Australia is making Google and Facebook pay for news: what difference will the code make?

The government's legislation to force the tech giants to negotiate with news media companies is being closely watched around the world

The Australian government tabled world-first media legislation in parliament on Wednesday that will force Google and Facebook to negotiate a fair payment with news organisations for using their content in Facebook's newsfeed and Google's search.

The Australian law is separate to a recent deal Facebook made to pay mainstream UK news outlets millions of pounds a year to license their articles, but has a similar motivation. The social network signed the deals as it faces the threat of a government crackdown over its dominance of online advertising.