Indian Government to set up new legislations for Tech Companies to share revenue with Indian publishers
Government of India is planning to make the Silicon Valley companies pay local publishers a share of the revenue for the original content that they churn. These companies are Google who owns YouTube, Meta who owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and also Twitter and Amazon.
Until now, the tech companies didn’t make any payments to the news platforms due to lack of legislations. They use the opaque ad-sharing revenue models and keeps a major amount of advertising revenue with them. As a result, the digital publishers are left lamenting about not receiving their fair share of revenue.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for IT and electronics, asserted that the government was considering formulating new rules to correct the anomaly of the situation seriously. The minister also mentioned that under the context of new legislations and rules, they are examining the market power on digital advertising, which the Big Tech majors exercises. This market power places the Indian media at a disadvantage.
Facebook commenced as a platform for connecting people. However, at present, it has transformed into a platform for news sharing and other media content at present. Likewise Google is not just a search engine anymore; rather it is a major platform for sharing news.
According to reports, more than 50 percent of the traffic on news websites routes through Google. Google on the other hand with its ad-revenue policy can push a particular news website upwards on the list.
While India is thinking about new legislations, other countries have already made strict moves. Australia and France have already enacted legislation, which binds Google and other tech platforms to divide their revenue share with local news creator.
