The argument should be, and is, about is it correct to “borrow” somebody else’s intellectual property and make money off it without paying the originator for doing so. In the music and movie businesses on the net that has been labelled “piracy”. Now appreciate that there is copyright in those cases which is not currently the situation with the news media; but maybe there should be - and that becomes the way to provide protection to all internet content which some group or person has put money into developing.
That would be a fair summation, except for 3 problems.
1. News itself puts links to most of it’s content onto FB and;
2. Most but not all of that content is pay-walled.
3. The only thing published, is whatever News et al have allowed to be published. There is no copyright infringement involved. The links redirect to the original publisher, ie: News...
Hence why there is such push-back on this issue. News is perfectly happy to use a free service to advertise itself and it’s product, but due to falling revenue is pushing for others who get no direct benefit from it, to pay them for this... FB usage in Australia hasn’t dropped since this decision of theirs, but web-traffic to News sites has, by up to 20% in some reckoning... So who is really losing out by this decision?
News wants FB to pay it, for putting links to it’s own content onto FB and has cajoled the Australian Government into going along with them. Hence why this is such a stupid decision by Morrisson et al.
Would it be fair, for you to start a blog, splash your written work all over facebook, freely accept the incoming traffic from Facebook without payment for FB’s services, and then demand Facebook pay you for people viewing that work that you have published on the net? Because when you get down to brass tacks, that is what News etc, want...
Edit: and here we are, mere days later seeing both Government and News organisations backtrack... Personally FB chose their path, but I think they could have handled this more cleverly. Simply announcing they would now be charging a fee for every news link, in Australia, being posted on their platform seems to me, would have achieved much the same effect as a news block... in any case, it seems a “deal” will be reached and FB threatening to bill news organisations for using it’s platform, will likely be a bargaining chip they aren‘t much keen on...
Facebook will walk back its block on Australian users sharing news on its site after the government agreed to make amendments to the proposed media bargaining laws that would force major tech giants to pay news outlets for their content.
www.abc.net.au