Centre aims to make Big Tech pay for using content from news publishers

Such a revenue-sharing model between internet companies and news publishers will be built along the ones prevalent in Australia and parts of European Union.

“The market power on digital advertising 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,” the minister of state for information technology (IT) and electronics Rajeev Chandrasekhar told The Times of India.

He said the government was mulling revision in the IT laws to effect this change.

If implemented, the new law will force Big Tech companies to pay digital news publishers a share of the revenue earned via using their original content.

“The news publishers have no negotiating leverage at all, and this needs to be tackled legislatively. This is an important issue for us,” the minister said.

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Google has already signed deals to pay more than 300 publishers in Germany, France and other EU countries for using their content on its platform. The Canadian government, too, moved a law early this year to bring about fairness in revenue sharing between digital news publishers and intermediary platforms.

In March this year, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) ordered an investigation into complaints against Google for abusing its dominant position related to news referral services and Google Adtech Services in the Indian online news media market.

According to the Indian Newspapers Society (INS), media houses are being kept in the dark on the total advertising revenue collected by Google and what percentage of the advertising revenue is being transferred to media organisations.

The CCI found that prima facie, these allegations of abuse of dominant position are under the purview of the Competition Act, 2002 and requires a detailed investigation by the Additional Director General.