What's the news: The Indian government is looking to make tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter pay Indian newspapers and digital news publishers a share of their revenue for using news content, the Times of India (TOI) reported on July 16. Why does this matter: Google and other tech companies scrape news from publishers' websites and showcase them to users, resulting in users not having to visit the source of the news. Because users don't visit the website of the news publishers, these publishers are deprived of ad revenue, which is the primary source of revenue for most publishers. At home, the Competition Commission of India is currently investigating Google following a complaint from the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) alleging that the company takes advantage of its members’ news content in search results but denies them fair advertising revenue. For this reason, some countries like Australia, France, and Spain have mandated that tech companies pay news publishers for their content, and other countries like Canada and New Zealand are exploring similar legislation. “The news publishers have no negotiating leverage at all, and this needs to be tackled legislatively. This is an important issue for us." — Minister of state for IT and electronics Rajeev Chandrasekhar to TOI. How will this be enforced: This will be enforced through regulatory interventions, which may happen as part of revisions to the existing IT laws, Chandrasekhar told TOI. "The market power on digital advertising that is currently being exercised by the Big Tech majors, which places…
