Background
In April 2020, the Commonwealth Government directed the
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
(ACCC) to create a mandatory news media bargaining
code, designed to establish a mandatory framework for negotiating
and agreeing payments to news content creators by the digital
platforms (specifically Facebook and Google) that display and link
to that news content (Code).
The framework was considered necessary to address the perceived
fundamental power imbalance perceived between news content creators
and the digital platforms, which was a key finding from the
ACCC's landmark Digital Platforms Inquiry published in July
2019.
The ACCC released its draft Code for public consultation on 31
July 2020, and it has unsurprisingly been the subject of strong
industry reaction. Content creators are generally supportive, while
the likes of Facebook and Google have been strongly opposed.
