The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology informed the Rajya Sabha on Friday that the issue regarding tech giants to share their advertising revenue with traditional or digital news publishers is a matter of concern, as raised by the stakeholders, including industry and legal experts.
Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrashekhar, while responding to a question by BJP member Sushil Kumar Modi on whether the government was looking to make big tech majors such as Google, Meta and Microsoft, pay Indian newspapers and digital news publishers a share of revenue for using their original content said, “This Ministry regularly interacts with such stakeholders on requirements for new legislation, amendments of the Rules, etc.”
Referring to media reports, he added that the Australian Parliament had in February 2021 enacted a law, called ‘the News Media and Digital Platform Mandatory Bargaining Code’, requiring global digital companies to pay for local news content.
