News Media Bargaining Code
enacted Australian legislation
The News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC, or News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) is a law designed to have large technology platforms that operate in Australia pay local news publishers for the news content made available or linked on their platforms. The law's definition of news is broad, including "content that reports, investigates or explains ... current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level." Originating in April 2020, when the Australian Government asked the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) to begin drafting it, it achieved broad support in the Australian Parliament but staunch opposition from Facebook and Google.
Due to Australia taking the lead pushing for sustainability of the news industry, the News Media Bargaining Code greatly influenced the legislation in other countries.
Under the law, there are two ways for the eligible news organisations (the ones registered with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (the ACMA) to extract fees from the platforms:
the news providers can directly negotiate agreements with the platforms;
if negotiations are unsuccessful, the Treasurer of Australia can "designate" the platform, imposing mandatory fees.
As of November 2024, no platforms were designated and no designations were pending.
Purpose
The Act seeks to "address a bargaining power imbalance that exists between digital platforms and Australian news businesses" which the ACCC identified in its Digital Platforms Inquiry report.
The Australian government hopes it "will ensure that news media businesses are fairly remunerated for the content they generate, helping to sustain public interest journalism in Australia".
It requires stakeholders to agree to a dollar value of the news content distributed by the platforms, pay that revenue to registered news publishers, and agree to final offer arbitration in the case of a dispute between a publisher and a platform on the value of the news content. The Bill defined making "content available" by "if the content is reproduced on the service, or is otherwise placed on the service, or if a link to the content or an extract of the content is provided on the service." Nine Network estimated this amount to be $432 million.
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This entry incorporates text from “News Media Bargaining Code” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.