Reluctant tech giants face millions in fines under new media code

ACCC chair Rod Sims says tech giants could face penalties in the hundreds of millions of dollars for each breach of the mandatory media bargaining code which will make them pay Australian media companies for their content.

Mr Sims told Sky News the code was designed to ensure media businesses are fairly rewarded for their “fundamental” work.

“Unless we’ve got a well-functioning media sector, Australian society is greatly diminished, so fixing this problem is hugely important,” he said.

Mr Sim said he was confident the code will succeed where other countries had failed.

“Other countries base their regimes on copyright and just said there’s copyright here, go work it out amongst yourselves, and that hasn’t worked,” he said.

“What we’ve done is said there’s not only going to be negotiation, there’s going to be arbitration, there’s that forcing device at the end.

“The other difference is when Spain tried to impose a payment regime, Google just said right well we’ll just stop showing your news on one of our platforms, well the non-discrimination provisions in our law won’t let them do that, so they won’t have the option of downgrading people who want to use the code and using other news content.

“They won’t be able to say we won’t use any Australian content, we’ll just use international, that also will be discriminatory.”

Image: News Corp Australia