Facebook will restore news to its platform in Australia after the government agreed to modify proposed legislation that had kicked off a bitter battle over how publishers are compensated for use of their content by Internet giants.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Australian lawmakers said the code would now include a provision that must take into account whether a digital platform has made a “significant contribution to the sustainability of the Australian news industry through reaching commercial agreements with news media businesses.”<\/p>\n
And arbitration would now only be used as a “last resort” following a period of “good faith” mediation. Facebook said the revisions would let it retain greater control of news on its platform.<\/p>\n
The dispute has been brewing for months and legislation that was set to be approved shortly would have required immediate binding arbitration if the two sides – publisher and platform — failed to reach a deal on compensation. It also required tech platforms to give publishers collective bargaining power and notice of any algorithm changes that would materially affect traffic.<\/p>\n
William Easton, Managing Director, Facebook Australia & New Zealand, said last week that the proposed law “fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content” and that “with a heavy heart, we are choosing” to suspend news from our service in Australia.<\/p>\n
The law in Australian and similar movement in other countries is a response to the imbalance of power between social media giants, which offer news to their massive base of users, and news providers, which want to be fairly compensated. In a preemptive move last week, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. inked a global deal for news content with Google<\/p>\n
Microsoft and a handful of European publishing groups will be working together on similar rules for tech platforms paying for news.<\/p>\n