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Google urged to pay news copyright fees

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Google's headquarters in Calif., the U.S. Reuters-Yonhap
Google's headquarters in Calif., the U.S. Reuters-Yonhap

More countries taking steps to regulate US firm's platform dominance

By Baek Byung-yeul

With countries increasing their efforts to strengthen antitrust regulations on digital platforms, Google is under pressure to pay copyright fees to news organizations for using their content on its platform. Officials in the news industry here said Wednesday that this wave of change is also approaching within Korea, as demands are increasing for a measure to impose a fair levy on overseas IT behemoths.

In response to criticisms that digital platforms have disrupted any hopes of a sustainable, independent and equitable news ecosystem, Google has launched Google News Showcase, a licensing program that pays fees to news organizations.

But the News Showcase program has not been initiated in Korea, where digital platforms such as Google have not been regarded as online news service providers under the Newspaper Act.

For the sustainable growth of news organizations based in Korea, a bill, sponsored by Rep. Kim Yeong-shik of the conservative main opposition People Power Party, proposed to amend the current Newspaper Act in April.

It still remains to be seen whether the bill will be passed at the National Assembly, given that Google has a huge grip on the Android app ecosystem, search engine market and other software technologies.

"Korea's internet service providers, Naver and Kakao, have been paying news organizations for reusing news content. They pay news fees by distributing their advertisement revenue, but Google doesn't," a representative of the local newspaper industry said.

But the source mentioned that public opinion is growing that the National Assembly should quickly pass the revision of the newspaper law to prevent Google from using news for free.

On July 20, the National Assembly's ICT committee decided to push ahead with legislation that restricts app market operators such as Google and Apple from imposing their own billing systems on in-app purchases. The local IT industry has criticized the fact that Google Play's forced in-app payment is an abuse of power that takes advantage of its market-dominating position.

The liberal ruling Democratic Party of Korea lawmakers of the ICT committee pushed the bill forward using the party's majority status, saying that they aim to pass the bill in a plenary session as early as next month.

"It remains to be seen whether the bill to amend the current Newspaper Act will pass in the National Assembly because of Google's platform power in Korea. However, the so-called Google in-app payment ban act was recently introduced in a plenary session. In this atmosphere, a law revision that prevents Google from using free news could take place quickly," the source said.

The move is in line with cases in other countries that have been pressuring Google to make payments to news organizations.

An antitrust regulator in France recently fined Google 500 million euro for failing to comply with its order on how to conduct talks with the country's news publishers over making payments for using their news content. The regulator also asked the tech giant to come up with proposals about how it would compensate news outlets for the use of their content.

Australia has also been stricter on Google's unauthorized use of news, as the country is the world's first to pass a bill forcing the digital platform to pay fees to news organizations for reusing their content.


Baek Byung-yeul baekby@koreatimes.co.kr


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