Australia said today it will levy a tax on large digital platforms and search engines unless they reach an agreement to share revenue from publishing journalistic content with the media.
The tax will apply from January 1 to technology companies that have more than A$250 million (€153 million) a year in revenue from Australia, said Deputy Finance Minister Stephen Jones and the Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland.
This fee will be charged to giants such as the North American companies Meta (owner of the social network Facebook) and Alphabet (owner of the Google search engine) and the Chinese company ByteDance (owner of the short video platform TikTok).
Proceeds will be used to fund subsidies for Australia's media.
"The real objective (...) is not to increase revenue - we hope not to have any revenue. The real objective is to encourage agreements between news media platforms and companies in Australia," Stephen Jones told reporters.
"It is important that digital platforms fulfill their role. They must support access to quality journalism that informs and strengthens our democracy," said Michelle Rowland.
"The rapid growth of digital platforms in recent years has disrupted Australia's media landscape and threatens the viability of public interest journalism," the minister added.
The move comes after Meta, owner of social networks Facebook and Instagram and messaging platform WhatsApp, announced in March that it would not renew three-year agreements to pay for Australian media content.
In 2021, Australia passed a law that requires digital platforms to pay Australian media outlets for publishing journalistic content, in what was the first legislation of its kind in the world.
The origin of the law was an investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that exposed the imbalance between advertising revenue obtained by technology companies and media outlets in the country.
According to the ACCC's final report on digital platforms, published in December 2019, they accounted for 51% of advertising spending in Australia in 2017.
In May 2020, Nine Media group chairman Peter Costello said that Google and Facebook generate advertising revenue of around six billion Australian dollars (€3.9 billion), of which around 10% comes from of news content.
The 2021 legislation requires technology companies to negotiate compensation with the media for publishing journalistic content on platforms, establishing the intervention of an arbitration panel as a last resort.
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