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Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

The interesting counterpoint is Australia, which did not allow google and facebook to simply pull news. Instead it gave itself the power to assign fees to the companies for not showing the news.

this forced the companies to the negotiating table because the question wasn't to pay for news or not, but pay for news, pay a fine for no news, or leave the market entirely.

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Which I don’t agree with. Why should social media companies be forced to carry the news?

IMO it is just a shakedown. The "why" is simply that the government has the ability and leverage to extract the money.

I agree, especially given that the media companies that got the money was largely Murdoch’s empire.

Because they're rich foreign owned companies that you can force to pay.

But you're paying a rich Australian (Murdoch) who is trying to manipulate Anglo democracies and directly enabled the election of a President who has dramatically undermined Australia's foreign policy.

Australia has the 2nd most concentrated media industry in the world - only China is even more concentrated [0]

Like everything else, morals are for chumps. It's oligarchs fighting each other.

[0] - https://gmicp.org/communications-media-and-internet-concentr...

Did you mean "but" or "and"?

Clarification: I guess I don't view your statement as a negation, modification, or point of contrast to the statement above. Both are accurate as I understand the situation.

My understanding is that "and" is more appropriate for additive information.

I'm directly replying to OP's statement that "Because they're rich foreign owned [social media] companies that you can force to pay"

Yeah, I don't understand how that's a response to my post either.

I got that you don't like Murdoch.

news is a social good while social media in its current form is a social ill.

Depends on the news

On the one hand: tax all companies and people to pay for it. I’m all for that.

On the other: news is largely produced by private companies. Their ability to reach customers and their financial viability is their problem and their responsibility. I don’t see any proposals to extort Craigslist, and they’re equally if not more responsible for the situations news companies find themselves in.

Keep in mind the law specifically states they must pay Murdoch, and him only.

It is staggering corruption at its best - official laws of a country to pay a single person money.

And that was lobbied by Murdoch…

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/mar/16/rupert-murdoch...

So Australia:

1. Passed a law mandating that companies pay royalties when they link to news articles.

2. Passed a law fining companies if they don't show news articles.

This seems like straightforward trade manipulation. Basically, a tariff cloaked in the language of fines and royalties. Imagine if the US passed a law fining foreign countries if they don't buy John Deere tractors, or rent office space from Trump's properties.

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