A recent report from the Guardian finds that the European Union is proposing new rules regarding the publishing of news content. One of the rules would cover how publishers are compensated for their work, and would have a major impact on Google and Facebook. While these two companies are not technically news agencies, they both generate a lot of traffic (and therefore revenue) from people looking for news.
The draft of a proposal that is expected to go in front of the European Commission says that, “the sustainability of publishing industries in the EU may be at stake, with the risk of further negative consequences on media pluralism, democratic debate and quality of information.”
To help prevent that ‘problem’ the EU is expected to push forward legislation that allows publishers to have exclusive rights to their digital publishing. Google and Facebook, of course, use content from throughout the Internet when people share it or post it on their news feeds.
If this legislation goes through, companies like Facebook and Google would either need to prevent the content from being posted on their sites, or compensate the content creators.
Many publishers, however, would choose to opt out of this since they want their content shared on social media sites. The social media sites drive massive amounts of traffic, which can be far more valuable than whatever the companies may be required to pay based on EU regulations.
This isn’t just written content either. Videos and audio content would also be impacted if this proposal goes through. You can read the full report from the Guardian HERE.
