The government has no plans to charge tech giants like Facebook and Google for using news content of publishers just like Australia, said Rajeev Chandrashekhar, minister of state for Information and Technology. Chandrasekhar was responding to questions raised by senior Congress member Shashi Tharoor in Parliament.

The Australian government tabled the world’s first media legislation in parliament that forces Google and Facebook to negotiate a fair payment with news organisations for using their content in Facebook’s newsfeed and Google’s search.

Shashi Tharoor had asked, “whether the ministry has taken cognizance of the draft law proposed in Australia and other similar moves to make platforms such as Google and Facebook pay for news and if so, the details thereof.”

Responding to the above query, Chandrasekhar said,”Government is aware of the growing risks of dominance of various big tech platforms on the internet and is deploying tools and capabilities to deal with the same including actively working with social media intermediaries. Presently, there is no proposal for enactment of a law by this ministry in this regard.” 

Worth mentioning here is that the Australian Parliament had in February 2021 enacted a law called the “News Media and Digital Platform Mandatory Bargaining Code”, requiring global digital companies to pay for local news content.