EU ready to follow Australia's lead on making Google and Facebook pay for news

EU lawmakers overseeing new digital regulation in Europe want to force Big Tech companies to pay for news, echoing a similar move in Australia and strengthening the hand of publishers against Google and Facebook.The initiative from members of the European parliament would be a serious blow to Google, which has threatened to leave Australia in protest at a planned new law that would compel it to pay for news.Facebook has also warned it will stop users in Australia from sharing news if the legislation is passed in its current form.European parliament members working on two landmark draft European digital regulations, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), told the Financial Times the laws could be amended as they pass through the EU parliament to include aspects of the Australian reforms. These include the option of binding arbitration for licensing agreements and requiring tech companies to inform publishers about changes to how they rank news stories on their sites. We will never accept this situation when somebody is using content … and authors are not remunerated at all.  » Read More