Social media giant Facebook has come out swinging over the Morrison government’s proposed news media bargaining code, threatening to stop Australians from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram if the code becomes law.
Search engine giant Google has fired off another round of criticism of the Government’s proposed media bargaining code, calling it “unworkable” and “extremely one-sided and unfair”.
Facebook and Google have been hit with a class action alleging their 2018 decisions to ban advertising of cryptocurrencies breached competition laws.
Google’s open letter to Australians, containing dire warnings about the effects of a proposed news media bargaining code, is misleading, the head of Australia’s consumer watchdog has said.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has delayed it decision on whether to block Google’s $3 billion tie-up with fitness device company Fitbit to allow time for the European Union to investigate the proposed merger.
Google and Facebook will face penalties of at least $10 million for breaches of a media bargaining code drafted by the ACCC that aims to create a “level playing field” between Australian media companies and the tech giants.
Google has reached agreements with publishers in three countries to pay for news, as the ACCC works out the details of a mandatory code under which the search giant and Facebook would be forced to pay publishers for news.
A group of IP lawyers has warned the Government will have to proceed carefully in establishing a mandatory code under which Google and Facebook would be forced to pay news publishers for content, saying such a move could be struck down under existing High Court precedent.
Google has been ordered to hand over details of an online reviewer’s identity to gangland lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson so she can pursue a potential defamation and misleading and deceptive conduct case against the reviewer, which she alleges is a rival law firm.
Google has been ordered to pay Melbourne gangland lawyer George Defteros $40,000 after it was found to have defamed him by publishing a link to an article that implied he had “crossed the already blurred line” between being a criminal solicitor and being a confidant to his underworld clients.