Pay news publishers for using their content: Govt to big tech firms

To set the “imbalance” right in the relationship between the big tech companies and news publishers, Indian government has said that big firms profit by feeding news into their search results and they must give a “fair share of revenues” to publishers.

Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Information and Broadcasting Secretary Apurva Chandra reiterated the extreme importance of this issue saying it was vital to future of journalism and the news industry’s financial health.

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At a meeting organised by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) –  a grouping of 17 top Indian news publishers, including NDTV – Chandra said that this problem is linked to the “strained financial health” of media firms.

“For the growth of the news industry, it is important that digital news platforms of all these publishers, who are the creators of original content, get a fair share of revenues from the big tech platforms which act as aggregators of content created by others,” he said at the event.

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Pointing out to examples such as Australia, Canada, France and the EU, the official said that these countries have taken adequate steps in the form of legislations and have made their competition commissions stronger which will ensure a fair sharing of profits between news content creators and aggregators.

Reiterating what Chandra said, Minister Chandrasekhar said “We hope to address this issue of disproportionate control and imbalance of dynamics between content creation and its monetisation and the power that ad-tech companies and platforms hold today.”

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The way the internet is built has led to a “deeply inbuilt imbalance” in the business of content creation and its monetisation. This ensures that small organisations are left disadvantages, added Chandrasekhar.

Chandrashekhar said that Digital India Act (which is in the pipeline) could help tide over this issue. Referring to Australia, he said the country had passed a resolution which required digital giants like Facebook and Google to compensate Australian media outlets and publishers for using their news.