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Facebook has been blocking all news content in Australia since Thursday.
The tech giant from America is reacting to an attempt by the Australian government to give news producers a share of the platform's proceeds.
Canada is now on Australia's side: The country has sharply criticized Facebook's actions - and wants to pass laws similar to Australia.
The chief lawyer at Microsoft sees this in a similar way and thus opposes Facebook.
WORLD:
What is happening in Australia right now?
Brad Smith:
The Australian government has figured out a way to fix the imbalance between news publishers and big tech gatekeepers.
It does not invoke copyright or intellectual property, but rather addresses the core of the problem.
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First, news ends up on Big Tech's platforms, creating real benefits for those platforms.
At the same time, the use of these platforms undermines the traditional economic basis for independent journalism.
Second, it has created an imbalance in the bargaining position between the technology platforms and the independent news publishers.
And Australia has now asked for negotiations to take place.
These negotiations are intended to compensate publishers for the benefits the platforms are getting from the news - which is enforced by impending arbitration if both sides fail to reach an agreement.
This will likely force Google to sit down at the negotiating table and negotiate better deals with news publishers much faster.
Which is a very important development.
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WORLD:
What do you think of Facebook, which is now blocking journalistic content in Australia?
Smith:
An unfortunate move.
After all, there is also a platform that makes satisfactory deals, which is a far better way.
WORLD:
Some journalists call Facebook's approach "war".
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Smith:
A large corporation should never boycott a country.
Unless it's about serious human rights violations.
It is a mistake to do this because of a legal or legal dispute involving issues of economy or competition.
It was already a mistake that Google threatened to disable its search engine in Australia a few weeks ago.
Incidentally, it was also this Google decision that led Microsoft to take sides in the Australian debate.
Google's threat to leave Australia prompted Satya Nadella (Microsoft's CEO, editor's note) and me to contact Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
After Microsoft got behind Australian law, Google made a U-turn and said the company would stay in Australia after all - and they started negotiating those deals.
Which is why I'm surprised that Facebook is choosing a different route.
These markets need more competition.
Isolating individuals is certainly not the right answer.
WORLD:
How do you rate the actions of the Australian Prime Minister?
Smith:
Prime Minister Morrison has shown determination.
He said the government will push their law forward and pass it.
Since he said this at a time when Google was building up pressure, I have no doubts that he will remain steadfast in the future.
WORLD:
What do you expect from the new Biden administration and the EU in this conflict, which is to be understood as more global?
Smith:
I have good hope that the Biden administration will have policies that will remove the imbalance between search engines like Google and news publishers.
The Congress is currently working on laws that will enable publishers to join forces and negotiate together for this purpose - for which antitrust exceptions must be created.
Which is ultimately based on the Australian way.
I also believe that this is an important opportunity for the European Commission to address these issues.
After all, the starting point of the debate lay in Europe.
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WORLD:
Where exactly?
Smith:
In Germany.
Here the problem was addressed first, the first innovative regulations were created to take the needs of news publishers into account.
Which is why I am convinced that governments across Europe - and in Brussels - should study Australian legislation carefully.
The European Commission has the ability to address the imbalance and lack of competition in these markets.
The European Commission is already working on the Digital Markets Act, which focuses on the role of technology gatekeepers, which I believe is correct.
One of those technology gatekeepers is Google - and laws to address that are overdue.
What is striking is the connection between the imbalance that exists between search engines and news producers and the lack of competition in the entire search engine market.
WORLD:
And Microsoft?
Smith:
We have the opportunity to continue to work with news publishers and support independent media outlets.
We have done that in the past.
But if I have my way, we will do that to a greater extent in the future.
Microsoft News is a very healthy model with its revenue sharing for news publishers.
We've already shared more than a billion dollars with publishers, but we should take the opportunity to get fundamental.
How the tech sector finds a better way to support journalism.
We should also take this opportunity to invest more in search engines so that there is more competition in this market - especially in those countries where there is virtually no competition.
WORLD:
Do politicians lack the competence when it comes to tech platforms and digitization?
Smith:
No, in most parts of the world government officials who deal with technology issues are very familiar with technology.
It is exciting to see how several developments suddenly come together.
If you take a step back, you notice that decisive changes began years ago, even if they are currently related to current issues.
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Mathias Döpfner (CEO of Axel Springer SE, to which WELT AM SONNTAG also belongs, editor's note) and the German and French publishers play a decisive role, who recognized the imbalance between technology platforms and news publishers much earlier.
I don't know if Australia would have reacted in this way if it hadn't been for raising awareness of the problem in Europe.
It was a process that literally moved around the world;
People talk to each other and learn from each other.
What happened in the capital of the United States of America may also have played a role: what a disinformation campaign we saw in the United States.
Which has ensured that democracies around the world have once again realized that there cannot be a well-informed public without healthy, independent quality journalism.
WORLD:
Is journalism a central part of our concept of a liberal, western democracy?
Smith:
It is significant that in 1787 of all times, the year the US Constitution was written, a British MP rose and called the press the “fourth estate”.
What's more, what he specifically said was that this fourth power was ultimately even more important than the first three.
The more you study the history of democracy, the more you appreciate the fundamental importance of independent journalism.
The overdue shift in the relationship between technology platforms and journalism is not the all-important panacea.
But this change that we are seeing in Australia right now is relevant to the whole world - and will make democracies around the world healthier.
WORLD:
Microsoft has not always had the best relationships with people who develop apps or have even competed with Microsoft.
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Smith:
When you run a platform, you have a responsibility to the developers.
If you look at the changes Microsoft has made to Windows - mainly at the behest of the antitrust authorities - it is above all those changes that ensure access to this very platform on very open terms.
And information that ensures interoperability.
A healthy balance needs to be struck between the companies that run platforms and those that make apps.
In addition, there must be real competition everywhere.
And here we are currently seeing a real imbalance, with certain markets heavily monopolized.
WORLD:
Where exactly?
Smith:
Strongest on search engines, which have less competition than any technology on the planet.
And then there is the news section.
Messages are fundamentally different from other apps.
Journalism is part of the basic infrastructure of democracy.
We must maintain healthy democracies around the world - this is the first priority and healthy markets a second.
The two have to go together, but we finally need to realize that in 2021, the world's democracies will be challenged in ways that were not previously the case.
And we should include this as an explicit goal in competition law.
So no longer just protecting free competition, but also maintaining healthy democracies.
WORLD:
Facebook has already given publishers a share of the income.
Extremely right-wing publications have also benefited from this, which has resulted in enormous criticism.
How should Microsoft or a competitor decide what independent journalism is?
Smith:
How do you define independent professional journalism?
It makes sense to study Australian law because criteria were created there that are debatable.
Independence is defined as being a company that produces news itself - and not acting on behalf of another organization.
It doesn't matter whether it is a government, an interest group or a trade union.
I also think it's important to work with groups like Newsguard, who have put in place a system for assessing whether they are real, independent sources.
To get reliable news.
And regardless of political opinion, but with regard to their objective reporting.
There were always opinion pages in news publications, and the opinion pages were very different.
If you look at the history of democracy and journalism, look at the early United States: the country's politics were changing dramatically just at the beginning of the 19th century when suddenly there were 200 newspapers and many of them were very partisan.
But interestingly, they also did a better job then than what we see today.
By ensuring that the public had a discussion based on a common, verifiable framework of facts.
But with different, sometimes very harsh opinions.
Bradford Lee Smith was born in January 1962 to an engineer and grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin. He studied law at Princeton University, where he met his wife, Kathy, in Columbia and Geneva. In the mid-1980s he started at the major law firm Covington & Burling, and later became a partner there. He joined Microsoft in 1993. He was promoted to chief lawyer and in 2015 became president of the group. Among other things, Smith took care of improving data protection for customers. He is a member of several civil society organizations.
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Source: Welt am Sonntag