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Australia to Force Tech Titans to Pay for News

A new Australian scheme would slap a tax on Google and other major tech platforms that will be earmarked to pay for news. Josh Edelson / AFP/File
A new Australian scheme would slap a tax on Google and other major tech platforms that will be earmarked to pay for news. Josh Edelson / AFP/File
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Australia to Force Tech Titans to Pay for News

A new Australian scheme would slap a tax on Google and other major tech platforms that will be earmarked to pay for news. Josh Edelson / AFP/File
A new Australian scheme would slap a tax on Google and other major tech platforms that will be earmarked to pay for news. Josh Edelson / AFP/File

Australia will force Meta and Google to pay for news shared on their platforms under a new scheme unveiled Thursday, threatening to tax them if they refuse to strike deals with local media.
Traditional media companies the world over are in a battle for survival as precious advertising dollars are hoovered up online, AFP said.
Australia wants big tech companies to compensate local publishers for sharing articles that drive traffic on their platforms.
"The rapid growth of digital platforms in recent years has disrupted Australia's media landscape, and it is threatening the viability of public interest journalism," Communications Minister Michelle Rowland told reporters.
"It is important that digital platforms play their part. They need to support access to quality journalism that informs and strengthens our democracy."
Social media platforms with Australian revenue of more than US$160 million a year will be taxed a still-to-be-decided figure earmarked to pay for news.
But they can offset the tax -- or avoid paying it entirely -- if they voluntarily enter into commercial agreements with Australian media companies.
The Australian government indicated the parent companies of Google, Facebook and TikTok would be covered by the tax, which will come into effect next year.
Officials said Elon Musk's X would likely escape because its domestic revenue was too small.
Hundreds of Australian journalists have lost their jobs in recent years as newspapers are shuttered and media companies downsize.
In 2021, Google and Meta struck a string of deals with Australian newsrooms worth a combined US$160 million.
But Meta has indicated it will not renew its deals when they expire in March, arguing that news makes up a tiny portion of its traffic.
The tax will be designed to stop the tech giants from simply stripping news from their platforms, something Meta and Google have done overseas in the past.
A Meta spokesperson on Thursday said Australia was "charging one industry to subsidize another".
Latest salvo
The spokesperson said the "proposal fails to account for the realities of how our platforms work".
Australia's University of Canberra has found that more than half the country uses social media as a source of news.
Supporters of such laws argue that tech titans attract users with news stories and devour online advertising dollars that would otherwise go to struggling newsrooms.
Google and Facebook owner Meta have pushed back against efforts in other jurisdictions to compensate news outlets.
Google started removing links to some California websites earlier this year after the state indicated it would make them pay for traffic driven by news.
Facebook and Instagram have blocked news content in Canada to avoid paying media companies.
It is the latest salvo in Australia's efforts to reign in the tech giants.
Australia last month voted for new laws that will ban under-16s from social media.
It has also mooted slapping fines on companies that fail to stamp out offensive content and the spread of disinformation.

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Technology

New App Hopes to Empower Artists against AI

Artists have voiced increasing concern over the rapid growth of AI and its threats to creative livelihoods - AFP
Artists have voiced increasing concern over the rapid growth of AI and its threats to creative livelihoods - AFP
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New App Hopes to Empower Artists against AI

Artists have voiced increasing concern over the rapid growth of AI and its threats to creative livelihoods - AFP
Artists have voiced increasing concern over the rapid growth of AI and its threats to creative livelihoods - AFP

In 2008, scriptwriter Ed Bennett-Coles said he experienced a career "death moment": he read an article about AI managing to write its first screenplay.

Nearly two decades later, he and friend Jamie Hartman, a songwriter, have developed a blockchain-based application they hope will empower writers, artists and others to own and protect their work.

"AI is coming in, swooping in and taking so many people's jobs," Hartman said. Their app, he said, responds "no... this is our work."

"This is human, and we decide what it's worth, because we own it."

The ever-growing threat of AI looms over intellectual property and livelihoods across creative industries.

Their app, ARK, aims to log ownership of ideas and work from initial brainchild to finished product: one could register a song demo, for example, simply by uploading the file, the creators explained to AFP.

Features including non-disclosure agreements, blockchain-based verification and biometric security measures mark the file as belonging to the artist who uploaded it.

Collaborators could then also register their own contributions throughout the creative process.

ARK "challenges the notion that the end product is the only thing worthy of value," said Bennett-Coles as his partner nodded in agreement.

The goal, Hartman said, is to maintain "a process of human ingenuity and creativity, ring-fencing it so that you can actually still earn a living off it."

- Checks and balances -

Due for a full launch in summer 2025, ARK has secured funding from the venture capital firm Claritas Capital and is also in strategic partnership with BMI, the performing rights organization.

And for Hartman and Bennett-Coles, its development has included a lot of existential soul-searching.

"I saw a quote yesterday which really sums it up: it's that growth for growth's sake is the philosophy of the cancer cell," said Bennett-Coles. "And that's AI."

"The sales justification is always quicker and faster, but like really we need to fall in love with process again."

He likened the difference between human-created art and AI content to a child accompanying his grandfather to the butcher, versus ordering a slab of meat from an online delivery service.

The familial time spent together -- the walk to and from the shop, the conversations in between running the errand -- are "as important as the actual purchase," he said.

In the same way, "the car trip that Jamie makes when he's heading to the studio might be as important to writing that song as what happens in the studio itself."

AI, they say, devalues that creative process, which they hope ARK can reassert.

It's "a check and a balance on behalf of the human being," Hartman said.

- 'Rise out of the ashes' -

The ARK creators said they decided the app must be blockchain-based -- with data stored on a digital ledger of sorts -- because it's decentralized.

"In order to give the creator autonomy and sovereignty over their IP and control over their destiny, it has to be decentralized," Bennett-Coles said.

App users will pay for ARK according to a tiered structure, they said, levels priced according to storage use needs.

They intend ARK to stand up in a court of law as a "recording on the blockchain" or a "smart contract," the scriptwriter explained, calling it "a consensus mechanism."

"Copyright is a pretty good principle -- as long as you can prove it, as long as you can stand behind it," Hartman added, but "the process of registering has been fairly archaic for a long time."

"Why not make progress in copyright, as far as how it's proven?" he added. "We believe we've hit upon something."

Both artists said their industries have been too slow to respond to the rapid proliferation of AI.

Much of the response, Bennett-Coles said, has to start with the artists having their own "death moments" similar to what he experienced years ago.

"From there, they can rise out of the ashes and decide what can be done," he said.

"How can we preserve and maintain what it is we love to do, and what's important to us?"