Summarised by Centrist
If passed, the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill will force platforms like Google into negotiations with local media companies. This may lead to compulsory payments, a so-called ‘link tax’, for linking to news content.
Google has already warned that this could force them to stop linking to news content in New Zealand, causing significant drops in traffic for news sites.
Dr Eric Crampton argues that this bill is not a “proper commercial negotiation,” as media companies can already block search engines from linking to their sites.
The bill creates an arbitration process, where a panel chooses between final offers to decide how much platforms should pay news publishers. “The amount arbitrators may consider fair is impossible to guess,” said Crampton, pointing out that the uncertainty led Facebook to block news links entirely in Canada.
According to Crampton, New Zealand’s parliament risks repeating Canada’s mistakes. Since Facebook stopped linking to news, Canadian news outlets have seen a sharp drop in referral traffic. Millions of dollars in previous agreements between platforms and publishers were also cancelled.
Canadian law expert Michael Geist argues that: “Far from preserving an independent press, the policies have placed them at greater risk.”
News companies may think platforms are “stealing” from them by linking to their content, but they may regret it when those links—and the associated traffic—disappear.
