Big tech companies should pay news publishers for content, says centre govt

The centre government is asking big tech companies to pay revenue to news -publishers for the news content produced by them, which is often used by tech companies to funnel news into their search results to drive traffic, according to media reports.

According to media outlets, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Information and Broadcasting Secretary Apurva Chandra are both taking notice of the issue of the “deep imbalance” pertaining to content creation and content monetisation, especially in case of news-based content.

“It leaves the small guy at a disadvantage which is not really the right thing for a country like India where we potentially have hundreds and thousands of content creators,” 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,” he continued further.

While at a conclave organised by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), Broadcasting Secretary Chandra echoed similar sentiments, emphasising on the need for creators of digital news content to get their fare share from tech 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,” Chandra stated.

“This is a question of journalism and credible content as well,” he added further

Nations like Australia, Canada, France as well as the EU have also taken notice of the imbalance between the producers and the amplifyers of content, passing legislations in regard to the same. Australia, two years ago, enacted a law requiring platforms like Facebook and Google to fairly renumerate news outlets in the country.

The Digital India Act, which could possibly come in effect in the near future, may also take a similar approach to bridge the imbalance between tech companies and digital news outlets.