Author: Rod Sims, Professor in the practice of public policy and antitrust, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Meta’s announcement nearly eight months ago that it would no longer do commercial deals under the News Media Bargaining Code has led to much speculation as to how the government would respond. The code became law in 2021. Facing the threat of designation under it – which would involve further legal obligations platforms may wish to avoid – both Google and Facebook (now Meta) did deals with news media businesses worth up to A$250 million per year. Google did deals with essentially all qualifying news media business, large and small – the criteria largely being that their journalists provide news.…