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Post by Admin on Feb 22, 2021 4:28:49 GMT
Australia's proposed media code could break the world wide web, says the man who invented it
The inventor of the world wide web says proposed Australian media laws requiring tech giants Google and Facebook to pay for displaying news content risks setting a precedent that “could make the web unworkable around the world”.
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web in 1989, said the draft legislation “risks breaching a fundamental principle of the web by requiring payment for linking between certain content online”.
In a submission to an Australian Senate inquiry on the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code bill, Berners-Lee said the ability of web users to link to other sites was “fundamental to the web”.
Requiring digital platforms to pay to host that link, a world-first provision of the proposed Australian laws, would “block an important aspect of the value of web content”, the computer scientist said.
Berners-Lee argued the proposal “would undermine the fundamental principle of the ability to link freely on the web and is inconsistent with how the web has been able to operate over the past three decades”.
“If this precedent were followed elsewhere it could make the web unworkable around the world,” he said. “I therefore respectfully urge the committee to remove this mechanism from the code.”
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Post by Admin on Feb 23, 2021 6:12:55 GMT
Facebook says it will restore news pages in Australia after a breakthrough in talks with the government.
The announcement caps month of bitter dispute between the American tech firm and Canberra, which had been working on legislation that would force tech platforms to pay news publishers for content.
The agreement "will allow us to support the publishers we choose to, including small and local publishers," said Campbell Brown, Facebook's vice president for global news partnerships, in a statement. She added that the company was "restoring news on Facebook in Australia in the coming days."
Last week, Facebook (FB) barred Australians from finding or sharing news on its service. The decision — which appeared to be the most restrictive move the company has ever taken against content publishers — forced the pages of media organizations and even some unrelated essential services to go dark.
The initial version of the legislation would have allowed media outlets to bargain either individually or collectively with Facebook and Google (GOOGL) — and to enter arbitration if the parties can't reach an agreement.
On Tuesday the Australian government said it would amend the code to include a provision that "must take into account whether a digital platform has made a significant contribution to the sustainability of the Australian news industry through reaching commercial agreements with news media businesses," among other measures.
"The government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won't automatically be subject to a forced negotiation," Facebook's Brown said. "It's always been our intention to support journalism in Australia and around the world, and we'll continue to invest in news globally, and resist efforts by media conglomerates to advance regulatory frameworks that do not take account of the true value exchange between publishers and platforms like Facebook."
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