Australia's Nine Entertainment signs content deal with Facebook, Google

Nine Entertainment Co Holdings Ltd said on Tuesday it had signed multi-year content-supply deals with Google and Facebook under Australia's news media bargaining code.

The agreement, terms of which were not disclosed, comes after rival Seven West Media Ltd and News Corp signed similar deals following the enactment of tough laws to make US tech giants pay for displaying news on their platforms.

The multi-media firm said it would supply content for Google's News Showcase platform for five years and to a similar Facebook product for three.

Google would also expand its marketing ventures across Nine's platforms, the publisher of the Australian Financial Review, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers added.

After considering these new deals and ongoing subscription revenue for Nine's mastheads, the Sydney-based company said it expected growth of A$30 million to A$40 million ($23.2 million to $31 million) in its publishing unit's fiscal 2022 core earnings.

-reuters-

Google agrees to pay Italian publishers for news

MILAN, Italy - Google announced on Wednesday it has signed licensing deals with numerous Italian media publishers to pay for news content, in the US tech giant's latest move to tamp down media anger over lost advertising revenue.

It follows an agreement struck with some French publishers earlier in the year over "neighboring rights", which were introduced by an EU directive two years ago and call for payment for showing snippets of news content as part of internet searches.

Wednesday's deal will give the Italian publishers access to the Google News Showcase program, which sees it pay outlets for a selection of enriched content.

"Signed on an individual basis, these agreements represent an important step in Google's relationship with Italian publishers by remunerating the publishers," Google said in a statement.

Google News Showcase will be available in Italy in the coming months, it added.

Fabio Vaccarono, CEO of Google Italy, said "these agreements represent an important step forward and confirm Google's commitment to Italian publishers".

Among the publishers who signed deals were the RCS MediaGroup, Il Sole 24 Ore, Monrif, Citynews, Caltagirone Editore, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Libero, Il Foglio, Il Giornale and Il Tempo.

The head of Il Sole 24 Ore, Giuseppe Cerbone, said "remuneration for news, including the rights related to the distribution of digital content, is a front on which our publishing group is engaged on the front line".

Urbano Cairo, CEO of the RCS MediaGroup, said "we are pleased to have signed this agreement, which governs the issue of related rights and acknowledges the importance of quality news and the prestige of our titles," which include the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Neighboring France was the first EU country to enact the "neighboring rights" law, but Google initially refused to comply. However after turbulent negotiations, the search giant sealed a deal with certain French publishers in January.

News outlets struggling with dwindling print subscriptions have long seethed at Google's failure to give them a cut of the millions it makes from ads displayed alongside news search results.

Australia has aggressively pushed to force digital companies to pay for news content, and last month Google struck a deal to make "significant payments" to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. 

Agence France-Presse

Australia to make Facebook, Google pay news outlets for content

SYDNEY - Australia finalized plans on Tuesday to make Facebook Inc and Google pay its media outlets for news content, a world-first move aimed at protecting independent journalism that has been strongly opposed by the internet giants.

Under laws to go to parliament this week, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the Big Tech firms must negotiate with local publishers and broadcasters how much they pay for content that appears on their platforms. If they can't strike a deal, a government-appointed arbitrator will decide for them.

"This is a huge reform, this is a world first, and the world is watching what happens here in Australia," Frydenberg told reporters in the capital Canberra.

"Our legislation will help ensure that the rules of the digital world mirror the rules of the physical world... and ultimately sustain our media landscape."

The law amounts to the strongest check of the tech giants' market power globally, and follows three years of inquiry and consultation, ultimately spilling into a public brawl in August when the U.S. companies warned it may it may stop them offering their services in Australia. 

A representative for Google declined to comment on Tuesday, saying the company had yet to see the final version of the proposed law. Facebook was not immediately available for comment.

Until recently, most countries have stood by as advertisers redirect spending to the world's biggest social media website and search engine, starving newsrooms of their main revenue source and bringing widespread shutdowns and job losses.

But regulators are starting to test their power to rein in the two mega-corporations which take more than four-fifths of Australian online advertising spending between them, according to Frydenberg. This year, a French regulator told Google to negotiate with publishers over payment for news content, and the matter remains before the courts. 

"It's both very ambitious and very necessary," said Denis Muller, an Honorary Fellow at University of Melbourne's Centre for Advancing Journalism, referring to the Australian law.

"Taking their news content without paying for it, in exchange for a very questionable reward of 'reach', seems to be a very unfair and uneven and ultimately democratically damaging arrangement."

News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller said the law was "a significant step forward in the decade-long campaign to achieve fairness in the relationship between Australian news media companies and the global tech giants". In May, News Corp stopped printing more than 100 Australian newspapers, citing declining advertising. 

In changes to draft legislation announced earlier this year that might favour the tech companies, the final version of the law would not affect news content distributed on Facebook's Instagram subsidiary or Google's Youtube.

But Frydenberg added to the list of media companies with whom the tech giants must negotiate, saying public broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corp and specialist public broadcaster SBS would be included, along with dominant private sector outlets like News Corp and Nine Entertainment Co Holdings Ltd.

-reuters-

Google says it will pay publishers for news content

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Google will pay partnered media publishers in three countries and offer some users free access to paywalled news sites, the tech giant said Thursday.

The announcement comes after legal battles in France and Australia over Google's refusal to pay news organizations for content.

In a blog post the firm said they would launch "a licensing program to pay publishers for high-quality content for a new news experience" due to launch later this year.

Brad Bender, Google's vice-president of product management, said they had been in discussions with partnered publishers -- including the Spiegel Group in Germany, Schwartz media in Australia and Brazil's Diarios Associados -- for several months, "with more to come."

"Google will also offer to pay for free access for users to read paywalled articles on a publisher's site," the statement said, without offering any further details.

Bender said the program will help publishers "monetize their content through an enhanced storytelling experience."

He added it would build on the 2018 Google News Initiative, a $300 million project that aimed to tackle disinformation online and help news sites grow financially.

It comes after growing calls for internet tech titans, notably Google, to pay for content.

A number of European and global publications -- including AFP -- have called on the European Union to adopt laws requiring internet companies to pay for the material they produce.

In April, France's competition regulator said the firm must start paying media groups for displaying their content, ordering it to begin negotiations after refusing for months to comply with Europe's new digital copyright law.

And earlier this month, Google rejected an Australian ruling that it pay hundreds of millions of dollars per year in compensation to local news media under a government-imposed revenue sharing deal.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook rejects call to share revenue with Australian media

SYDNEY -- Facebook on Monday rejected calls from the Australian government and news companies that it share advertising revenue with the media, suggesting it would rather cut news content from its platform.

The US tech giant said in a submission to Australia's competition watchdog that news represents a "very small fraction" of the content in an average user's news feed.

"If there were no news content available on Facebook in Australia, we are confident the impact on Facebook’s community metrics and revenues in Australia would not be significant," it said in a thinly veiled threat to boycott local news companies.

"Given the social value and benefit to news publishers, we would strongly prefer to continue enabling news publishers’ content to be available on our platform," it said.

In an effort being closely watched around the world, Australia is set to unveil plans to force Facebook and Google to share advertising revenue they earn from news featured in their services.

The initiative has been strongly pushed by Australia's two biggest media companies, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and Nine Entertainment.

They argue that the crisis roiling the news industry worldwide is mainly because of Google, Facebook and other large tech firms capturing the vast majority of online advertising revenues, without fairly compensating media companies for advertisements placed against news content.

The loss of advertising dollars that previously flowed to newspapers has forced cutbacks and bankruptcies across the sector, a process exacerbated by the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

In Australia, News Corp, Nine and other media have both announced major cuts in editorial staff, with more than 170 newsrooms and newspapers suspended or shuttered in recent years.

Australia's competition regulator, the ACCC, has estimated that Google and Facebook together earn some Aus$6 billion (US$4 billion) a year from advertising in the country.

Leading news publishers have demanded the two companies pay at least 10 percent of that money each year to local news organisations.

Google last month rejected the demand, saying it made barely Aus$10 million a year from news-linked advertising.

The two companies' positions bode ill for negotiations the ACCC hopes to pursue between the tech firms and Australian media companies over a mandatory "code of conduct" governing issues such as revenue sharing, curbing disinformation, data sharing and protecting user privacy.

The ACCC has until the end of July to draw up the final code, which the government has said it will quickly implement.

Agence France-Presse

Australia to force Google, Facebook to pay for news content

BRISBANE - Australia said Monday it would begin forcing Google and Facebook to pay news companies for content, in a landmark move aimed at shielding traditional media from the tech giants' digital dominance.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said a mandatory code of conduct to be unveiled by July would require the firms to reimburse Australian media companies for using their news and other content.

"What we want to see is a level playing field. What we want to see here is a fair go for the companies and for the journalistic content that is prepared," he told Channel 7.

It comes just weeks after France's competition authority ordered Google to negotiate with publishers over payments to reuse snippets of content in its news aggregator and Google Search.

Google and Facebook have had a huge impact on Australia's news industry, with the number of newspaper and online journalists falling more than 20 percent since 2014 as digital advertising revenues were overwhelmingly captured by the two titans.

The new regulations follow an 18-month inquiry into the power of digital platforms by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which recommended an overhaul of existing regulations.

Frydenberg said the government was imposing the measures after discussions on a voluntary code failed to make headway, with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on advertising revenues hastening the need for action.

"That hasn't made meaningful progress so now we are taking the decisive decision to create a mandatory code, seeking to be the first country in the world to ensure that these social media giants pay for content," he said.

A similar move by Spain saw Google shut down its News service there in 2014, while the company has threatened to do the same in response to the new French laws.

Australia's new regulations will also cover the sharing of data, and the ranking and display of news content, to be enforced by binding dispute resolution mechanisms and penalties.

An estimated 17 million Australians use Facebook each month and spend an average of 30 minutes on the platform a day, while 98 percent of Australian mobile searches use Google.

Agence France-Presse