Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms Inc, on Monday, threatened to remove news from its platform if the U.S.

Congress passes a proposal to make it easier for news organizations to bargain collectively with companies such as Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook. Sources briefed on the matter said lawmakers were considering adding the Competition and Journalism Preservation Act to a must-have annual defense bill to help the struggling local news industry.

Introduced last year with bipartisan support, the bill would allow publishers to negotiate with platforms like Facebook and Google over the distribution of their content. It's supposed to give news publishers leverage against Big Tech and could force Facebook to pay to include news on its platform, something Facebook has fiercely fought against in the past in other countries.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a tweet that the company would be forced to consider removing news if the law is passed "rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly overlook any value we provide to news organizations by increasing traffic and subscriptions."

Meta, the social media conglomerate formerly known as Facebook, has threatened to remove news from its platforms if the U.S. passes a law that would require it to negotiate with publishers to pay them to allow links to their content.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

The European and Australian position

It must be said that in Europe, the 2019 European copyright reform established a "neighboring right" for the benefit of press publishers and press agencies. This measure is supposed to help them get paid for the takeover of their content by online platforms and other aggregators, thus compensating for the collapse of their traditional advertising revenues to the benefit of Internet giants, such as Facebook and Google.

Jesper Doub, Director of News Partnerships at Meta (which was called Facebook at the time), Europe, Middle East, and Africa, said in a statement:

"The law of 24 July 2019 to create a neighboring right for the benefit of press agencies and press publishers – which transposed Article 15 of the European Directive on copyright and related rights – enters into force on 24 October 2019. The provisions of this law provide, inter alia, for the authorization of press publishers to display on online platforms, in an enriched format, links to their content.

"This is already the case on Facebook. Press publishers decide on the publication of their content on our platform. We will continue to display their content in a rich format, including images, titles, excerpts, and other fields that they publish via their RSS feed. However, a very small part of the content on our platform is published by users, without having received the consent of the press publishers. Also, if they want the links published by users to be displayed in a rich format on Facebook, they will have the opportunity to give us their consent and inform us of their wish that these links to be displayed in a rich format.

"In the spirit of Article 15, we want to create even more value for the content of press publishers. Thus, we are in discussions with French publishers to set up a dedicated space on Facebook where French users will be able to consult publishers' content. We want to support quality journalism and believe that a new space dedicated to news will give French users access to more reliable sources, and lead them to discover new media, thus expanding the audience of our partners' content. Our discussions with French publishers to define what the best experience would look like in this area and how we could compensate our partners appropriately, are already underway and will continue beyond October 24."

Then, the phenomenon spread to Australia: the authorities worked on a similar law whose first version was more aggressive. Not only was there talk of forcing tech giants to negotiate with news sites, but the bill, in its original form, proposed an arbitration process where each party (an Australian publisher and a tech giant, respectively) would present a proposal, and then an independent arbitrator would decide which proposal was more "reasonable." This has been widely seen as increasing the bargaining power of news sites.

In January 2021, Google threatened to shut down its Australian search engine if the law went into effect. In February 2021, Facebook went even further by preventing users from sharing Australian news articles. Microsoft seized the opportunity to undermine its rivals, strongly endorsing the Australian approach and supporting the concept of payment for news content.

After several days of intense negotiations, Facebook and Australia reached a face-saving deal. Facebook has agreed to reactivate the sharing of news articles. In exchange, the Australian government allowed Facebook to withdraw from the forced arbitration process if it could convince the government that it had already "made a significant contribution to the sustainability of the Australian news industry by entering into commercial agreements with news media companies." Both Google and Facebook have struck deals with Australian media companies in a bid to show that more coercive measures are not necessary.

The revised law gives tech companies a longer period to enter into voluntary agreements before being forced into an arbitration process.

While these changes were tactical gains for Facebook and Google over Australia's harsh original proposal, it's clear that the tech giants have abandoned their previous position that they shouldn't have to pay at all.

Then comes the United State. Bill.

No doubt encouraged by these "successes", American lawmakers are trying to replicate their essence. The U.S. Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2022 (JCPA) has similar goals to Australia, but relies on smaller publishers (those with fewer than 1,500 employees) and broadcasters to unite and negotiate with Facebook and Google on the "terms and conditions of covered platform access to digital news content."

The definition of "covered platform" refers to an online platform with at least 50 million U.S.-based users, annual net sales exceeding $550 billion, or at least one billion monthly active users worldwide.

In other words: Meta and Google.

The Meta reaction

Andy Stone, head of meta-communications, expressed the social network's dissatisfaction with the bill as follows:

"If Congress passes a reckless journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider removing information from our platform altogether rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscription. The JCPA fails to identify a key fact: publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platforms because of the profits they subsequently derive from it, not the other way around. No company should have to pay for content that users don't want to see and that isn't a significant source of revenue. Put simply: The government's creation of a cartel-like entity that forces a private company to subsidize other private entities is a terrible precedent for all American companies."

It turns out that this language is very, very similar to the wording Meta has used elsewhere.

The company's argument against Canada's online news bill (Bill C-18) also argues that publishers benefit from sharing their work on Facebook because it is more widely viewed, which boosts subscriptions and helps them sell ads. And that's exactly what Facebook said in Australia, where local Facebook executives lamented that local law "fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and the publishers who use it to share news content."

However, the Australian government won the game after modifying the negotiation process mentioned above. The Australian program has worked quite well. News organizations that received money from Google and Facebook used it to hire staff in rural and regional communities. But other publishers (often smaller entities or those that don't cover the news) haven't been able to bring the web giants to the table and haven't seen any money.

The Canadian bill is being studied in committee and the U.S. bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights.

But the idea that big tech companies should participate to ensure the survival of news organizations is emulated. India has expressed interest in the arrangement and New Zealand last Sunday announced a plan for a published link payment system.

All governments considering the arrangement can draw on the Australian experience.

However, if the goal is to burnish his image with voters by conducting this type of operation, the politicians involved may not know that Josh Frydenberg (the minister who led the negotiations with Facebook) has often cited securing the company's payments as an example of why he deserved to be re-elected. But he lost his seat in the May 2022 Australian election, when the government of which he was a member was also removed from office. Reasons unrelated to the Facebook deal were behind both losses. So while Australia's deal with Facebook was welcomed locally, it didn't bring in much political capital.

The opinion of the inventor of the web (Tim Berners-Lee) - on the question:

"On the web, content sharing relies on users' ability to do two things: create content, usually text, but also other media; and link in this content to other parts of the web. This is consistent with human discourse in general, in which there is a right, and often a duty, to make references. An academic article is needed to list references to other articles that are linked. Journalist is normally required to refer to their sources. Bloggers' discourse involves links from one blog to another. The value of the blog lies both in the text and in the carefully chosen links.

Before search engines were effective on the web, following links from one page to another was the only way to find content. Search engines make this process much more efficient, but they can only do this by using the link structure of the web as their main input. Links are therefore fundamental for the web.

As I understand it, the proposed code is intended to require certain digital platforms to negotiate and possibly pay to link to news content from a particular group of news providers.

Charging a fee for a link on the web blocks an important aspect of the value of web content. To my knowledge, there are currently no examples of a legal payment requirement for links to other content. The possibility of establishing links freely - that is, without limitations on the content of the linked site and free of charge - is fundamental for the functioning of the web, its development so far, and its future growth in the decades to come.

Like many others, I support the right of publishers and content creators to be properly rewarded for their work. This is undoubtedly an issue that needs to be addressed, both in Australia and around the world. However, I firmly believe that constraints on the use of hyperlinks are not the right way to achieve this goal. This would undermine the fundamental principle of the ability to freely link on the web and is incompatible with the way the web has been able to function over the past three decades. If this precedent were followed elsewhere, it could render the web unusable worldwide. I therefore respectfully ask the committee to remove this mechanism from the emerging code of conduct."