Centre wants tech giants to pay news outlets for content

Australia was one of the first nations to introduce a law that forced tech firms to pay for original content from news publishers

The Centre is looking at making tech giants - Google (owner of YouTube), Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Microsoft, Apple, Twitter and Amazon - to pay remuneration to news publishers if they use original content produced by them.

Minister of State for IT and Electronics Rajeev Chandrashekhar told The Times of India that this move was being taken forward through regulatory interventions and could happen through revisions to IT laws.

"The market power on digital advertising that is currently being exercised by the big tech majors, which places Indian media companies at a position of disadvantage, is an issue that is being seriously examined in the context of new legislation and rules," Chandrashekhar told TOI.

The minister said the government felt that the growth of social media and tech platforms had resulted in a consolidation of market power with a handful of big tech companies, leaving many original content creators at a disadvantage. "The news publishers have no negotiating leverage at all and this needs to be tackled legislatively," said Chandrasekhar, in the report. "This is an important issue for us."

Australia was one of the first countries to introduce a law that forced tech platforms to pay for original content sourced from local media entities. And it happened after a battle between Google and the country's consumer regulator. Since then, around 30 deals have been struck between media organisations and tech majors.

In India, the Digital News Publishers Association and the Indian Newspaper Society complained to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) about Google's practices, the report said. They accused Google of abusing its dominant position as a news aggregator and imposing unfair conditions on news publishers. The CCI then ordered an enquiry against Google.