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UK ‘using every opportunity to have an international dialogue about Big Tech regulation’

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The UK is using “every opportunity to have an international dialogue” with other countries about how to regulate Big Tech, the Government has insisted, as Australia’s news media bargaining code forcing digital platforms to pay for news content passed into law on Thursday.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden met with his counterpart in Australia on Thursday morning and recently met with his equivalent in Canada, one of the countries that have expressed interest in following Australia’s example, Baroness Barran, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), told the House of Lords.

“The Secretary of State has been very clear about his concerns about Australian news being removed by Facebook, and the importance of authoritative news services has also been absolutely clear, particularly during the pandemic, and the huge part that they have played,” she said.

“The Government is using every opportunity to have international dialogue with our European neighbours, but also this morning the Secretary of State met with his counterpart in Australia and he recently said he’d met with his counterpart in Canada, so we are working in the most collaborative way possible.”

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and  Communications Minister Paul Fletcher have been leading discussions around the code in their country, while Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault has been the public face of the country’s efforts to implement its own media code.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said last week that world leaders from Britain, Canada, India and France had expressed admiration and support for the its code, adding there was a “lot of world interest”.

Facebook and the Australian government announced they had reached a compromise earlier in the week that saw the social network agree to restore news links to its platform after blocking them in protest against the then-forthcoming law.

Australia agreed to four changes to the code, including taking into account whether a digital platform had made a “significant contribution to the sustainability of the Australian news industry” and allowing tech firms an extended two month mediation period to thrash out deals with news organisations before the arbitrator intervenes.

Baroness Barran said the Government was committed to supporting the sustainability of trusted journalism, and that it was engaging with the Australian government to “develop our understanding of the progress they are making and are closely monitoring the reaction from both publishers and platforms”.

“We’ve announced plans to introduce a new code of conduct to govern the relationship between dominant online platforms and the different groups of users which depend on them, including news publishers,” she said.

The forthcoming Digital Markets Unit, a new part of the Competition and Markets Authority which will come into force from April, is designed to ensure fair competition, both for publishers and more widely for other sectors, she said, adding that the Government remained committed to allowing everyone to “access all authoritative information easily and freely.”

Baroness Barran denied the Government was dragging its heels over passing legislation addressing Big Tech’s market dominance and access to data and digital advertising, adding there was a “number of interlocking issues” the Digital Markets Unit would seek to address.

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