Talks, protests and pontificating over, Australia set on news content law

Australia and the tech giants have been in a stand-off over the legislation widely seen as setting a global precedent. Talks between Australia and Facebook over the weekend yielded no breakthrough. “The bill as it stands … meets the right balance,” Simon Birmingham, Australia’s Minister for Finance, told Australian Broadcasting Corp Radio. The laws would give the government the right to appoint an arbitrator to set content licencing fees if private negotiations fail. Lobby group DIGI, which represents Facebook, Google and other online platforms like Twitter Inc, meanwhile said on Monday that its members had agreed to adopt an industry-wide code of practice to reduce the spread of misinformation online.