A bipartisan bill that would allow news organizations to band together and negotiate with Big Tech platforms for fair compensation for the use of their news content has advanced to the full Senate.
The Senate Judiciary Committee recently passed the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act on a bipartisan vote of 14-7, according to a June 15 news release. The JCPA would also establish a "limited safe harbor" protecting the news organizations from antitrust laws to allow them to negotiate jointly with tech companies.
“We all know the vital role that local newspapers and broadcasters play in informing the public, ensuring accountability and promoting civic engagement," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Majority Whip, said in the release. "Yet, we’ve seen a massive decline in local news over the past few decades driven, in part, by large online gatekeepers like Google and Facebook siphoning away more and more of the advertising revenue that news organizations have traditionally relied upon to fund their work."
The JCPA would empower news publishers with fewer than 1,500 exclusive full-time employees and news broadcasters which "engage in standard newsgathering practices" to work together to negotiate pricing, terms and conditions under which the online platform can access the content of the news organizations, the release said.
The covered platforms would be required to negotiate in good faith, according to the release. if negotiations fail to produce an agreement after six months, news publishers could demand final-offer arbitration.
Other provisions of the bill would shield journalism organizations from antitrust laws under a limited exemption, allow news publishers to jointly withhold content from the platforms, prohibit platforms from retaliating against smaller news publishers or over views expressed in content and provide a private right of action for violations, the release noted.
Google is already facing an antitrust investigation launched by the European Commission in June 2021 to determine if Google violated European Union competition rules by promoting its own online display-advertising technology services to the "detriment" of competitors.
