 Thank you, sir. Sir, is it possible to use the virtual backdrop that we have sent? No worries, we still have two minutes. Sorry, I saw that. Let me... I don't know if I can do that or not. Let me quickly see what I can do. How do we do that? I don't know how to do that. I always get my wife to help me. My apologies, you did send that and it was very clear. Where is it? I should... You're able to send it again? My apologies, my profound apologies. I'm much rather that than you looking at my business. If there's an issue, no problem. We can go like this as well. Well, I'd like to find it if I can. I haven't done it either, Rod. Yes, if you're not sitting in your bedroom. Sorry, sir. We can start now. We are going to all start. That's all right. We have another two minutes to go, one minute to go and we'll be live. Our audience has joined us. All right. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen in India and good evening to our esteemed participants in Australia. I would like to extend a warm welcome on behalf of exchange for media at this inaugural edition of E4M DNPA dialogues. The dialogues aim to encourage open and unconstrained discussions and provide a testing ground for ideas and new policy approaches. The event is being organized under the ages of digital news publishers Association of India, which is the DNPA, is being executed by exchange for media, India's largest publisher of online and print publications on advertising, media and marketing. DNPA represents the digital arms of the country's top media companies walking in the areas of print and television. During the course of this discussion, the participants will discuss issues involved in creating an ideal relationship between news publishers and big tech platforms in rebuilding the business of journalism. The discussion will cover the requirement of a new focus on solutions, ranging from direct dialogue to consensus on changes in the law. Australia has recently adopted news media and digital platforms mandatory bargaining code. It is a world-leading approach to compel digital platforms to pay news organization for use of their content. The code has so far facilitated about 200 million Australian dollars in payments from Google and Facebook to media businesses, both large and small. Today, we have an eclectic panel of speakers to discuss this important topic and I would like to introduce my speakers today. We have with us Professor Rodney Sims, ex-chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Mr. Tanmay Maheshwari, Managing Director, Amar Ujala. We have Mr. Pawan Agarwal, Deputy Managing Director, DBCOP Ltd. We have Emma McDonnell, Senior Policy Advisor at Mindshrew Foundation. We have Peter Lewis, Director of the Australia Institute. We have Paul Thomas, Managing Director, Star News Group, Private Limited. He may join us later as well, I can't seem to hear. And we have, of course, Dr. James Misei, Senior Lecturer at MIT University. He may also join us later. At this point, I would like to welcome Mr. Tanmay Maheshwari to deliver the welcome address. Before he comes in, I want to briefly talk about Mr. Maheshwari. He is the Managing Director of Amar Ujala Ltd. Amar Ujala is a 75-year-old business house with interest in publications, digital publishing, healthcare, and commercial printing. He's also the Chairman of Digital News Publishers Association, an honorary treasurer of Indian Newspaper Society. Mr. Maheshwari is an engineering graduate and is passionate about early-stage investing and closely works with startups to help them scale. He is also the co-founder of Segute Ventures and Early Start Investment Fund. I would request Mr. Maheshwari to come and share his thoughts. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Mr. Maheshwari. Yes, we can hear you. So, mostly thanks for taking our time to be a part of this DNPA roundtable. Before we talk about the roundtable, it's only fair to talk about DNPA, because I'm sure that some of you might be aware about it, and some of you might not be fully aware about it. So, DNPA is a purpose-led group of leading news organizations of India. We believe that access to write information is a fundamental right of every person, and as an organization, we are committed to building an ecosystem, where the organized digital news media industry not only shines, but also thrives. Each one of us, each one of our members, has a deep-rooted media legacy behind us, and we are committed to the highest standards of the journalistic rigor so that the people can make well-informed choices. We keep pace with both technological advances and policy interventions required to promote the health of the organized news media industry in India. We work closely, both with the tech platforms and the policymakers, to co-create the best possible solutions and outcomes. We also have a very strong view against the menace of fake news, and do whatever we can to fight against it. A strong digital news ecosystem is a fundamental element for the nation building. All of us have seen that what harm, fake news, and misinformation can cause to this entire ecosystem. During the past few months, DNPA has worked alongside with Ministry of Finance, Ministry of INB, Ministry of IT, TRY, and various other government bodies on a wide range of outcomes and subject matters which we feel would be instrumental in designing the future of digital media in India. DNPA also promotes awareness about the latest technological developments in this country. As an organization, DNPA promotes and encourages a growth of friendly relationship amongst the news ecosystem members. Our members include 17 prominent media companies of India. They are Dhanik Jagaran, Dhanik Bhaskar, Indian Express, Malayalam Manorma, Inadu Television, India Today Group, Times Group, Amarujala, Hindustan Times, Z Media, Anand Bazar, Pasarika Network, Lokmat, NDTV, New Indian Express, Matrabhoomi, Hindu, and Network 18. We live in a time when engaging debates are taking place regarding the fairness and transparency of the Big Tech. Globally, there is a noise everywhere. While we know that we have to coexist along with the Big Tech, we also cannot ignore some of the limitations which it causes in our ecosystem and that is how DNPA dialogues was born. DNPA dialogues are the first of its kind roundtable initiatives wherein we intend to get international experts who are ahead of the curve in this thing. Australia is one such example where some great work has been done in this field. Today is the opening dialogue and it will be followed by another dialogue on December 9th and then we also have a physical event in the month of January. The intent and the purpose of these dialogues is to create awareness about what is right and how things can be made better. So I thank all of you once again for taking your time and to be a part of this wonderful initiative. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Maheshwari for sharing your thoughts here and now I will request that we have Mr. Dr. Anurad Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of BW Business World and Exchange for Media to deliver the welcome address through this video. Good morning. It's a sunny morning on 25th November. Welcome to this DNPA conversation. This DNPA dialogues curated by Exchange for Media. DNPA, the Digital News Publishers Association is the largest body of the news publishers in the digital space. They reach out to combine humongous amount of readers, viewers, consumers in India and really I could say that they straddle both India and Bharat. They are read in urban cities, they are read in semi urban cities, they are read in rural cities. Between the members of the DNPA, pretty much 70-80% of the universe of readers, if not 90-100% is mapped really they are representative of what the digital news publishers in India are. These conversations have been carefully curated by DNPA and Exchange for Media to be able to create a roadmap for how the digital news publishers should move forward. What is happening in this space in its broad stakeholders, whether policy makers, academicians, publishers, digital evangelists, entrepreneurs, to be able to have a shared vision of the future, to be able to bring everyone to the same platform so that there is a shared future which factors in all the realities of what the readers, viewers, buyers and the digital news publishers have to engage together on. It's an excellent platform to be able to know what's happening in this space. Today on 25th November is the first date but you have this again on 8th December virtually and we have global leaders today joining in, we have global leaders joining on there and on 20th January 2023 in Delhi we have a hybrid physical plus virtual DNPA dialogue. So I'm sure today's deliberations will make you more aware of what's happening in the Indian digital news publishers ecosystem, what should be the way forward and bring all stakeholders to the platform to be able to put forward their views. We'll also learn from leaders in other parts of the world in terms of what their experiences have been, what did the governments do there, how did the policy enable, what are the mistakes we shouldn't make as policy makers, what is the right balance. So really we will learn from case studies. All right that was Dr. Anurad Patra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of BW Business World and Exchange for Media and now I would like to welcome Mr. Pawan Agarwal to deliver his opening remarks. Let me briefly introduce Mr. Agarwal. He's a Deputy Managing Director of DBCOP Ltd. Danak Bhaskar publishes newspapers in 12 states in India in Hindi and Gujarati. Mr. Agarwal was the President of the South Asia Board of the International News Media Association and the Chairman of DNPA until last year. I request Mr. Agarwal to share his thoughts. Thank you Royal and a very warm welcome. Good morning to everyone present here. Let me introduce our first keynote session speaker Mr. Rod Sims. Rod Sims is currently Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University and Chair, Steering Committee, Competition Research Policy Network at the Centre for Economic Policy Research London. From 2011 till 2022 for almost over a decade, he was the Chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Prior to this, in addition to many other senior roles, he was Principal Economic Advisor to Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawk from 1988 to 1990. We are all very excited to hear your perspective Rod and with this I hand over to you. Thank you very much. Can you hear me all right? Yes, okay. Thank you. We'll look first of all thanks for the DNPA for the invitation. It's just fantastic to be able to talk about the news media bargaining code to a wider international audience. I've done this actually now in Canada and the UK and the US. So I'm delighted, absolutely delighted to be able to share some of our experiences with people from India and in the DNPA. I do apologise for not getting the background up. That was completely my oversight and I think it's my loss more than yours because you're actually staring into my bedroom, which is very embarrassing. So I really wish I had got the background up. Anyway, let me talk a bit about the news media bargaining code and what it is, why it's there, what it achieved and then I'm happy to briefly answer some questions. So it's important firstly to understand that the news media bargaining code was recommended by the ACCC, which is the equivalent of your Competition Commission of India. But we would ask by government to do a review of digital platforms, news, advertising and other things. So when the government asks us to do that, that unlocks our ability to gather information compulsorily from companies. But most important, they're asking for recommendations from us. So this wasn't a ruling by the ACCC. This was a recommendation government and then government adopted what we recommended. So we weren't using our powers. This was government legislation, not not competition law. We started the study that the government asked us to do in late 2017. We reported in mid 2019. And by the end of 2019, the government had largely accepted, well, virtually all of our recommendations. We had a number of recommendations relating to media. We recommended the government fund regional and rural media that was a bit under threat. And they did that. We asked them to keep funding because one of the major ways government supports media in Australia is by funding the Australian Broadcasting Commission, as well as the special broadcasting service. And that is being done. And we also talked about tax exemption status for people donating to media. And that wasn't picked up. But I run through those just to show there was a suite of recommendations that we made relating to media. And one of those was the news media bargaining code, which the government did accept. So what we had seen in the course of our study, which caused us to recommend a news media bargaining code, was that Google and Facebook had massive market power. They were using the content of media businesses without paying for it. The media businesses tried to get payment, but they got nowhere. What we found was that Facebook and Google needed news media content on their platform. They desperately did, but they did not need the content of any one media entity. But on the other hand, each media entity needed to be on Google and Facebook for their survival. So Google and Facebook didn't need any particular media entity. So they could say, look, if you don't like our terms, go away. But each media entity needed to be on Google and Facebook. So that led, in our view, to an imbalance in bargaining power. We described that as a market failure, which we felt was important, obviously as economists. We can understand there's a lot of market failures in our economies. But this one really mattered because it was a market failure that was having a damaging effect on media, on journalism, and therefore on society. Because we certainly were very clear that journalism is fundamental to a well-functioning society. And so that's why this issue had to be addressed. And that was the logic we put forward to address it. And as I say, the government accepted the recommendation. Initially, the government suggested that there be a voluntary code that would attempt to see agreement between Google and Facebook on the one hand and the news media businesses on the other. Behind that was a threat that if the voluntary code didn't work, there might need to be stronger action. The negotiation started in very early January. By March, the government asked for the ACCC's view, how's it going? We gave the view to the government that we did not think these negotiations were going to achieve a financial outcome that we thought was in any way appropriate. That that wasn't a topic being much discussed. So in April, the government directed the ACCC to draft a code, a news media bargaining code. So we were given that task. We worked closely with the Department of Communications, the Minister for Communications, which Emma McDonald was then on the staff of, and also the Treasury Department. And we put out a draft code in July. That was for discussion, very much a draft. We put out on the basis of that discussion, another draft in November. And finally, the legislation was passed in February. As is probably well known, there was a lot of brinkmanship associated with the code getting legislated. Google said that if this code is legislated, they would withdraw search services from Australia. As soon as they did that, the Chief Executive of Microsoft was talking to our Prime Minister and said, don't worry about losing Google search. Bing can come to your country and provide a wonderful service. So that led to a bit of a, that didn't play out as Google expected. And they dropped that essentially back down. Facebook took a different approach. They just took all news off their Facebook site. I just woke up one morning to find that announcement. The problem for Facebook was they overplayed their hand. They not only took down all news, but they took down bushfire warnings when there was actually a bushfire going on in Western Australia. They took down medical warnings when there was a COVID crisis and other medical issues. And so this generated a big backlash against Facebook, people saying, well, we'll get off Facebook if this is the way they're going to treat us. So eventually Facebook backed down as well. But in the course of those threats and that action, that triggered final negotiations between the Treasurer of Australia and the Chief Executives of Alphabet and Facebook respectively, a range of changes to the legislation were made before it got passed. Most of them were not of great substance. I guess the one of most importance for us was the government agreed that if Facebook and Google went out and did deals with media businesses, then Facebook and Google would not be designated under the code. So with that, the code legislation was passed. It became law in February of 2021. But the code is law. It sits there. But in a sense to trigger the provisions I'll describe in a second, Facebook and Google needed to be designated. They didn't want to be designated simply because they didn't want the precedent. They wanted to be able to go to every country including yours and say, the code doesn't apply to us. We were never designated. That is a misrepresentation. To avoid designation, they went out and did a lot of deals with media businesses very quickly. So in a sense, the objective of the code was not to have the legislation take effect. It was not to have arbitration, which I'll come to in a second. It was not to see designation. The objective of the code was to get deals done between media businesses and Google and Facebook, and that's what happened. So the objective of the code was completely met. There's three key provisions of the code that matter. A whole lot of them really, but only three really matter. One is that there's provision for negotiation and arbitration. So the parties are required to negotiate. If negotiation doesn't work, there's provision for arbitration. Now, the point of that is that there is a bargaining power imbalance. So just having a requirement to negotiate does not achieve much, but having the ability to go to arbitration, that evens up the bargaining position between the parties because if you are a monopoly, Google is 95% of search in Australia. You can say, no, I'm not going to negotiate, but now we've got a cat joining the scene. But if Google knows that the media businesses have the ability to go to arbitration, to get an arbitrated outcome, then Google has every reason to negotiate, and they did. So arbitration was absolutely fundamental. So you have to negotiate, but there is compulsory arbitration. It was also final offer arbitration, where each side puts in their bid to the arbitrator, and the arbitrator selects one bid over the other. The purpose of that is to avoid ambit claims. I mean, if the arbitrator is meant to come up with their own view, then Google will offer nothing. The media business will ask for something ridiculous, and the arbitrator's left having to basically determine the outcome. We thought there just wasn't the information to do that. So we said final offer arbitration, which would force the parties together. And if somebody came up with a really stupid outlandish thing, that'd get ignored. And because neither party would want that to happen, you'd have sensible bids. So negotiate arbitrate was one characteristic. Secondly, this wasn't a must carry regime. That is, Google and Facebook were not required to do all this. But if they did a deal with one media business, they had to do a deal with them all. So it's up to them whether they wanted to have any news on Google search or Facebook. But if they did have one, they had to negotiate with everybody, and everybody had the right to go to arbitration in relation to that deal. So fundamental provision number two. And thirdly, the right to collectively bargain. Because there's a whole lot of little players who are too small, even with the ability to go to arbitration, they just don't have the fire power. And so they could get together and collectively bargain. So that's the essential provisions of the code. As I say, what the government conceded in response to Google and Facebook's various threats and actions was that, okay, we won't trigger all that if you go out and do deals. That was the compromise. And the good news from the government's point of view is they did. So the government achieved what it wanted to achieve, which must never be forgotten. The code has been successful. It got what it wanted to achieve. So in terms of outcomes, over $200 million per year, I think it's well over $200 million per year has been paid each year. Every single year, three, four, five year deals by Google and Facebook combined. Google eventually did deals with essentially all media businesses in Australia that could possibly be eligible. There's a bit of debate about one or two small ones, but basically they did deals with everybody. Facebook did deals with news media businesses that probably employ about 85% of Australian journalists. Maybe it's more than that. It's hard to get good data, but they did a deal with just about everybody, large, medium and small. I'm in Australia, has four large media businesses, has, I don't know, five, six, seven medium-sized businesses and has a large array of small ones. Google did a deal essentially with them all. Facebook did a deal with virtually all. So just to deal with a couple of the criticisms of the code, some have criticised the code because it doesn't solve all of journalism's problems. My response to that, it was never meant to. It was part of a suite of recommendations to help journalism. We believe there was a need for government grants to go to certain types of journalism. We believe there was a need to keep funding the ABC Australian Broadcasting Commission and the SBS and there are a range of other things. So it was meant to deal with that inability to bargain with Facebook and Google who were benefiting from journalistic content, but not paying for it. That's the only thing it was meant to deal with. Very, very narrow objective which was achieved. The second criticism, which is one being very much formented by Google and Facebook, was this only benefited the large players. That's just factually incorrect. It's just completely wrong. As I say, Google's done a deal with everybody. Facebook's done a deal with large, medium and small. I guess some of the small players who didn't have a deal with Facebook and a couple who think they should get a deal with Google but haven't. Controversial as to whether they should or shouldn't. They complain they've been left out, but really large, medium and small players have got deals and there's been a number of amounts, bits of collective bargaining. Country Press Australia represents the smallest newspapers in the country. I mean, some of these have got two or three journalists in small country towns. They got together. I mean, they were lucky they had an umbrella organization to begin with, but they got together and collectively bargained and got a very good deal. Indeed, I would say in my experience that the small players got considerably more money per journalist employed than the large players. Certainly, Country Press Australia got a very good deal. Then the other issue is transparency. People felt that the deal should have been made public. Sorry, some have alleged that the criticism of the deal should have been made public. My view is that's not right. All we're trying to do here, and this is the key point, was even up the bargaining position. Suppose Google didn't have a monopoly and you didn't have this bargaining imbalance. That have just done deals anyway. No one would have known what was in the deal. Companies are doing deals all the time and no one knows what's in them. Yes, this was facilitated by legislation, but just to even up the bargaining power, this is not government decreeing what the outcome is. Where I think the transparency argument has some merit is that the only people who know what the deals are is the ACCC. We know them all because we were in contact with all the media businesses, and so we're the ones, I'm no longer with the ACCC, of course, but we're the ones who know it was considerably more than $200 million. We know that to be true. I mean, we absolutely have the data, but it's all confidential data and that probably can be addressed. Just to finish up, the news media bargaining code is being replicated in Canada. Legislations before the House, the House of Parliament in Canada, it will likely get passed early middle of the year, 2023. It has one large improvement on the code, which is that, as it were, the governing body, which is actually the media regulator in Canada, will have all the information and publish it in broad terms. It won't publish deals, but it will publish in aggregate. It would then, in the Australian context, have given the ACCC the ability to aggregate the data and put it out there in a public way, which is a lot better than getting me along to tell you that it was over $200 million. I think the Canadian change is an improvement. The United States has legislation for its parliament. We're hoping it gets passed in the lame duck period, but we don't know. So, 50-50, they'll pass their legislation. It's very similar to the bargaining code. It has negotiate arbitrate. It has collective bargaining. What it does is only apply to media below a certain size, because the media above a certain size have already got deals with Facebook and Google. Facebook and Google went out and did those deals once they saw what was happening in Australia. The big guys got deals, the legislation in the US is for the smaller companies, and let's hope that passes. And then finally in the UK, they are also following the news media bargaining code approach. They're doing it through general legislation, which deals with a whole range of issues, including not just media. But the first thing they'll do when that legislation is passed, hopefully next year, is bring in a news media bargaining code. There needs to be legislation first, but then that will happen fairly quickly. I think it's extremely likely the legislation will be a news media bargaining code look-alike will occur in Canada, 50-50 in the US, and actually I'm fairly confident it will happen in the UK as well. So, my advice to India is copy the news media bargaining code, the legislation sitting there. You can also look at the Canada legislation if you want to see another variation of it. It's not a big variation. So, you've got models there that could be adopted quite quickly rather than having to rethink the whole thing again. So, that's all from me. I'm happy to take questions for a while. I'm conscious I'm a couple of minutes over, but very happy to take a couple of questions. Thank you very much, Rod. Very insightful You answered a lot of questions though. I'm very simplified. I have one question from our publishers of DNPA and publishers in India, which is our relationship is of divided rivalry with the platforms. We depend on each other. What do you think is a sweet spot in arriving at a happy equilibrium between the two? I think the only way it can happen is with a legislated arbitration regime. I hope I'm answering your question correctly. You won't get to a sweet spot without some element of compulsion because the platforms are too dominant. They've got too much market power. So, I think if you have the threat of arbitration there, so go negotiate, but the news media businesses have the ability to seek arbitration, then that sweet spot will be found. You won't, in my view, ever have to arbitrate. We never wanted arbitrated deals. We just wanted the threat of arbitration to force people to the bargaining table. So, I think you need to negotiate arbitrate regime. My view is you won't need to use it. That sweet spot will be found between the parties. And can I say the negotiations often took a long time, and this is why it's better that the parties do it rather than the government do it. If the news media businesses are negotiating, each news media business is slightly differently set up and constituted. They had different needs, different things to offer. So, the test, and all we were really checking with each news media business was, are you happy with the deal? And all of them said yes. Some of them said absolutely. They got a very good deal. And some of them said, look, it's a fair deal. We're okay with it. But some of the negotiations took a couple of months of intensive discussion. So, leave it to them, but give them the backup of arbitration so that they've got some bargaining power when they sit down with Google and Facebook. That makes a lot of sense. Tanmay, you want to ask the next question? Thanks a lot. Continuing with your thing that, as you said that arbitration is an end goal. But ideally, it is not used. But in India, we see both the big tech players offering a lot of side deals. So, they don't want it to go to that level where we have to negotiate with them and the government has to intervene. So, how do we really take care of that? Do we do deals with them and continue to work on a path? Or we should stay away from all the side deals which are there on the table right now? Yeah, good question. So, Google and Facebook did side deals with some parties very early. And I might have to shut that up. No, it's been shut up. Excellent. Sorry about that. Google and Facebook did side deals with some companies very early. Those companies that did deals early regret that they did that because they didn't get a very good deal. So, I think you can't be sure you're going to get an appropriate deal, an appropriate compensation for your content being used by Google and Facebook, unless you've got that legislated regime sitting in the background. So, that when you're negotiating, at the moment, if you're just doing a side deal, you've got no negotiating leverage. But if that legislation is in the background and they know you can go to arbitration, then I think that gives you leverage which gets a deal that you're comfortable with. Now, it is to be clear, it's hard to know what an appropriate payment is. All I know is that each of the Australian businesses were happy with the deals. Some did say, well, look, it was hard to know how much to ask for, and that's true because it's hard to know what the value is. But as I say, the smaller ones got more per journalist than the bigger ones. So, I think if there is that threat of arbitration, you really see what's on the table. If there's just side deals without any threats, you won't. And I think you'll get an inferior outcome. On that note, I also wanted to ask, since you said most organisations have got reasonable amount per journalist, do you see improvement in the quality of journalism and do you see that sustainable now in Australia? I mean, that was my next question. And is the government happy with that and the platform's happy with that outcome? No, look, thank you for that. I did overlook that in my presentation, so thank you for the question. So, journalists in Australia have told me and others, and you've got Emma and Peter coming along as well, that there's never been a better time to be a journalist. People teaching journalism say that their journalist students can easily get a job. So, there's been a lot of extra recruitment for journalists. The example that's a public one is the Guardian newspaper. It's obviously a British-based newspaper, but it's a digital-only paper in Australia. And it is increasing its staff from 100 to 150, essentially because of the money they got from the news media bargaining code. And they've made that public. The Australian Broadcasting Commission is using all the money for extra journalism as well. It's less clear with other media businesses. And I say that because you don't know whether they were going to, you know, whether they felt they'd be forced to cut journalists. And with the extra money they got, they didn't need to cut. So, you don't know what's incremental and what's not. But I think journalism academics and journalists themselves are saying there's never been a better time to be a journalist. So, I think you'd say if you, you know, the overwhelming view of journalists and news media businesses in Australia is that they're very happy with the outcome. I'd have to put it this way because the media businesses and the journalists are happy with the outcome. The government's happy with the outcome. Google have, I think, approached it in a very good spirit. And as I say, done deals with everybody. The most recent group, Emma McDonald, put together a collective bargaining group to gather in, as it were, the final group. And so Google, I mean, you'd have to speak to them, they'd rather, I mean, they'd rather say, I mean, they'd obviously rather not have been compelled, but they have, I think, done very well. Facebook have always been reluctant and complaining. So they would say the code's a terrible thing and a terrible outcome. So look, the platforms were, in a sense, forced into this. So you can't expect them to be that happy about the media businesses, journalism, government, extremely happy. Okay, we would also like to take a question from our audience. So, Rohel, you would like to ask that? Yeah, yeah, there's a question. I couldn't read the name of this person is not clear. But they want to say that, you know, what are the big learnings for Indian media from whatever is happening on the global front briefly, though you have answered it, but specifically if you could maybe sum it up for them. I think the lessons are that we have social media now, it is a dominant presence. But social media, Google, Facebook, others, and obviously Apple News is now growing. They don't produce journalism. They're not producing journalistic content. They need journalistic content. Society needs journalistic content. So we have to find a way of getting money for journalism and media businesses from the social media. And I think the news media bargaining code is a great way to do that. It's not the only thing governments need to do. I think the governments probably do need to support certain types of journalism. And there's other things in our recommendations. But I think working out a way forward with the big digital platforms is absolutely fundamental. And I think the news media bargaining code does that very well. Thank you, Professor Sims. And I could, you know, intently I was listening to what you said. And the fact that this is the great time to be a journalist is good for the government, for the journalists. I mean, that was profound. I hope it's the return of journalism. But thank you, gentlemen, for this wonderful conversation. And I would like to move and introduce to you one more question from our DNB. All right. And, you know, the question is, what about the future? You know, today we have two, three, we have a Facebook, we have Google. Tomorrow we have more platforms emerging. And, you know, of course, we had Dick Talk, which is not there in our country. But how's the future looking like? And what should we do for holding the future that we live for the next 10, 20 years? So the legislation allows the government, so legislation is the law in Australia. It has no sunset. It's just there. It has been reviewed by Treasury and they might make changes to it, but they'll only be proposing changes, which Parliament moment have to accept. But the legislation's there. The legislation allows the treasurer of Australia, or the finance minister, I guess, in an Indian context, to designate appropriate platforms. And the idea was Google and Facebook, when we did the work a couple of years ago, Apple News may be a candidate, TikTok may be a candidate. So the legislation is open to designating other platforms. So it's very flexible in that sense. I should add that the legislation was supported by all the three major party, political parties in Australia, and all the independence. So everybody supported it. That's no great surprise since all the media supported it. And that's one thing I think is really crucial. Media needs to talk as one and get behind something like this. In my country in Australia, if all the media supports something, it usually gets support from the government. And that's what we had, support from the government, support from the opposition, support from the green, support from the independence. So it has a lot of support. Now, when these deals run out in three, four years, five years time, obviously we'll then see what's happening. Facebook is trying to downgrade news on its platform. So that will be interesting. So I just think we need to rethink in a few years time, which platform should be covered. But the framework of the law sits there. That's the crucial thing. The legislation is there. Whether or not somebody is designated, they better do deals, otherwise they will be. So I think the crucial step is getting the law passed. Then it's the law of India. And it is there. And it will protect journalism going into the future, as I'm hoping that the news media bargaining code will in Australia. Thank you very much, Rod. Wonderful insight. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for the time. Thank you, gentlemen. Great discussion, of course. Never ending one, I mean needs, of course. And we're doing that series, precisely for the same reason. Thank you for joining us on this discussion. And moving on, I would now like to invite Emma McDonald and Peter Levis to take this discussion forward. I want to briefly introduce them. Emma has over 25 years of experience working as general counsel and in policy, regulatory and public affairs. She served as the senior policy advisor for the Australian Minister for Communications when the news media bargaining code became law. She was the head of public affairs at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and has held senior legal and business affairs roles at Australian and global media production companies. Through her most recent work at MindTrue Foundation is that she negotiated with Google collectively bargaining on behalf of 24 smaller Australian news outlets. And in May, this year secured agreements for all of the publishers. Thank you, Emma, for joining us. And we have Mr. Peter Levis. He's one of the Australia's leading public campaigners with more than two decades of experience in media politics and communications. As a principal of essential media, he has been behind some of Australia's most successful and innovative campaigns, including every Australian count for the NDIS and never alone of the Luke Betty Foundation. Thank you, Peter and Emma, over to you. Well, thank you to the DNPA for inviting us to speak today. It's a very kind of you. I guess I'll start, Pete, if you want, just to do a brief... Why don't you set the scene? In a way, what you guys have is a bit of an inside-outside team here. So at the time, Emma was working inside the Minister's office and I was working outside with civil society. So why don't we start talking about what was going on inside the government and why you think the move to take on the big tech platforms occurred with such gusto? Well, the first thing I would say is that I think governments for about the past 10 years or more in Australia had been aware of the digital disruption that the platforms had caused the media industry. And I had come from a media company, several media companies. So I'd seen it firsthand, sort of advertising revenue falling off of fiscal cliff and everyone going to Google and Facebook, partly because they had really easy technology that made advertising with them simpler than say with your traditional media companies. So the government and the regulators in Australia had been grappling with this problem for quite some time. They had tried to deal with it through various grant programs and funding schemes over that time and they'd written a lot of papers about the solution. But it was Rod's work, the ACCC's work that was commissioned by the government that really sort of triggered a different way of thinking about the problem because prior to that it had not been thought of as a competition policy problem. It had sometimes been considered through the copyright lens and then other times as just this big behemoth that nobody really knew how to deal with. So I think he tackled it from that perspective and by doing that work he did and identifying a bargaining power imbalance, he in the ACCC gave the government something completely different and something new and a way to deal with this problem that had never previously been thought of. So as Rod said, and I don't want to rehash what Rod said, it was an initial phase of a voluntary code proposed and I think everyone was optimistic that Google and Facebook would come to the table and work with the media companies. As Rod also said, it became quite apparent by about the March, April of 2020 when you may all recall we were at the start of the COVID pandemic, that sort of I guess shone a real light on the extent of the problem in the media sector. And when I was working in the Minister's office, a lot of the publishers were coming to us very concerned about what their future would be and how could we help them. At that point, as Rod said, we asked him how the progress was going with the voluntary codes, it was obvious it wasn't working, and that kind of triggered the introduction of the mandatory code and the process that Rod discussed that we went through. I guess I can just summarise quickly what it was like dealing with Google and Facebook while I was in government. It was tense, it was stressful, it was combative at times and they were very reluctant to come to the table and work with government. They said they were but it didn't feel that way to us at times. And what I would just reaffirm from what Rod said was super important was that there was bipartisanship and there was a collective will and willingness of the publishers to support what we were trying to achieve. And when media speaks with one voice, I'd seen it previously when I worked in a media company, when all the media companies come together and support legislation, it tends to lead to legislation being introduced. And we went through that very tricky phase when Facebook turned off news but the government actually held their nerve and proceeded with the legislation. And I think that the thing I would say to all countries, and I spoke to the Canadians about it and actually wrote recently about this, it's really important that governments hold their nerve when it gets to the really pointy end of negotiating the final stages of legislation. And my final point is that you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The legislation you end up with may not be absolutely perfect but if it delivers the outcome like the legislation did, then I think that's a good outcome and has done a straighter very well in terms of support for journalism. So thank you. Yeah, look, the other, I think there's three things for you to consider. The first is that this was not a proposal for a news media bargaining code alone. It was part of, as Rodine Emmerich said, a really substantial piece of public policy. If you download the report, it is not called the news media bargaining code report. It's called the digital platforms inquiry. It's about 600 pages long. So if you are struggling sleeping at night, you can definitely download it, but it's incredibly well written and incredibly thoroughly researched. It created the evidence base to make the key finding that when we talk about digital platforms, Facebook and Google, we are not talking about tech companies. We are talking about advertising monopolies and the finding on the advertising monopoly was the trigger for our competition regulator to pass a series of recommendations. I think, Emma, there's 27 recommendations in all of which the news media bargaining code was just one. Now, you guys all work in the media and you would know that if you were looking through 27 recommendations and one of them said, give more money to media companies, that's the one you'd like to get first cab off the rank as well. It was definitely that it got to the front of the queue for all politics that the media is very influential in Australia and one company in particular. But if it had just been a piece of policy sitting with the minister's office, there was organised opposition from both Google and Facebook who have got, Emma will tell you, teams of government relations people exerting whatever pressure they can. They were not going to give up this principle lightly because the proposition in Rod's report was to regulate at a national level the way that the platforms operate, which is just something they have never really counted as before. They push back at everything. The third thing I would say is that and I should say by background the Australia Institute is an independent, although politically progressive think tank and I run the centre for responsible technology, which is a satellite of that. And the role we often play by proposing policy but also working with government to deliver the last mile of reform, which is really about working with civil society to support government moving forward, particularly in the face of the sort of organised corporate negotiations, one word threats another that was being carried out by the big platform. So we were working with academics who had written on the issues and the power of big tech. We were working with activists who believe that the big tech platforms have too much power. And we were working with those groups to provide evidence input into the decision makers who would ultimately determine whether the laws would make their way through the parliament. And that was not uncontested. Obviously, a large tranche of civil society is suspicious of the media and didn't want to see more money particularly going into Rippit Murdoch's pocket and News Limited controls 70% of the Australian media. So they were clearly a major beneficiary of these laws. I think my view was that the challenge and the opportunity to get good regulation in place to limit the growing power of big tech was worth holding your nose for that. So we leaned in behind. I've never had such a good run in the media promoting a form of digital regulations I had with this one, I must say. And like the media used their power where they have got it to create part of that condition where there was an expectation of change. But it was very important because at the end of the day when Facebook closed down their services to Australia, as Rod said, they overreached. They closed a lot of other not just news sites. They were closing access to that platform to domestic violence services to the Weather Bureau during a time when the bushfires were just about to hit. So it was very important to hold public opinion behind the government taking on the platforms. Because as you would know, if a fight between big media and big tech, a lot of people will say, well, there's no good guy there. And a lot of people are more likely to be using their Facebook or their Google than they are to be consuming the media in these days. So ultimately, the fight was a political one. It was over control. Good policy, political bipartisanship, and some efforts to organise civil society around the proposals, I think all were the three sort of bases on which the successful laws got through. The last point I'd make is that this is not a cure all to the issues of big tech power. One of my disappointments has been that the media in Australia has not got behind some of the other proposals like privacy, law reform with the same fervour as they did behind the news media bargaining code. And the other thing is that because the negotiations, formal designation of the platforms never actually happened under the code. So there were good deals that were struck for media companies and through Emma's work with smaller media players. But ultimately, the regulation hasn't occurred. It's more a leverage in the marketplace to facilitate the deals that have given our media companies significant resources. So it's a complex picture. And I think it'll play out differently in every jurisdiction. But I would say that don't just think about these laws as a transaction. It requires that good policy and public outreach as well. I would agree with everything Peter just said. And I would really endorse the proposition that this is one lever that needs to be pulled. But it's not it's the start of the conversation about how you protect journalism long term. It's not the end. And I think that's really important that publishers think of it like that. And that governments also realise they've got a continuing role to play in supporting media, public interest media. And because as it's been pointed out, it's very important for democracy. So I guess Pete, are we happy to take questions? Yeah, sure. So thanks a lot, Peter and Emma. It was wonderful to hear your views. So the first thing we want to ask you is that, see, the playbook in which Australia played was the first of its kind. And Google and Facebook and the entire big type was not actually ready for it. Now, all of them know that what's coming their way. So what kind of backlash do you expect in all the places, including India, when it comes to the tea? Well, I think we've seen it play out already in Canada, the threats to shut down news services and Facebook news. Attempts, I think, by the platforms to garner the support of some groups of the media. So they've tried to do a kind of a divide and conquer thing with maybe small versus large publishers that may well be happening in India. I'm not close enough to what's going on, but I suspect that could be happening, certainly happening in Canada from what I've heard from people on the ground there. That's probably using their financial muscle to help small publishers, and also this disinformation that I've heard that they're saying that this kind of law will only help big publishers. It won't help small publishers. And we know that is not the case because of what we've seen in Australia. And as has been mentioned, the work I did with some small publishers, and I can see Paul Thomas is on for speaking later. He also was responsible for that through country press. So it is possible for small publishers to be beneficiaries under the legislation. But I think Google and Facebook, I suppose, understandably, are scared about that the replic the replication of the code beyond the shores of Australia. So they will be doing whatever they can to mitigate the costs and investment that they feel they have to make. Because we're a fairly small country. And so if they play it out and extrapolate what's happened in Australia and think about India, that would give them a moment to pause, I expect. Same with the US particularly. The only other thing I'd say on that is that, and you guys are all storytellers, the first rule of political campaigning is to go problem solution. And I think a critical part of building the momentum in our country for this was to, for the media to articulate the challenges they were under through falling revenues, the cannibalization of advertising markets, the fact that there were news deserts opening up across Australia where there was no media coverage whatsoever in terms of local papers anymore. So if it is just asking for a compensation, you've really got to also make the case for what you're being compensated for and how that is not about you, it's about the public interest. Thanks, Peter. Peter, I have a question for you. You, of course, are well-known columnists of Guardian Australia. We've read that a lot of news outlets in Australia have managed to increase staff's strengths, especially in the journalism, thanks to positive COVID impact of the code on their revenues. Guardian, we've read that has increased about 50% of their staff strength after the code. So is that a significant example for media organizations across the world, what are your views on that? Absolutely. I had a very interesting discussion with a senior journalist at one of our daily newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald. And what the code has done is not just released the pressure valve and had more people hide, but it's changed the way news is being covered. He said to me, because we now have staff, we're no longer trying to file two or three stories a day to fill up the pages. We're now filing two or three stories a week and we're running higher quality. We've got time to build a story. We're not just accepting media releases and re-topping them. We're actually doing our work again. And I thought that, I hadn't seen that because a lot of my work is working with organizations dealing with media. And I go, the journalists are so busy, just send them the whole story and they'll write it. And there's been a change in mood, at least in our major newspapers because they now have staff. Guardian Australia is rolling out statewide and local reporting, which we have not seen since it started up in the country 10 years ago. And I think, and Emma can speak more to the smaller players because she was central in securing their deals, but the shift of dynamic from worrying where the next cut's going to being able to plan how to actually deliver the purpose of the media, which is public interest journalism, has been the significant win, I think, of this code. Yeah, I think, as has been pointed out, there hasn't been any disclosure of specifics of where the funds went. And that's because of the existence of very tight non-disclosure agreements, that Facebook and Google or in my case, who I did a deal with Google, we were asked to sign, but it's the same situation for Facebook. I would also say, though, that some of the larger publishers are probably not that excited about sharing the details of their deals if they don't have to either. I think they view it as a commercial deal, as Rod described, and he obviously has views about not disclosing and that transparency isn't a missing piece, whereas in some other markets, they're starting to say that transparency should be much bigger because of the government intervention. I actually, I feel more on Rod's side, and I know it's not popular, but I don't think the transparency is that important. And if a media company has used some of the funds to pay down debt, that means that they are sustainable in future years, that doesn't bother me. That actually makes me feel happy that they won't fall over and they will continue to exist. So there might be some public outcry about people spending that money on paying down debt, but if that saves journalists' jobs, to me that's achieved an outcome as well. In the case of my small publishers, as I said, I'm not able to tell you anything specific about the deals they receive because I'm under restriction on disclosure agreement, but I can tell you that the funds they've received have been transformational to some of these businesses that they've been able to invest in their businesses. They've been able to invest in journalism. They've been able to invest in new equipment. And Google, I would reinforce what Rod Sim said earlier, Google were actually terrific to deal with. We did have a few bouts in the ring and rounds of debating what the publishers should receive, but after six months, we were able to secure funding for all 24 of the publishers in the group. They were all very satisfied with what they got and they're all putting the money they've received to good use. And I think that's a good outcome for them and they will all survive. And that to me is incredibly important as well. Thank you. Thank you, Emma. There's one question just related to that. It has come from our audience, come from J.D. Karadik. The question is that with this arbitration and a deal with big text, also in any way helped with the discrimination that they reportedly do in the algorithms. Yeah, one of the real sticking points in the negotiation was algorithmic transparency. I don't quite know where that ended up landing, Emma. I think it was something that the big tech companies managed to hold on to, was it? No, they do have to disclose major, look, I'm really happy to remember back to the legislation. So I may not be completely right about this, so don't take all my words, but I'm pretty sure that they're required to disclose with a certain number of weeks notice major algorithmic changes. But they did get that provision watered down in the legislation. That was one of the ones they were very concerned about because they saw that as their kind of secret herbs and spices that is integral to their business model. One more question from the audience from Mr. Rajkumar Varier. He's asked how to deal with non-transparency of collection made by Google and how do we arrive at a number which can be said to be satisfactory? What if even if it had gone for arbitration? It's so hard. This is the bit where Emma and I probably disagree in that I think because the government intervened to protect our media, there should be some transparency. So it could guide what the next round of negotiations might look like. My belief is that the platforms paid a premium to Australian media companies to close the thing down. And I think they hope that the rest of the world wouldn't be listening quite as hard as has been. Emma, we think the number Rod uses is about for Australia where we've got a population of about, I'm going to say 27, 28 million. 26 million. 26 million. And we believe it's something like 250 million per year. There are thereabouts for the media. We don't know. But so that's 10, $10 per citizen. You do the sums for India. And good luck with that. That would be a lot of revenue for all of us if you go as per the population base. Well, all the circulation base, I don't know. But because it's all commercial and confidence, it's very hard. And that was I think because if it had been designated and there was a dispute, there would have been that baseball arbitration where each side took their number and the ruling would be the most reasonable of those two numbers. And there would have been there would have been a benchmark. And you could this conversation shows why the platforms were so desperate not to have that embedded in the law. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm Ion Peter. And thank you very much for your time. And with this, we move on to our our next speaker of the day. So here, would you like to introduce Mr. Thomas? Thank you. Thank you for this wonderful conversation. And I also want to remind our speakers that we are receiving a lot of questions. And we will definitely make time towards the end of this today's deliberations and take the audience questions. There is a lot of synergy here, a lot of conversations and questions coming to us. Now moving on to our next speaker, I would now like to invite Mr. Paul Thomas, Managing Director of Star News Group to kindly join us. Paul is a fourth generation newspaper man, following in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great grandfather, what a legacy, who started the newspaper in 1894. In April 2020, the Morrison government directed the ACC to develop a mandatory code to address bargaining power imbalances between digital platforms and media companies. The draft news media bargaining code was published by the ACC in July of 2020. And interested parties were invited to make submissions regarding the proposed code. Paul put in hundreds of hours of time into representing country press Australia CPA. In the ACC inquiry, he worked tirelessly to ensure publishers were well represented in the proposed code. Thank you Paul for joining us. There's so much to expect from this conversation. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to the DNPA today and I hope the expectations aren't too high. I've been, as you mentioned, I've been involved in this since the very start, I think 2017, when the ACC was asked to look into it and have been through that entire journey up until the legislation enacted in March 2021 and obviously still ongoing through our current agreements that we've got with the platforms. And my involvement was primarily as a participant representing independent newspapers across the country through our newspaper association Country Press Australia. And Country Press Australia represents 190 member newspapers. Whilst our own group was one of the biggest group members of the association and still is, Country Press Australia represents a wide range of sizes of publications from mum and dad, small regional newspapers to groups with many newspapers, but most of our members are really quite small. And Country Press publications were at the core of really what the platforms inquiry in Australia represented. That is ensuring a strong local media continued to be sustained to enable public interest journalism would be continued to be provided to local communities, you know, holding the powerful to account and acting as a voice in a platform for informed public debate. The digital platforms had for many years used our content and preyed on our advertisers, yet at the same time didn't have the same accountability through legislation such as defamation laws. And given the size of our member newspapers, we had no power or influence over the platforms, obviously. The experience in Australia ensured this power balance was evened and it was only able to be achieved, I believe, by the ACCC's incredibly strong support and Rob Sims himself led that charge incredibly. And ultimately the recommendations to government which led to the legislation and the mandatory code. Now initially, as Rod and others have mentioned, the code was intended to be voluntary and some discussions at that point took place between publishers and the digital platforms, but the reality is there was no urgency and there was no commitment. And it was it was amazing the major change that took place once the government announced that the code would become mandatory and they indicated through a draft bill that the platforms would ultimately be forced to reach an outcome through arbitration, which has just been mentioned previously as well. Obviously, if it wasn't achieved through negotiations, as we all know now, the final legislation negotiated only once really Facebook removed news from the platform and also Google Threatened Flat of Australia for a period of time led to a slight softening of the approach and only required this arbitration process if a platform was designated. And this really did force the platforms to come to the table and negotiate an outcome with each of the publishers. And for me, I guess the key takeouts of what you need to do with digital platforms in environments such as India from the experiences that we have had is that you need to ensure governments do provide a legislative framework to force the digital platforms to the table, enable small publishers like ourselves and like Emma's group to work together as a collective to negotiate. In our case, it provided a much greater power balance, but also made it a lot easier for the platforms to work through a single point of contact. And if the platforms have to negotiate with, in our case in Australia, hundreds of publishers and in India's case, thousands of publishers, it becomes almost an impossible outcome or almost impossible for them to reach an outcome that really is going to be palatable for everyone in the end. Now, I think also need to ensure there's a clear definition of who should be included in any digital platforms code. And one of the things I think we've been concerned about in our industry is that the code such as this can be abused and platforms who are providing content but not providing public interest journalism have been included in negotiations for funds. An example of this in Australia is platforms providing things like restaurant reviews and information, but they're not or they don't have any commitment to public interest journalism or what someone in the federal government recently referred to as COPS courts and council. It's vital also that any form of requirement or legislation enables the platforms to enter commercial arrangements. They'll be far more receptive to an approach that allows them to negotiate an outcome that does not have the ramifications beyond their commitment to paying news providers. And like Emma and Rod, I think it's vitally important that any outcomes are treated confidentially. I think you get a better outcome in that way and certainly being an approach that we've been in favour of. We also took the approach of negotiation and compensation based on our contribution to public interest journalism and that is really to the heart of our business is really about the numbers of journalists that we employed. So right through the negotiations in terms of legislation, every submission that we did to the ACCC and we did then to government and then our negotiations with the platforms, we always based it on the numbers of journalists that we employed. It wasn't necessarily how the remuneration was ultimately developed at the digital platforms in, but it's certainly the way that we used it in terms of coming up with numbers in how we believe we should have been compensated. We based it all on the numbers of journalists that we had and we had our own number that we wanted to achieve with the digital platforms based on our per-journalist headcount essentially. And right at the moment, there's clearly some concerns that Facebook have made a number of public statements about their likely future removal of news which Rod Sims referred to a bit earlier as well and kind of leads us to the next stages of where we go to. And again, Rod Sims mentioned Apple news and others that are within this ecosystem essentially that we I think need to start to talk to and we need to start to talk about as an industry. But from my perspective, that's pretty much all I've got for the moment. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much Paul. I'll begin with a question and this is a quote from a statement that you made to Australian antitrust regulator. So in the letter to Australian competition and consumer commission, you wrote, the duopoly of Google and Facebook have had a profound impact on star news group over recent years impacting on revenue, profitability and company's ability to provide public interest journalism to local communities. What I wanted to know, where all did you feel the pinch the most and could you quantify the exact loss? Quantifying the exact loss would be very difficult. Probably the single biggest issue I think that Facebook and Google have had on local publishers has been their ability to control their advertising platforms and essentially control the prices that businesses pay in local environments. Facebook, unless you're selling the Facebook platform as a publisher, you can't place ads on Facebook. With Google, they essentially control the amount that people pay and obviously through things like Google AdSense, they control that advertising environment quite significantly as well. So the inability for a small local publisher or even a larger publisher to be able to monetize their digital business in an advertising environment has become almost impossible. Interesting. Tanmay, you want to ask the next question? Yeah. So thanks a lot, Paul, for the wonderful insights. So after all of it is done, so what does the future hold for you guys? Both on the brain side, Alvis, the digital side. So if I talk about the next three to five years, what do you think that? How is the business shaping up? What will be the type of journalism that you guys would do more? And what's the ultimate outcome? That's a good question. So in Australia, there's been a significant change. So our business and the industry group that I'm involved with is very much about regional and local journalism and newspapers. So we don't tend to cover national stories. We're very much about hyper-local journalism. And in Australia, that was quite controlled up until the pandemic hit in 2020. It was controlled by the likes of News Corp and Rupert Murdoch. And also, well, really at that time, I guess it was Fairfax morphing into another company now called Australian Community Media. So they're sort of two big companies in Australia that dominated in that sphere. And 2020 hit the pandemic hit. And there was a significant mass number of papers that were closed essentially overnight. And since then in Australia, there's been a really significant increase in startups that have been started by independent publishers. And it's interesting to see the real change in what's been provided to local communities now. They're getting, and it's partly because of the digital platforms, monies that's coming through. And we have had some other good government support in Australia. But independent papers now are producing in the same areas that the big players were producing papers. They're providing papers that are probably three or four times the size and three to four times the journalism that those big companies were providing. They don't do syndicated content by and large. And they put, as I said earlier, that sort of national type news in there. There's been a really big shift back to hyper local. I think local communities, because of those closures in Australia, have really seen what they were missing out on. And for a period of time, they didn't have a newspaper. And the whole fabric of that society started to fall apart. And so there's just been a really significant shift. And I think I'm excited by the future. I think there is obviously challenges in how we continue to monetize ourselves, ourselves across the different platforms. There is still significant difficulties in getting a model online that provides that sustainability. And that's why governments and that's why the digital platforms and others have to have to play a part in that. And I think the future will always now be that there has got to be those added mechanisms involved in that ongoing sustainability of the political media. Thank you very much, Paul. Very insightful and very happy to hear your perspective as a media man in Australia. Thank you very much for your input. Ruheil, should we move to the next speaker of our session? Yes, absolutely. All right. Let's move on to our next speaker. Do I am getting all requests for questions by all requests? Everyone who ever is there, please post your questions. We'll surely take them to our esteemed speakers. So we move on. Thank you so much for joining us. And James, Dr. James Mace is here. He is a senior lecturer at RMIT University and an associate investigator with the ARC Center of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society. His research interests include media and telecommunications policy, journalism, and intellectual property. He regularly publishes work in leading media and communication journals. Thank you so much, James. Over to you. Thank you so much, Ruheil, for having me. We are honored to speak at this roundtable. I thought I should start with disclosure that I've got research funding with meta of $19,000, which I think is probably good to note in this context. But it's with my colleague and I actually don't see or touch any of the money. I just do the work. So I just thought I'd start with that. So I'm not as connected as many of the other speakers here. I wasn't in the room, so to speak. I was more of an outsider. I did a lot of commentary in media and wrote a lot of academic papers. And what I wanted to touch on is just three things. I wanted to reflect on the Australian experience, but also talk about some of the improvements that you're no doubt perhaps aware of in terms of the online news acting Canada. I'll talk about where that kind of policy journey is heading. I also want to raise the prospect of the potential of simpler options than the quite convoluted arbitration mechanisms that we've seen become internationally popular. And of course, you know, people are free to ignore my ideas. And I thought I'd end up with some suggestions for the limitations if we decide to move forward with the more complex kind of legislation that's been popular in Australia and Canada today. So in terms of the Australian experience, you know, we know it's not a link tax. It won't break the internet. And we know we've heard it's given a lot of money to journalism in Australia. But I might think I'd agree with Betty here that the code is still quite opaque. We don't know how much deals are. And I think it's first iteration perhaps and barely just happened at Facebook and Google search, which I think was a bit too narrow. Of course, I recognise it was the first time anybody did this in a very complex political environment. I think we've seen real improvements from the Canadian experience and even the maturations of the Australian reforms. So I think as India starts to consider this reform, I think there's already an opportunity, as others have noted, to look at subsidiaries like Instagram or YouTube, but also consider Apple News and other platforms. We know Meta's moving away from news. We know Twitter is collapsing every week. So I think there's real scope as these reforms are implemented in other countries to keep that question of which platforms should be in the room quite, quite open. I also just wanted to briefly touch on the ministerial designation mechanism of the agency led, which is what seems noted, Professor Sims noted was the treasurer or he would be the finance minister. I do find this somewhat arbitrary, even with the wonderful input from the agency. You know, I think Canada has kept it quite cleanly with the platforms having to contact the communications regulator by a certain time period. It's slightly cleaner. It ensures clear lines between the regulator and the affected parties. I think a really great example of this is the algorithmic transparency which Emma and Peter discussed earlier. Algorithmic transparency only happens under designation. Since no platforms are designated, there is no need to provide algorithmic transparency. I realize that's not the core outcome of this discussion. We're interested in the money, but I think it does say something about ensuring those three lines between the regulator and the parties under effect. I think the wonderful work of Emma at Minderu kind of speaks to a really critical part of implementation, which Paul also spoke to that there can be a lack of capacity for small publications to secure a deal without support. Many of these publications were struggling for some time without the wonderful work of Minderu grandation. I think it's really critical in implementation to think about small publisher capacity, as Paul mentioned, building those structures around collective bargaining. This is less about the kind of mechanics of the bill, but really about that implementation piece. I'm afraid I have to agree to Peter here, though, about the question of the opaque nature of the bill. As many people have noted, the velvet of news is still unclear. Even the leader Professor Sims could construct $200 million on the back of an envelope. Media businesses may be happy, but it's still an unanswerable problem. I may be betraying my academic leanings here, but I'm really fascinated in the velvet of news. It would be great to know what that number is. I think Canada has taken a really good step here with the requirement of an annual independent auditor to actually audit these payments. Our review in Australia, as far as I understand, is just on the initial success of the law, but I think we do need a watching brief on these. I don't necessarily think these deals need to be public, but I think this is a significant intervention by government. And if government and relevant policy makers get an understanding of these deals, what the overall funding space for major environment is, and actually helps us answer this question about what is the value of news, I think that's a really beneficial outcome. Moving on to public interest journalism, I agree with Emma. I think we can't force this money to go into shoe leather. Paying down debt is absolutely reasonable. But I do think it is a core logical bill, and I do take full point that we need to address the kind in which the actual public interest journalism is supported, that news media outlets are not just taking this and are running with it. And I note quite positively of the commitments of some outlets to actually tell their readers, not in detail, but broadly what they're doing with this revenue, this new revenue stream, which I think is really positive. So even now, Australians try to really frame it as a mark of the floor, and Professor Sims obviously noted that. But I think the more I think about this intervention, the more I think this is really about government journalism working quite closely to secure its future. The Canadian legislation is quite didactic, criteria based even more so than the Australian legislation and really sets clear terms for engagement for these parties. So in a way that leads me to talk about the quite complex nature of these early iterations, noting the designation, not having algorithmic transparency and so on, the complexities of market management, trying to secure support from personal publishers to get deals through. You know, this is mentioned in a recent international Institute of Communications conference in Ottawa and shared by my colleague, Professor Derek Wilding, a really rich discussion again about platform levies or taxes. A simpler fund to achieve the same goals. Obviously, there's disquiet about even at arms length, having government involvement in media, but I think I'd argue governments already in the room have made a significant intervention in this relationship already. There's existing kind of history in Australia. So we already levied private telecommunications providers to ensure positive social outcomes by funding a consumer advocacy body. So I think they are kind of backgrounds that could help us understand how to inject a levy in a way that provides perhaps a clearer criteria based approach. But obviously, if we move ahead, I think Canada, the legislation that has still has some much perhaps stronger, slightly stronger criteria than what's in the books in Australia. You know, I think just to throw us better in the works, I did just want to raise the question of do we want platforms to fund news? We know that digital platforms, it's transient. We know that they're not always with news from a long call, you know, Twitter's falling over, Twitter's trying to walk away. You know, how much do we actually want to tie these industries together through payments? I've tried to be practical in this talk. I recognize this is where the international conversation is, but I always think it's worth raising this question. We know that some media will really reliant on social traffic, you know, how much are we going to be reliant on platform funding? And I do take Paul's point and I really agree with him that I think, you know, whatever happens in terms of platform repayments, I think digital advertising reform is perhaps the more critical area where ensuring that that opaque space of whether it's Google's dominance or third party advertiser providers is really where a lot of loosening of revenue and securing that revenue could be really beneficial. So I'll just end, presuming we don't want the levy, presuming you don't want to listen to me about digital advertising reform with some nuts and bolts implementation. I think, like many speakers have said, ensuring that any reform is agile and responsive, I think that criteria based legislation is critical. I really think it's critical that spending from the reformers reviewed regularly. And I think this isn't just about, you know, government or public, but it's about trust. We know that there's a kind of trust deficit and media is always needing and increasingly needing to build trusted audience and citizens in a populist environment. I think spending commitments basically around these kind of spending commitments are just, if possible, a really great way to show that commitment to the public interest. In terms of transparency of deals, I think, you know, Canada has really provided the policy arm and I think the kind of policy language to provide that transparency at least to a governmental level. And just to finish, I think, despite all that practical advice, I think it's still worthwhile reflecting on the problem of platform dependency and how and where the news media decides strategically to make itself dependent on platforms in whichever way it chooses to do so. So, you know, I think it's really not just about as everybody in this room knows about that opportunity to get the money, but a story of how do we secure investment in journalism while we're paying the trust back to both government who's progressed this intervention, but also the citizens who are doing this for in the first place. So, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, James. And may you want to ask first question to James and then we can move to the audience questions. Thank you, James, you know, for the wonderful insights you have given us. I couldn't, you know, agree more that trust is the ultimate thing and as a media organization, that's what all of us should ultimately be striving for. It's wonderful to hear your views. Can you elaborate a little bit more on deals and their dependencies because you have a very clear view that the Canadian view is a much better view than the Australian view. But a lot of deals are one-to-one deals. A lot of deals you never put out in public domain because it's an arrangement between two independent players. So, why do you feel that each and every deal should be made out public and it should be out in the open? Yeah, thanks for that great question. It's a really important one. I might not have been clear, but I don't actually support the public disclosure of those deals. I think they are quite sensitive documents, but I think what Canada has already kind of started to think about doing is requiring more information from both parties, so actually ordering these processes. And I think that's, you know, I must admit I'm not afraid of the deep details of the Canadian experience, but, you know, the kind of details that they're asking for are total commercial value of these deals, the distribution of commercial value across these deals, and the effect of these agreements, right? So I think, you know, just by securing a little bit more, not too much, but a little bit more than that top line figure of $200 million, which, you know, Rod Simpson himself admits as a guesstimate. I'm sure a very good guesstimate. I'm sure Rod is across all of that, but he's not privy to those deals. Because we need to know this is working, I think, you know, from my perspective, this is a really innovative and really fantastic legislation. Obviously, we're seeing some really great benefits, but I still view this and perhaps more than other people as quite a dynamic space. You know, I'm not sure how much platforms are going to be in with news for the long run. Google, sure, I think so, but others maybe will come and go. And I think we really need a close eye from policymakers around how is this working and really how is this affecting the market. The government is intervening in quite a significant way here. And we need to ensure that that intervention is done sensibly and carefully. So, you know, I don't want the deals on the front page of every paper, but to the extent they can be provided to the responsible people in government, I think that could be a step forward. Okay. Link to that question. Do you think there's any practical way in which the Big Tech could be encouraged or incentivized to share due revenues with news organization? And is that something that should be explored? So, share what revenues? Revenues with news organizations. Well, I think really this is probably it, to be honest. I think, you know, in terms of new ways, I wouldn't so much as suggest that I would know better than some of the wonderful and intelligent people that have devised these reforms, which are quite complex. And I don't necessarily see that the tech industries, and I'm not criticizing them here, but I think they legitimately don't see that they have a business commitment to news. And beyond that, it's a positive social outcome, and everybody should support news. We've seen publicly, many of these outlets don't platform, sorry, don't necessarily see journalism as something tied to their business. Based on the Australian experience, I think Google is the most likely candidate because they provide information, and they're even the way their search results are set up, and it's reliance and use as a source of data is the kind of platform most likely to be open to future revenues sharing. I think conversely, on the other hand, the other way to secure revenues, I think, is to actually, you know, it's going to be more challenging. It's going to be tackling that digital advertising piece, which is, you know, in the same way, opposition to Google. So, you know, Google has an interest in news because of its traded information, but by the same token, you know, it's good on one hand, but on the other, it's also the villain in many ways. And the platform, that's capturing much of that revenue, as Paul mentioned, and I think, you know, we've seen the competition markets authority in the UK, and the HLC here is doing fantastic work on the structuring of the digital advertising market. And I think reforms in that area, you know, I'm optimistic, obviously, but could potentially pull back some of that revenue into public interest journalism or journalism more generally. Thank you very much, James. And Rohail, should we open it to? Absolutely. Waiting for it. I am getting a lot of requests. When are we starting these questions? So, we've filtered some now because there were so many of them. So, what Rod said earlier, you know, that bargaining, I first request everyone to switch on the cameras so that, you know, we can have these answers. You know, what Rod said earlier was that bargaining would succeed only if there is a legislative pressure. A similar view is being echoed by other panelists as well during the course of the discussion. It would be interesting to know who do you think should drive the legislation in India? There's a question, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, which manages competition regulator, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which kind of regulates content in India and manages media in some way. All electronics and IT, which has some regulation matters on big tech companies. Who should build the cat? Well, it depends how you set up the problem you're trying to solve. I don't know quite the demarcations in your departments, but I do think that the initial report into monopoly power of the tech platforms through a competition frame was a very effective way of amplifying the key proposition that the platforms had too much power. I would be concerned if it was purely a media play, it would be interpreted in a different way. But again, it's got to be that partnership between the good policy work, the right political will and then engagement with the broader public. Can I just add something? The way it was done in Australia was it was managed out of the treasurer's office primarily because he's responsible for competition policy, but he worked very closely with the Minister for Communications because the Minister for Stakeholders. It needs to be both because I spoke to Paul a lot when I was working in the Minister's office. I don't know if you can hear me, it's saying my internet's unstable, but I dealt with Paul and lots of other media companies. We were hearing about all the problems so we could feed into the discussion about looking for the solutions after hearing so many stories about what was going on in the media sector. The treasurer's office was hearing from them too, but we were the primary place where they would come to talk about policy issues relating to the industry. The question is how can the interests of smaller media houses and big media houses, who are often competing, be brought together on matters concerning big tech? Well, they can be brought together because I think it's sort of being covered off. I think this is what you're getting at. The big media companies can look after themselves. They are in a position to negotiate and secure deals largely. The smaller companies absolutely need the collective bargaining mechanism. Without that in the legislation, smaller publishers would not have achieved the outcomes that they have. So I guess if they come together, the big publishers need to stand with the smaller publishers and acknowledge that collective bargaining must be included in any legislative sort of proposal that comes out of the government. That's absolutely critical. James, a question for you. What is the road ahead for Indian publishers in terms of getting their fair share of revenues from tech companies displaying the news they publish? Well, I think that presuming that premise, I think this is kind of the best way. Well, there's two roads ahead, really. There's the EU road, which is premised on copyright law, and that is ancillary copyright, which we're all familiar with. I think we saw that that has been... There was some subsequent success in France after some long period through the TSM, but even that ended up in the competition law course and was premised around competition law. So I think we're really noting them as points about the need to include communications regulators and competition regulators. That's a critical point. I think we're starting to see the growth of the competition focus as an initial base for securing that revenue. It's quite notable to all that Canada has picked this up quite strongly. I don't really want to comment or presume to know what would work best for India, but in terms of what seems to be the most successful way to take, I think it's really notable that from 2005 onwards, we had this long battle to try and get any sort of money from platforms. Copy, Press and Belgium didn't do so well. They just constantly pulled traffic, etc. So regardless of my minor criticism of the code and everything else, it's a massive achievement to get any money out of these platforms. So I think that's a real signal that if people believe the premise that platforms are taking revenue and it should go to news, then competition law is probably the way to at least start in conversation with your communication regulator and other key stakeholders. That's right. Final question Paul, and the question is how important is it for news media businesses around the world to coordinate and collaborate to ensure their rights and interests are protected when it comes to striking big deals with, of course, big tech companies? I think collaboration is vitally important. Our experience in Australia was that once the legislation was enacted, there really was a situation where the platforms then tried to pick everybody off individually. And what we did in Country Press Australia is we constantly tried to bring everyone back together. We ended up out of our 190 newspapers. There was only one publisher that decided to do their own deal and they did it only with Google. Every publisher stayed with Facebook and that I think was a representation of the fact that I think that publisher realised it was a mistake that they went early. They did that because they were fearful they'd miss out. So I think you've got to hold your nerve. I think you've got to stick together. You've got to collaborate and make sure that people understand the importance of being able to have that stronger voice and be more powerful as a joint entity, essentially. And it's similarly across I think the world. Since then, we've had organisations like yours reach out across a whole range of different countries to learn from our experiences. And I think it's really important that we as an industry internationally continue to talk and work through solutions, not only through the digital platforms, but I think in a whole range of different challenges that are coming up for news media businesses. Right. Thank you very much. Sorry, before I had just a request, this is a question from Mr Puneet Jain. I just want to quickly add this question and then we move on to the other part. So the question is for Emma. Apart from need of bargaining code to address economic imbalances, which could be areas where platforms and publishers need to engage closely? How do publishers work with platforms on areas like its user data, which is currently only leveraged by platforms? Wow, I might not be the right person to answer this question. I know that they are working in Australia with their partnering up with universities. James mentioned grants to academics, etc. They're also offering other grants, other grant programs exist in the market to support journalism. So they can work together in that respect. Google and Facebook both do workshops and other things in regional communities to try and support regional publishers and they do skill development programs. So there are those things. I'm sure they've also offered them to lots of you guys in India as well. In a way, they do that to try and avoid having to go the next step and enter an agreement. I haven't really answered that question because I'm not really across the sort of technical issues of how publishers interact with the platforms in relation to their ad tech. So I speak to that. But I'm just going to finish by saying I completely agree with James that there is an issue about dependency on the platforms. And I think that that is I think that's really important to point out. And it's got to be that's why I said right at the beginning that this is the start of the conversation, not the end. Somebody else might want to jump in. Thank you. I like that, Emma, when you said the start of the conversation and not the end. The only other point I'd make is that while the media companies were very, very enthusiastic about the news media bargaining code, they are not showing the same enthusiasm for privacy reform, which is another key recommendation of Rod's original report. And one of the insights is that over the time that this process has been rolling out, a number of them are starting to imagine themselves more as digital platforms themselves and trying to seek and share integrated data. News limited, for instance, has a real estate play that can be feeding into data being collected about users of their news sites. And we're really concerned that if at the end of the day, we just have a bunch of media companies that look more like digital platforms that exist to extract data to monetize that we probably haven't gone where we wanted to go with this process. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I think it was a great conversation and would like to thank all our speakers today for sharing the deep insights and also the way forward for building relationships with the platforms to find a way to work together and save journalism. I think the most important key words that I heard from all of you is to be able to save journalism because ultimately publishers are in journalism to serve the society and give right information and right knowledge to our millions and billions of our readers and viewers. And with that commitment, I think let's let's hope for a much better future for all of us in the publishing business in a commitment to our readers and viewers. Thank you very much, Emma. Thank you very much, Peter, James, Paul, Rod for being here. And thank you very much for wonderful audiences to join us on a Friday morning for this session. Very, very thankful to you and I hope it added value to all of you from DNPA. On behalf of DNPA, thank you and all our members. Thank you very much. A big thank you to all of you. Thank you very much. And thank you very much to Exchange for Media for bringing this together. They brought this whole thing together. Thank you very much to the entire Exchange for Media team. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Bye. See you.