Rep. Cicilline to push bill allowing news publishers to negotiate with Big Tech

Could Australian-style rules to force Google and Facebook to pay for news be coming to the United States?

U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., told the CNN program “Reliable Sources” over the weekend that the House will soon take up legislation that would give news publishers an antitrust exemption allowing them to bargain collectively with the Big Tech platforms. The purpose would be negotiating a compensation system.

“Local news is on life support in this country,” said Cicilline, who chairs the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee. “The monopoly power of these two platforms is resulting in a significant decline in local journalism.”

More broadly, he said his committee will also take up parts of a 450-page report, compiled over 16 months, to rein in the power of the giant platforms. He told host Brian Stelter that many of the recommendations in the report have bipartisan support and are aimed at breaking up the tech companies’ monopoly power.

The most intriguing of those ideas, according to a recent story by Cat Zakrzewski in The Washington Post, involves “interoperability and data portability, which would make it easier for consumers to move their data to new or competing tech services.”

Facebook has massive market dominance, and it would be difficult for a competitor to get a toehold in the market in any case. But it would be at least somewhat more feasible if users could easily transfer all their data over to a new service and delete it from Facebook, something that is almost impossible to do at the moment.

Regardless of what happens, it seems that Google and Facebook may soon no longer be able to operate with impunity. I’m far from certain that the Australian system is the best way to go given that it privileges entrenched publishers like Rupert Murdoch. But the idea that the platforms should pay something for what they use is long overdue.

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