Australia to Force Internet Giants to Pay Publishers
lentilla writes:
The Australian federal government has decided to force Internetgiants to pay for content they collect from local publishers.Treasurer Mr Frydenberg says "It's only fair that those that generatecontent get paid for it".
According to thisarticle appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald: 'The ACCC[Australian Competition and Consumer Commission] will be asked todraft a new industry approach for consultation in July with adefinition of the "news content" to be covered by the mandatory code,with the expectation the search and social media giants will have topay for content.'
Students of history will recall that German publishers triedsomething similar in 2013.Google responded by removing links to these articles rather than paythe publishers for the privilege of linking. The result:"visitors from web search fell 40 percent; from Google News, they fell80 percent". Two weeks laterand the group of publishers decided to give search engines a freelicence to index their content.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.