New Delhi:Big tech companies that primarily deal in content aggregation must give a “fair share of revenues” to publishers, the Centre said on Friday highlighting the need to address "disproportionate imbalance" in this dynamic.
Information and Broadcasting Secretary Apurva Chandra's message that was read out at a day-long conclave organised by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) said the sharing of the revenue between content aggregators and news publishers was linked to the “future of journalism.”
“For the growth of the news industry, it is important that digital news platforms of all these publishers, who are the creators of original content, get a fair share of revenues from the Big Tech platforms which act as aggregators of content created by others," Chandra said. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, opined the same.
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"If news industry continues to be negatively impacted, the future of journalism, our fourth pillar, is also hit," Chandra said. Highlighting how changes were happening in the field of technology at a rapid pace, the I&B Secretary said it was not easy to keep pace with the changes in the field of technology. He highlighted its impact on the news publishing industry.
Chandra also spoke about how other countries such as Australia, Canada, France and the EU, have passed legislation and strengthened their competition commissions to ensure a fair split of revenue between news content creators and aggregators. "We hope to address this issue of disproportionate control and imbalance of dynamics between content creation and its monetisation and the power that ad-tech companies and platforms hold today," said MoS IT Chandrasekhar.
