The "Draft Law on Compulsory Bargaining on News Media and Digital Platforms" has entered the legislative process and will be reviewed by the Commission on the 17th at the earliest.

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[Reporter Xie Junlin/Taipei Report] In view of the fact that the digital advertising market is monopolized by large multinational digital platforms, leading to an existential crisis in the news media industry, Democratic Progressive Party legislator Zhang Liao Wanjian and others led the proposal of the "Draft Law on Mandatory Bargaining between News Media and Digital Platforms", The draft starts from the promotion of communication and negotiation between the platform and the media, and combines the two elements of "giving sufficient room for negotiation" and "determining the final payment amount by arbitration".

The draft will be handed over to the committee for review on the 17th at the earliest.

Zhang Liao, Wanjian and others pointed out that in order to solve the unfair competition problem of digital platforms using local media news content without paying, many domestic scholars jointly proposed a draft bargaining law to establish a special law for news media to require platforms to pay for the use of news content. legal basis.

The opinions of all parties were solicited through the public hearing, and the legislative process was carried out with reference to the consensus of "news has a price" in European and American countries, so the proposal was made based on the private version of the draft.

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The proposal stated that at the beginning of the drafting of the civil version, the Australian model was first considered, and there were 14 articles in total.

In the legislative purpose part, the draft states that this law is specially enacted in order to promote the balanced development of the digital industry, resolve the unequal negotiation power, maintain a free and diverse news media, strengthen public discussion and democratic accountability, and safeguard the rights and interests of the public.

The competent authority for this Act is the Ministry of Digital Development.

Regarding the definition of digital platforms, the draft stipulates that it refers to websites or other online services that display, distribute or guide users to the content reported online by news media.

Regardless of whether all or part of the title of the report is used, or a small amount of text, charts, photos, thumbnails, sound, video, excerpts, etc. in the report, regardless of its length, it belongs to this category.

In addition, because digital platforms are generally transnational in nature, the draft also stipulates that in terms of jurisdiction, no commercial bases have been established in the territory of our country except for those who have established commercial bases in the territory of our country, but there are sufficient facts to confirm that they have a similar relationship with our country. Substantially related digital platform operators may also be under the jurisdiction of our country.

The draft states that the announced digital platform operators should negotiate with the registered news media in an honest and credible manner regarding the authorization fee and other transaction conditions requested by the registered news media for reprinting, short reprinting or excerpts.

After the negotiation is completed, both parties shall report the conclusion of the bargaining agreement to the competent authority.

The draft also stipulates that registered news media can apply in writing to the competent authority for the appointment of a mediator and enter the mediation process after submitting a price negotiation request and failing to reach a price negotiation agreement with the announced digital platform operator for more than three months.

The mediation period is 2 months, which can be extended for 2 months with the consent of both parties, but only once.

If the mediation process ends and the two parties still fail to reach an agreement, the registered news media can submit the bargaining matter to arbitration.

In addition, the draft stipulates that the arbitral tribunal should adopt the more reasonable final quotation of the parties as the arbitration judgment.

If only one party makes a final offer, the arbitral tribunal shall accept it.

However, the arbitral tribunal should reject the final quotation that is highly likely to cause serious damage to my country's news reporting production system or to consumers, as it has not been submitted.

In terms of penalties, the draft stipulates that for cross-border platforms that fail to declare their agents on time, digital platforms or news media that violate the obligation of good faith negotiation, and violations of arbitration judgments, the competent authority may notify them to make corrections within a time limit; A fine of not less than 50,000 yuan but not more than 500,000 yuan shall be imposed, and consecutive penalties may be imposed.

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