New Zealand Plans to Make Facebook, Google Pay for News

“It’s not fair that the big digital platforms like Google and Meta get to host and share local news for free,“ Mr. Jackson said Sunday. ”It costs to produce the news and it’s only fair they pay.”

Like legislation elsewhere, New Zealand’s proposal would allow Google and Facebook to negotiate with publishers without government intervention. But if no agreement is reached, then the law would plot out a mandatory negotiating process.

New Zealand’s proposal is likely to set up a fight with the online platforms, which have campaigned against laws and proposals in other countries. Facebook, for example, at one point blocked news on its platform in Australia while legislation there was being debated and it has threatened to do the same thing in Canada.

On Monday, Meta’s regional policy director,

Mia Garlick,

said New Zealand’s proposal misunderstands the relationship between Facebook and news, noting that publishers are the ones who control whether and how their content appears on the platform. Ms. Garlick said it also fails to recognize current commercial deals the company has in New Zealand.

“We are concerned about the unintended impacts future legislation will have on innovation in both the media and broader tech sector,” she said.

Google didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

News publishers all over the world have argued that tech giants benefit from their content by drawing users to their platforms and that it can be difficult for some outlets—particularly small ones—to negotiate commercial deals with the tech companies. Facebook and Google, however, have said publishers benefit by having their links shared, which drives traffic to their websites.

Still, tech giants have said they are committed to local news and have reached commercial deals with publishers, in some cases before the threat of legislation was introduced. In New Zealand, for example, Facebook has commercial agreements with three publishers focusing on innovation, which the company has said helps to support the long-term sustainability of journalism there.

NZME Ltd.

, which owns New Zealand newspapers, said it reached its own independent agreements with both Google and Facebook earlier in the year, but that it still supports the government’s proposal.

“We are supportive of the government legislating as it ensures the future sustainability of our local news media and contributes to a healthy media ecosystem,” said NZME Chief Executive

Michael Boggs.

In a report last week, Australian officials said their law, passed early last year, was a success, pointing out that more than 30 commercial agreements between digital platforms and a cross-section of Australian news businesses have been struck. Although those agreements were made voluntarily, the report said those agreements were unlikely to have been made without the law, suggesting that the threat of activating its most onerous provisions had an impact.

News Corp,

owner of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, is among the news organizations in Australia to have made commercial agreements with Google and Facebook.

Google has raised concerns that Canada’s proposal goes even further than Australia’s law, pointing out that the Canadian version has an extremely broad definition of eligible news businesses and that there is no obligation to follow journalistic standards.

Whether New Zealand’s parliament ultimately passes a law isn’t certain. An election is expected next year and the government could change after the vote, which could come before anything has had time to make its way through parliament.

Write to Mike Cherney at [email protected]