Australia lays fiendish tax trap for Meta – with an expensive escape hatch Australia has created a tax that only big tech companies must pay – but which they can also legally avoid by paying money to Aussie news publishers. The new tax – dubbed the "News Bargaining Incentive" – is a follow-up to 2021's News Media Bargaining Code under which Australia forced Meta and Google to negotiate payments to …
Making them pay for what they otherwise steal (let's call 'using it for free' for what it is) is an interesting exercise, and I suspect they will do everything they can to wiggle from under it.
From what I have picked up from the Honest Advertising crew I suspect wining and dining the right people will work best, so I don't expect it to have a big impact, sadly.
I'm honestly confused here.
Why is providing a link to a story detrimental to the news source? Wouldn't that be a positive thing that helps the news source?
If I click on a link to a story, don't I see the ads on the page? If not, why not?
I can understand wholesale lifting of text being an obvious problem -- that's plagiarism.
I don't use Facebook or any other "social media" so I'm clearly missing something.
Can someone help me out here?
If I understand correctly, they're providing not only a link, but enough of a summary of the article that lots of folks read the summary instead of clicking the link. So closer to plagiarism.
(Side note - I hate writing the word "plagiarism", because I never know how to spell it, so I have to copy somebody else's spelling...!)
Hum.
I guess it depends upon how long and detailed the summary might be.
Again, I don't use Facebook or the like so I have no idea how badly Facebook et al violate copyright.
I do use Google News a fair bit and use the one line summaries there to decide whether I want to read the full article or not.
The alternative would be to just post blind URLs with no summary or even a headline or subject, which, I suspect, would lead to a vanishingly small amount of engagement.
"Why is providing a link to a story detrimental to the news source? Wouldn't that be a positive thing that helps the news source?"
Oh, you are thinking those companies are linking to the stories. Nope. At best they'll put a "credit" at the bottom and you can type in the URL and find the page with the original story if you can be bothered. If it was just a page of properly linked headlines and a 1-2 sentence summary, there wouldn't be the fuss and the social media site would just be curating stories to fit the user's interests.
Hopefully they will just be able to stop displaying news from these "so called" news outlets, who do nothing but print and spread FUD, lies, rumours and misinformation.
No one could care less if they never saw and Australian "news" from these companies in their feeds.
Just more corrupt politicians doing the bidding of their media masters.
is if anything more right wing that Fox News USA. Some of their videos on YouTube are sickening.
The right wing media ecosystem is just abhorrent. They don't care who they hurt or hang out to dry as long as they do not criticise the Orange Jesus.
Newsmax has banned iits hacks from speaking ill of any of the OJ's cabinet picks.
The little darlings are so thin skinned that it is as clear as glass.
Fat Orange Man: I am your President.
Peasant Woman: Well, I didn't vote for you.
Fat Orange Man: Aussies can't vote for President.
Peasant Woman: Well, how'd you become President, then?
[Angelic music plays... ]
Fat Orange Man: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Fat Orange Man, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your President.
Dennis the Peasant: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Fat Orange Man: Be quiet!
Dennis the Peasant: You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!”
Australia had the choice to get submarines from France, learning how to build and to operate them and be independant.
Except in typical French fashion the Attack class subs were overdue and over budget. Partly due to wanting to try and convert France's nuclear Barracudas to diesel-electric.
Instead, they went the AUKUS way, won't get any submarines in our lifetimes (and probably never), and will have to beg UK and USA to see theirs patrol Australian waters...
Maybe you're old, but they're due in a decade or so. Also if I were Captain of an Astute, I don't think I'd need much begging to go visit Garden Island instead of operating out of cold, grey UK ports. Then again, submariners have much less opportunity to sunbathe on patrol compared to crews of surface ships. But Australia gets to contribute to the design of the Astute replacement, build the new boats, plus a lot of technology transfer under the deal. Which includes fun stuff like quantum technology, so Aussies can have quark soup to go with their pies. Or perhaps more importantly, it'll create a lot of new skilled jobs at the Osborne shipyard. It could create more, if only Australia would drop its non-nuclear policy, then it could perhaps do a deal with RR to build, operate and maybe export SMRs.
Australia's kinda weird that way. Despite being very rich in uranium, it doesn't really exploit it by working up the value chain and producing fuel. Which is a shame given there's a bit of a nuclear renaissance at the moment, an insatiable demand for energy and a distinct lack of fuel processing & reprocessing facilities in friendly countries. But Australia's also been discovering the cost & reliability problems with their current 'Green' energy policy, so might hopefully change its attitude to reliable, affordable zero carbon energy.
just watch Sky News Australia.
Old man Murdoch is from OZ and still has a lot of influence. Perhaps, just perhaps that now Lachlan is set to take over the Fox empire they might not be so biased. Yeah right.
Here? Sky News and anything that comes out of GB News and Farage.
It's most commonly based on the fact that the parent themselves grew up , went through the various ups and downs of life, learned a lot, and then starts to hand that experience down to the child, giving practical advice, where possible , on how to negotiate some of life's pitfalls.
It doesn't require official schooling , it just requires some common sense.
Yes, but that applies to everyone. The notion of a locus of responsibilities that should be left exclusively to parents implies an exclusive competence, otherwise there's no basis for excluding external input. In the absence of exclusive competence, it's simply an assertion of property rights.
It wasnt that long ago, and it still is the case in many of the poorer countries, where there is no alternative, other than the parents for bringing up their children.. And strangely enough, it was and still is successfull and that has been the case for around 99.9% of our existance.
If you think that you, yourself, are not reponsable enough to acclomplish this task, I can understand that, but in such a case please don't have children as you will simply become a burden for others.
"If you think that you, yourself, are not reponsable enough to acclomplish this task,"...
Any parent who thinks that they ARE responsible enough is fooling themselves.
Parenting is a team sport, It takes more than just your Biological family, it takes friends, and the support of the wider society.
/Rattus
There is an (apparently) African proverb about it taking a village to raise a child. Unfortunately, (part of) that proverb was used as a book title by Hilary Clinton, so politically the right wing is required to repudiate the whole idea, because of course they do.
I guess it depends whether you think that local journalism is more important than only seeing "news" which has been filtered for you based on....., well, who knows what criteria, but whatever they are it's unlikely that they'll be for your benefit. I'm not daft. I know that this law won't bring back local papers or prevent echo-chambers but standing up to the Meta is a good start IMHO.
Well ... at least they appear to have found a way to make Big Tech actually pay by placing them between a tax and a charge.
If it works, remains to be seen.
However, I salute the Aussies for their efforts to make Big Tech pay.
... the question what the extracted money is used for, is an independent question. An important one, though.
However, if Big Tech is allowed to skirt any taxation whatsoever, then any discussion on the money's use is moot.
In an ideal world, it would be as well as, rather than instead of paying tax. So the big tech companies pay the newspapers for the news they scrape, plus they pay tax on their profit. This compromise helps the big tech companies as it cements the idea that big tech doesn't pay tax by compromising slightly on the idea that big tech doesn't pay for it's content either.
"So essentially an Australian taxpayer subsidy for the newspapers. Just bypassing the actual taxman."
I'm not sure I understand your logic there. A new tax, that Big Tech may or may not have to pay. The taxpayer doesn't appear to be subsidising anything but may not get the benefit of a new and extra tax. The best I can see id that the taxpayer will be no better off and definitely not worse off. At best, maybe "Big tech" will charge a tiny bit more for advertising in Oz and those advertisers might increase their prices a smidgen to cover it. It's not as if Facebook can increase the users subscription price to cover it.
"Social media" makes money by having citizens create stuff that other people want to view. This approach creates content for social media companies for free. Why tax the social media companies at a very high rate so that the product created by the citizens contributes to the local economy. So, for example, in India there are about a quarter billion Indian citizens producing content for Facebook. Assuming that Indian subscribers make up 10% of all Facebook subscribers, make Facebook pay a tax of say 70% on 10% of their global revenue.
This might seem extreme, but let's face it, Facebook, Google, etc... are getting that content for free. Why not tax them?
"Let the papers fail."
Already happened in the UK with local press completely dead. That's had a massive impact on transparency in local democracy. Great for the scummy politicians, very poor for those politicians trying to do the right thing, even worse for citizens at large.
Obviously you don't care*, the question I am left with is why you don't care?
* Perhaps not about the UK local aspect, but about the wider consequences on democratic processes of the massive decline in quality journalism all round the world.
Socially, we tend to agree (well, those of us not drinking the Musk KoolAid) that there are things that we, as a society, benefit from. This is why the government funds basic research into science and health care, subsidizes some forms of agriculture and green space conservation, etc. News is another. No one would disagree that not all journalism is "good", but the presence of people whose job it is to report on current events is an undeniable benefit to anyone whose not trying to hide corruption, graft, incompetence, malfeasance and waste. So funding (somehow) journalism is a "social good". All that's left is arguing about how that's achieved...
This is nothing more than a press release just before an election so the government can point and say look what we are doing.
After the election this will disappear, never to be heard from again.
On the very small chance I am wrong then I expect either Social Media will pay a small amount ( aka only what they want to) or they will leave / be banned.
Remember this is the country where the laws of Australia are more powerful than the laws of physics and the government chased the car manufacturers out of the country.
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