For over two decades now, internet giants have used news publishers’ reliable, fact-checked content to grow engagement on their platforms and earn billions in advertising revenues. In fact, before Google was set up in 1998, news publishers accounted for almost half of the advertising revenue globally. Today, their share stands at less than 8%. 

This has left the global news media industry flailing for a viable business model. And with news publishers adamant that Big Tech firms such as Google and Meta created this problem, they are also insistent that these companies help fix it.

For a while now, news publishers’ have demanded fair compensation for their content, either in the form of licence fees, royalties, or revenue sharing. Overseas, this has resulted in countries such as Australia, Canada, the UK, France, and Spain, among others, introducing regulations—a bargaining code of sorts—to force the likes of Google and Meta to negotiate better commercial deals with news publishers. Now, India appears to be following suit.

Ramping up the pressure

A week ago, it was reported that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MoIB) was considering introducing legislation to create India’s own version of the news publishers’ bargaining code. The law, if implemented, would compel tech giants to fairly compensate publishers for using their content.