New Zealand to press ahead with media content pay law

New Zealand’s conservative coalition government will proceed with a bill that would make it compulsory for digital technology platforms to pay media companies for news, it said on Tuesday.
The bill is being introduced as New Zealand media companies struggle against technology firms for advertising dollars, leading them to find new ways to provide news programming.
Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith said, the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, introduced last year by the previous Labour government, will be presented in Parliament with amendments to support “our local media companies to earn revenue for the news they produce.”
Goldsmith said, the proposed changes would align it more closely with Australia’s digital bargaining law.
That law, which took effect in Australia in March 2021, gives the government power to force internet firms such as Facebook owner Meta Platforms and Alphabet Inc’s Google to negotiate content supply deals with media outlets, if the parties fail to reach an agreement on payments.
Meta said the New Zealand bill ignored the realities of how its platforms work, their voluntary nature, the preferences of users and the free value it provided news outlets.