-interest journalism in Australia,” and added that the government was “pleased to see progress by both Google and, more recently, Facebook in reaching commercial arrangements with Australian news media businesses.”
After the fallout between the US-based tech giant Facebook and the Australian government, Facebook blocked its users from not just seeing but also sharing news on its platform over a law that forces the tech company to pay the news publishers for using their content.
Back in May, Canada, too, proposed a similar law about fairness in sharing of revenue between digital news publishers and social media platforms, including Google and Facebook.
The need for such laws is high as the companies earn revenue from such news content which is published by media houses, however, the original content creators do not get any revenue share.
