Indian govt to make tech giants pay publishers for news and original content

The Indian govt may soon announce some changes for big tech companies that use content from the local Indian publishers. The brands in the ambit of this new announcement might include Google, Meta, Twitter, and even Amazon. A report suggests that these mega tech companies will be asked to share revenue for the original content produced by these publications.

So far, the tech companies haven’t been paying the news platforms and publishing houses for their content usage. The lack of legislation has helped the tech companies avoid paying hefty shares in revenue. This move by the Indian govt is expected to provide a boost to revenue streams for struggling publishing houses.

With control over advertising revenues, big tech companies manage to benefit the most by taking the lion’s share of the revenue. According to a report by TOI, the Minister of State for IT and electronics Rajeev Chandrasekhar claimed that the government was seriously considering formulating new rules to correct the imbalance in the current situation.

Chandrasekhar told ToI, “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.”

Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms that benefits from the steady flow of news from prominent as well as small regional publications. Google News is also another platform that brings together content from various publications. The mega search engine also provides a personalised curation of News in the form of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

The Digital News Publishers’ Association (DNPA) claims that more than 50 percent of the traffic on news websites is routed through Google. And Google is not very transparent about how it ranks some publications over others. The change in algorithms is also mostly kept under wraps.

Australia and France are two countries that have already set a precedence in offering legislation supporting news organisations. The two countries have already implemented the new legislation that allows news organisations to get a share in revenue from big tech giants like Meta and Google for the use of their content. UK and Canada are also two countries that are trying to implement similar legislation.

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