Platforms to pay news publishers for content: Canada legislation

Canada has issued a legislation to compel platforms such as Google and Facebook to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content. According to newspaper industry sources, the Canadian legislation is expected to strengthen the case filed against Google by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) with the Competition Commission of India.

In addition to Canada, several other jurisdictions including Australia and European countries like France and Spain have passed similar laws forcing news intermediaries like Google to come to the table with news publishers and negotiate commercial terms.

Canada’s Online News Act requires digital platforms that have a bargaining imbalance, measured by metrics like a firm’s global revenue, with news businesses to make fair deals, that would then be assessed by a regulator. If such deals do not meet a set of criteria detailed in the act, the platforms would have to go through mandatory bargaining and final offer arbitration processes overseen by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications regulator.