Facebook announced on Friday preliminary agreements with three Australian publishers, a day after the Parliament passed a law that would make the digital giants pay for news.

Facebook said letters of intent had been signed with independent news organizations Private Media, Schwartz Media, and Solstice Media. 

The commercial agreements are subject to the signing of full agreements within the next 60 days, a Facebook statement said. 

"These agreements will bring a new slate of premium journalism, including some previously paywalled content, to Facebook," the statement said. 

Schwartz Media chief executive Rebecca Costello said the deal would help her company continue to produce independent journalism.

"It's never been more important than it is now to have a plurality of voices in the Australian press," Costello said in the Facebook statement.

Private Media chief executive Will Hayward said the new deal built on an existing Facebook partnership.

Australia's Parliament on Thursday had passed the final amendments to the so-called News Media Bargaining Code. 

In return for the changes, Facebook agreed to lift a six-day-old ban on Australians accessing and sharing news. Access to Australian news sites did not appear to be fully restored until Friday.

Google, the only other digital giant targeted by the legislation, has already struck content licensing deals or is close to deals, with some of Australia's biggest news publishers including Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and Seven West Media.

Facebook Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg on Wednesday took a veiled swipe at News Corp. in a social media post criticizing Australia's law, which is aimed at setting a fair price for the Australian journalism that the digital platforms display.

"It is ironic that some of the biggest publishers that have long advocated for free markets and voluntary commercial undertakings now appear to be in favor of state-sponsored price setting," the former British deputy prime minister wrote.

News Corp. Australia executive chairman Michael Miller said last week that his company had pay negotiations with Facebook.

"Having been someone who's dealt with Facebook over the past months, we have some weeks where we're getting good engagement and think we're progressing and then you get silence. I think the door is still open," Miller told a Senate inquiry into Australian media diversity. 

News Corp. owns most of Australia's major newspapers, and some analysts argue the U.S.-based international media empire is the driver for the conservative Australian government making Facebook and Google pay. News Corp. has announced a wide-ranging deal with Google covering operations in the United States and Britain as well as Australia.

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We can say that Facebook and lawsuits are two sides of the same coin, where there is Facebook, lawsuit follows. Recently on going lawsuit regarding facial recognition algorithm used to tag people in photos while uploading has finally been closed and Facebook lost a big penny in it.

Facebook has agreed to pay $550 million to a group of plaintiffs from Illinois who argued the network didn't seek their consent when Facebook first started the practice in 2011. This legal action started back in 2015 which elevated to a class-action lawsuit in 2018. Finally, Facebook wanted to be out of all this and opted for the settlement for which company said, “We decided to pursue a settlement as it was in the best interests of our community and our shareholders to move past this matter."

Facebook pledged to invest at least $1 billion to support journalism over the next three years as the social media giant defended its handling of a dispute with Australia’s overpayments to media organizations. Nick Clegg, head of global affairs, said in a statement that the company stands ready to support news media while reiterating its concerns over mandated payments. "Facebook is more than willing to partner with news publishers," Clegg said after Facebook restored news links as part of a compromise with Australian officials. Facebook News to Be Restored in Australia as Government Agrees to Amend Law. 

"We absolutely recognize quality journalism is at the heart of how open societies function - informing and empowering citizens and holding the powerful to account."

Facebook and Google have both devoted money to supporting journalism in the past, citing its critical role in democracies. Clegg defended the California titan in a blog post titled "The Real Story of What Happened With News on Facebook in Australia." Australia Passes Landmark Law on Content Payment as Facebook Restores News. The social media platform came under fire after it blanked out the pages of media outlets for Australian users and blocked them from sharing any news content, rather than submit to the proposed legislation.

Clegg contended in his post that at the heart of the controversy is a misunderstanding about the relationship between Facebook and news publishers. Newsgroups share their stories on the social network, or make them available for Facebook users to share with features such as buttons designed into websites, Clegg noted. Facebook drove some 5.1 such "free referrals" to Australian news publishers last year, worth an estimated 407 million Australian dollars, according to Clegg.

"The assertions - repeated widely in recent days - that Facebook steals or takes original journalism for its own benefit always were and remain false," Clegg said.

"We neither take nor ask for the content for which we were being asked to pay a potentially exorbitant price."

 

'Erred' enforcement

Clegg said that to comply with the law as originally proposed in Australia, "Facebook would have been forced to pay potentially unlimited amounts of money to multi-national media conglomerates under an arbitration system that deliberately misdescribes the relationship between publishers and Facebook."

He maintained that in blacking out all news in the country, "we erred on the side of over-enforcement" and acknowledged that "some content was blocked inadvertently" before being restored. After two decades of light-touch regulation, tech giants such as Google and Facebook are coming under increased government scrutiny. In Australia, regulators have zeroed in on their online advertising dominance and its impact on struggling news media. According to Australia's competition watchdog, for every $100 spent on online advertising, Google captures $53, Facebook takes $28 and the rest is shared among others. To level the playing field, Australia wants Google and Facebook to pay for using expensive-to-produce news content in their searches and feeds.

"It is understandable that some media conglomerates see Facebook as a potential source of money to make up for their losses, but does that mean they should be able to demand a blank check?" Clegg asked rhetorically.

"It's like forcing carmakers to fund radio stations because people might listen to them in the car - and letting the stations set the price."

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee recently warned that introducing the precedent of charging for links could open a Pandora's Box of monetary claims that would break the Internet.

source: gadgetsndtv

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