Why Government Must Make Google, Facebook Pay For Content

As the world’s largest democracy, as its second-largest online market, as a soon-to-become fastest growing major economy, India should have taken the lead on making Google and Facebook – two alarmingly dominant global super-monopolies – pay a fair share of earnings they make from domestically produced news content on the internet.

- Saubhik Chakrabarti

Even more so because, first, India’s government has demonstrated it is perfectly willing to take on Big Tech on multiple other fronts and, second, it has made atmanirbharata (self-reliance) its economic policy mantra. A large democracy with growing internet market power run by a government that champions local enterprise and can get tough on global players is just about the perfect candidate to be a key player in this fight.

But it was Australia that took the lead. A law that’s almost certain to be passed by its parliament will impose payment obligations on Big Tech. And Australian PM Scott Morrison was entirely right to call for a global alliance of democracies to make Google and Facebook pay much more for news content they profit from.

Some other democracies have taken a few steps or half steps. Led by France, European countries have started making rules and launched investigations. Discussions on remedial action are gathering momentum in the US. So far, there’s nothing in India. Even though, nothing could be clearer than the case for making Big Tech cough up more money to democratic India’s news content publishers. Let’s explain it simply, point by point:

Credible, fact-checked news is a bedrock of democracy. This should be self-evident. Imagine waking up one morning and finding out that tweets, posts and internet videos by just about anyone, none of whom has a reputation to protect or responsibility to adhere to or is bound by laws, is your ONLY source of news. How will our democracy survive that? It can’t.