Tech companies do not share the right revenue with publishers

The Indian government said that big tech companies that funnel news into their search results and feed should give a fair share of the revenue to publishers. Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Information and Broadcasting Secretary Apoorva Chandra both stressed the importance of the issue for the future of journalism and the financial health of the news industry. Both said this at a conference organized by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), an organization of major Indian news publishers.
Chandrasekhar said, 'The power of advertisement has increased in digital media. The income from this has created an imbalance in the entire system. Lakhs of people making small groups and digital content are being harmed by this. Currently, digital content creators do not have control over content monetization. There is a mismatch between their need for content monetization and the power that big tech companies have.
We hope that the Digital India Act will solve this problem. He referred to a law passed two years ago in Australia that requires digital platforms such as Facebook and Google to share the rightful revenue for using a media outlet's content. The digital branch of the traditional news industry in India and many parts of the world has been questioning the antitrust monopolistic practices of big tech companies.
Chandrasekhar also said that he has spent three decades in the field of technology, but is living in the most interesting times right now. Things like chat GPT and artificial intelligence will change digital media in many ways. Today 800 million people in India are connected to the Internet. It is the largest Internet gathering in the world. It is possible that by 2025-26, 100 crore people in the country will be connected to the internet. The Internet has also changed now. This is not the Internet like it was 10 years ago. In future, artificial intelligence, the cloud, and the digital economy will lead to the development of the internet.
Recently, the second dialogue of the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) was also organized to brainstorm ways to decode the publisher-platform relationship. In this, leading experts from Canada and America had said that countries around the world, including India, should enact laws like Canada's Bargaining Code. In fact, media houses in many parts of the world are challenging Big Tech companies like Google, and Facebook for the use of their content. Media houses want Big Tech companies to give them the right revenue for their content.
Experts Taylor Owen from Canada, Paul Deegan and Dr. Courtney Radesch from the US agreed that the voluntary deals tech companies do with media outlets are not enough. Legislation is the only way to ensure fair dealing with Big Tech companies. Owen, Radsch, and Deegan count India as one of the countries that should show the rest of the world how to rebalance the publisher-platform relationship in terms of revenue sharing, transparency and accountability.
The purpose of Canada's Online News Act is to ensure that Big Tech such as Google, and Facebook do the right sharing of revenue generated from the content of digital news media. The act gives the Telecom Commission the power to oversee how Big Tech companies deal with news outlets. The draft legislation, called Bill C-18, was tabled in Parliament in early 2022.