Meta threats fail to derail US news bargaining laws

It was introduced after the Australian competition regulator found there was an imbalance of bargaining power between media companies and digital platforms.

Its introduction led to millions of dollars worth of deals between the digital giants and media companies including Nine Entertainment Co, owner of this masthead, News Corp Australia, publisher of The Australian and Herald Sun, the ABC and Guardian Australia.

The local legislative efforts also attracted international recognition and prompted similar regulation in markets such as Canada and New Zealand.

If passed, the JCPA would allow small and local news outlets to negotiate with tech giants for payment of their content. Unlike the Australian laws, the JCPA is tailored specifically to small publishers and has an “employee cap”, which excludes larger newspaper publishers from the bill. It is not supported by major news outlets.

Attempts to pass the legislation during the lame-duck period – the session after a November election and before the beginning of the new Congress on January 3 – were stalled last week when the JCPA was removed as a provision in the National Defense Authorisation Act because it was not related to national security. It would be very difficult to get the bill over the finish line in a new Congress with divided chambers.

Coffey said if Congress found another way to pass the laws, they would be another example for countries trying to balance the market power.

“Similar to the European Union’s Copyright Directive, which laid out the foundation for global efforts to require online platforms to compensate publishers, and the Australian News Media Bargaining Code, which established a strong, competition law-based mechanism for doing so, we hope that the JCPA would create further momentum to pass similar measures in other countries,” Coffey said.

“The more countries that adopt measures to ensure fair compensation for publishers, the harder it will be for the platforms to circumvent these laws and continue their current anticompetitive practices.”

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