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When the search engine giant Google threatens to no longer provide its services in a country, then things get serious.
The reason is a planned law by the Australian government that will oblige large digital platforms to negotiate license fees for the use of journalistic content with the respective media companies.
A payment would be safe: If the sides could not agree, an arbitration tribunal would have to determine the amount of the levy.
The law would primarily affect Google and Facebook.
It is true that the media benefit from the attention they get from the platforms.
On the other hand, they have not yet been able to monetize them sufficiently.
On the other hand, Google and Facebook skim off an overwhelmingly high share of digital advertising revenue worldwide and, in turn, benefit from the content.
This is not a fair deal, say media companies worldwide - and governments in a number of countries see it the same way.
In its directive on the reform of copyright law, the EU has also provided for a passage that provides for license payments for the use of journalistic content by search engines and aggregators.
A German implementation is still pending.
With its draft law, Australia is now so far that Google's Australia boss Mel Silva sees “no other realistic option” “except to make the Google search function in Australia no longer accessible”.
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The message is: If you don't play by our rules, we'll pull the plug.
Google has a share of over 90 percent in the Australian market for search engines (as in Germany).
Google's reaction shows that it is not about fair cooperation, but about conditions that you largely want to set yourself.
Sure, no company likes to be forced to negotiate - but the assertion that its own business foundation is destroyed by such mandatory licenses stages a drama that does not exist.
The “open Internet” is not threatened either - it is rather controlled by the large digital corporations, and the sales and profits generated have not yet been distributed fairly.
Committed to market power.
And anyone who uses them to blackmail an entire continent is acting irresponsibly.