- "The amendments require the Treasurer to take into account whether the digital platforms have already struck commercial agreements with news publishers before passing further regulation to make the code formally apply to them"
- "In the event the Treasurer decides to enforce the code, the tech giants must be given one month’s notice"
- "Another change will add a two-month mediation period into the code to give the parties more time to broker agreements before they are forced to enter a binding final-offer arbitration process. This comes on top of the existing three-month negotiation period."
All of these amendments favour Facebook. It also buys them time. I guess we will have to wait and see after the 2 month mediation period is up who has the upper hand.
I guess the answer to who won, Facebook or the Australian government depends on what you consider a win here. I personally would consider Facebooks strike and the forcing of the Australian governments hand to pass legislation that didn't want to pass a win for Facebook.
Have you looked at the amendments? They are incredibly minor and don't change the basic operation of the law (i.e. to compel negotiations between Google/Facebook and news publishers). This is 100% face saving for Facebook. I would guess the original calculation re the black out was to gauge impact on other jurisdictions and when they saw/heard resolve tightening in Canada (who has a long history of imposing these sort of 'taxes' on middlemen)/UK/France/etc they blinked.
- "The amendments require the Treasurer to take into account whether the digital platforms have already struck commercial agreements with news publishers before passing further regulation to make the code formally apply to them"
- "In the event the Treasurer decides to enforce the code, the tech giants must be given one month’s notice"
- "Another change will add a two-month mediation period into the code to give the parties more time to broker agreements before they are forced to enter a binding final-offer arbitration process. This comes on top of the existing three-month negotiation period."
These changes don't seem like a loss to me.