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Big Tech in Indonesia may start paying news firms for content
Media groups are pushing for the regulation, inspired by Australia's News Media Bargaining Code passed in February.
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A smartphone is being operated in front of the logos of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon as a background in Hédé-Bazouges, western France, on Sept. 28, 2017. (AFP/Damien Meyer)
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ndonesian media groups are pushing for a draft regulation to make news aggregators pay publishers for displayed content, a regulation meant to support the domestic news industry.
Sources told The Jakarta Post that the new regulation was based on Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code – the first law of its kind in the world – passed in February this year. The law requires aggregators such as Google and Facebook to negotiate fees with publishers.
Read also: Australia passes bill to compel Google, Facebook to pay for news
The proposed regulation addresses the years-old complaint of publishers, which have been losing advertising revenue to online aggregators, that tech giants were benefiting from using news content in search results or other features without proper compensation.
Indonesian Cyber Media Association (AMSI) chair Wenseslaus “Wens” Manggut said on Nov. 15 that the problem was exacerbated by the fact that web traffic landed more frequently on low-quality content like clickbait, hoaxes and hate speech.
“This kind of ecosystem provides no incentive for proper journalism,” Wens said. “Our work requires effort that is supposed to be valued. If left to an open fight, we would be done for”.
The draft is the work of media associations and the Press Council through a media sustainability task force. The proposed regulation also gives more responsibility to aggregators to vet online content.
