July 17, 2024 7:00am by David Farrar

NZ Initiative on Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill

News companies wishing to block search engine indexation can do so easily. A simple robots.txt file stops search engines from indexing sites. Paywalls can prevent those who have not paid from viewing a site’s content. Blocking platforms’ access is relatively simple. Why have news publishers not done so?
International research showing that digital platforms, overall, do more to benefit news firms by increasing their reach than they might do to harm news firms when some platform users substitute platforms’ snippets of news rather than paying for the newspaper.
When those who want news decide which outlets to support with their subscription dollars, news outlets face a market test. If the test instead depends on a political or bureaucratic allocation process, worse outcomes may be obtained
As in Canada, small and independent outlets are likely to be most harmed if Meta blocked links to news rather than be subject to compelled bargaining
Entrenching existing players and business models by throttling smaller independent outlets would stifle innovation and new entrants in the media market
Forcing payments for links and snippets undermines the open nature of the web
If there is a public interest case for supporting journalism, it would be more transparent and economically eﬃcient to do so through direct subsidies rather than forced transfers from one sector to another.

It’s a bad bill that should not be progressed.