The Australian and Canadian governments have introduced the News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC) and Online News Act (C-18) bills to ensure that media companies in those countries are properly compensated for the news they bring, and used by information search platforms such as Google and Facebook.
In a discussion held yesterday by the Ministry of Communications and Digital and also the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, they announced the consideration of adopting a similar regulatory framework as implemented in Australia.
In the announcement, KKD and MCMC are also in discussions with major online platforms such as Meta and Google regarding the development of this licensing and regulatory framework.
This move is seen as interesting, because although the NMBC law is now in use in Australia with Google and Facebook agreeing to pay media platforms for sharing their content, media practitioners in Canada seem to be facing a crisis of reduced readership due to the bill this law
Google has issued a statement saying that bill C-18 is too restrictive and needs to be rethought at the negotiating table, while Facebook said that the ban on sharing news links in Canada has not had a significant impact on traffic on its website.
For now, the introduction of this digital media practitioner bill is still at the discussion stage, and more details about it may be announced in the future.