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New Zealand joins the Google threat club

THE NEW ZEALAND government has carried out its 2022 promise to make Facebook and the like pay for the news they use - by introducing a "Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill" (Bill 278-1) . This declares that it will work by “providing for collective bargaining by news media entities” with internet services.

So it amends competition law, not authors’ rights: it follows the example set by Australia and later by Canada. It sets up arbitration panels and establishes civil (that is, not criminal) penalties for failure to bargain, or to supply information, etc. As expected, we find no mention of payment to journalists.

Google has as expected responded by threatening on 4 October to cut New Zealand news site links if it has to pay for news content. It deployed this threat in 2014 when Spain passed similar legislation, and indeed shut down news.google.es for several years. It threatened to do the same to the entire European Union while the bloc was debating its Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market - which does provide for journalists to be paid - and this year to California.

New Zealand communications minister Paul Goldsmith told Radio New Zealand that while the final number depends on negotiations, the bill could generate as much as $30 million per year (assuming those are NZ$, that'd be £14 million).

It is worth remembering that Google has made agreements to comply with such laws when forced, most recently in Canada.