The ABC is government funded: https://www.abc.net.au/

And SBS is partially government funded: https://www.sbs.com.au

But it's not enough to have just two news organisations.

If the number of organizations is the concern, the government could fund a larger number of organizations. This doesn't seem fatal to the option I proposed.

Or the government could just make Google pay for what it uses. It's simpler and more direct.

Haha, no it is not. Taxing a specific organization for a specific policy purpose is much more complicated than paying for that policy purpose out of the general fund and paying for it with general taxation.

To see the truth of my claim, consider what's going to happen if Google declines to "use" the Australian news media after this law is passed. I doubt any serious person believes this will be helpful to the news media's bottom line. So you'll have an even more serious problem for news media revenue, and also the search engine most people use will be doing a worse job of helping people get the information they're looking for. All because the government chose a complex policy solution to a simple policy problem. (At least, the problem as stated is simple. I suspect the actual problem the government is trying to solve is a little different than what is publicly claimed.)

Of course it is. Industry specific regulation exists for all industries. This is nothing new.

Why do you believe that everyone else must pay Google's costs? Why do you think Google shouldn't pay its own way? It's a bizarre position to take.

I am not clear on what you're talking about when you discuss "paying Google's costs." It doesn't "cost" Google anything to link to a news article. And it doesn't "cost" a news media company anything to be linked to. "Everyone" is not paying Google's costs in any of the scenarios we're discussing.

Google profits from the content. Google must pay for it. We're not talking about just linking to articles. We are talking about people's news reading being entirely mediated through Google.

It's disappointing that you've failed to understand the issues. Read more:

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-...

If Google removes all news links from their services (assuming that would allow them to avoid this tax), and remains profitable in Aus, please remember to update your beliefs on this subject. I will do the same if Google's removal of news links causes a material decline in profitability or allows for the creation of a profitable upstart that deals with the Aus news media on these terms.

You're still not getting it. It's not about if Google is profitable or not. That's beside the point.

There's not much I can do for you anymore. It's up to you now.

In the comment I was replying to, your first sentence was "Google profits from the content." How then is it not about whether Google is profitable or not? I am contradicting your assertion that Google profits materially from this content. If Google removes the content and remains profitable, that strikes directly at your claim that Google profits from the content. It's not beside the point. It is exactly responsive to what you wrote. Maybe that is not the point you were trying to make, but IMO that is an issue with what wrote, not my understanding of it. The language you used was about profits, plain as day.

> In the comment I was replying to, your first sentence was "Google profits from the content."

Which is not the same as "Google is profitable."

Good grief. This is about making sure journalism survives. Google bleeding it dry doesn't help it survive.

Thank goodness you've given up because your points were so incoherent that it was borderline spam.

It seems incoherent to you because you haven't understood the issue. You haven't understood the issue because you're only listening to what Google tells you. Google wants you to have that narrow perspective because it makes you exploitable and that's good for Google's business.

Google is making sense here. The evils they are fighting against helps doubleclick. See Google plus (G+) it can drop and abandon things. Big.

What do you think?

I think you haven't understood what the ACCC is doing and why it is doing it. It's not a mystery. They are very clear about it:

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-...

Btw, the above was an attempt at a GPT3 trap. I could tell by the sentence structure that the person I was replying to didn't seem normal

Attempt failed.

Except for the Defund the BBC movement that's going on right now... I'm skeptical any government funded broadcaster is sustainable when it just turns into a propaganda outlet for the establishment.

I'm not super familiar with UK politics but it looks like this movement raised something like 45k british pounds on gofundme? Seems pretty fringe. I guess the BBC will remain funded.

The actual org is small, but it's caused thousands to pull their license fee, which is no small sum of money for the Beeb. It's not like they're rolling in profit.

There are around 65 million UK residents. Even if thousands pull their license fee it's not gonna move the needle that much. And if it did move the needle, I suspect the government would address the issue by enforcing the license fee more aggressively, or by doing the sensible thing and funding the BBC via the general fund.

They can't legally enforce it because the BBC guy has no special power to inspect your telly set and it's not technically a tax (as long as you don't consume BBC content). They also include YouTube/iPlayer consumption of BBC so it's unenforceable on a technical level too.

They've tried to scare people into compliance since the 50s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van

That makes me, as a non-UK resident, rather sad. BBC programming (at least what makes it to North America) is really very good.