Nick Clegg, head of global affairs, said in a statement that
the company stands ready to support news media while reiterating its concerns
over mandated payments.
"Facebook is more than willing to partner with news
publishers," Clegg said after Facebook restored news links as part of a
compromise with Australian officials.
"We absolutely recognize quality journalism is at the
heart of how open societies function -- informing and empowering citizens and
holding the powerful to account."
Facebook and Google have both devoted money to supporting
journalism in the past, citing its critical role in democracies.
Clegg defended the California titan in a blog post titled
"The Real Story of What Happened With News on Facebook in Australia."
The social media platform came under fire after it blanked
out the pages of media outlets for Australian users and blocked them from
sharing any news content, rather than submit to the proposed legislation.
Clegg contended in his post that at the heart of the
controversy is a misunderstanding about the relationship between Facebook and
news publishers.
News groups share their stories at the social network, or
make them available for Facebook users to share with features such as buttons
designed into websites, Clegg noted.
Facebook drove some 5.1 such "free referrals" to
Australian news publishers last year, worth an estimated 407 million Australian
dollars, according to Clegg.
"The assertions -- repeated widely in recent days --
that Facebook steals or takes original journalism for its own benefit always
were and remain false," Clegg said.
"We neither take nor ask for the content for which we
were being asked to pay a potentially exorbitant price."
'Erred' enforcement
Clegg said that to comply with the law as originally
proposed in Australia, "Facebook would have been forced to pay potentially
unlimited amounts of money to multi-national media conglomerates under an
arbitration system that deliberately misdescribes the relationship between
publishers and Facebook."
He maintained that in blacking out all news in the country,
"we erred on the side of over-enforcement" and acknowledged that
"some content was blocked inadvertently" before being restored.
After two decades of light-touch regulation, tech giants
such as Google and Facebook are coming under increased government scrutiny.
In Australia, regulators have zeroed in on their online
advertising dominance and its impact on struggling news media.
According to Australia's competition watchdog, for every
$100 spent on online advertising, Google captures $53, Facebook takes $28 and
the rest is shared among others.
To level the playing field, Australia wants Google and
Facebook to pay for using expensive-to-produce news content in their searches
and feeds.
"It is understandable that some media conglomerates see
Facebook as a potential source of money to make up for their losses, but does
that mean they should be able to demand a blank check?" Clegg asked
rhetorically.
"It's like forcing car makers to fund radio stations
because people might listen to them in the car -- and letting the stations set
the price."
World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee recently warned that
introducing the precedent of charging for links could open a Pandora's Box of
monetary claims that would break the internet. -AFP
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