Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chairman (ACCC) Rod Sims said proposed laws that will make Australia the first country in the world to force Google and Facebook to pay for news were fair and critical for the survival of the media industry, reported Reuters.
Sims said he was surprised to hear criticisms from Google about the draft legislation unveiled by the Australian government earlier this month.
Google last week declared the code unworkable, citing in particular a requirement to provide publishers with two weeks’ notice of certain changes to algorithms and internal practice.
“We thought they were comfortable with that … so we were very surprised that they’re still complaining about that,” Sims said in an interview on Monday, December 21, for Reuters.
