Lin Chuyin, a legislator of the Democratic Progressive Party who was born in the media industry, proposed the "News Media and Digital Platform Bargaining Law Draft", which was jointly signed and supported by 39 members from across the party.

(Photographed by reporter Xie Junlin)

[Reporter Xie Junlin/Taipei Report] Since the digital advertising market is monopolized by large multinational digital platforms, the news media industry is facing an existential crisis.

Lin Chuyin, a legislator of the Democratic Progressive Party who was born in the media industry, proposed the "News Media and Digital Platform Bargaining Law Draft", which was jointly signed and supported by 39 members from across the party.

The program committee of the Legislative Yuan passed the agenda for the follow-up session earlier, and the draft is expected to be read in the session on April 7 and handed over to the transportation, education and culture committees for joint review.

Lin Chuyin said that the fourth right of the media is very important in a democratic society. Unreasonable profit sharing will erode the power of news supervision. It is urgent to promote the legalization of news media and digital platform bargaining. The draft is listed as a priority bill in this session, so that the members' version and the Executive Yuan's version can enter the committee for substantive discussions, so that the media industry can develop soundly.

The main points of the draft proposed by Lin Chuyin include: specifying the competent authority as the digital department; after the news media industry submits a price negotiation request to the competent authority and registers, it must negotiate with the digital platform for the reprinted original news content; the competent authority acts as the news media and digital platform. The connected media should inform the digital platform in writing about the content of the news media industry’s request for price negotiation.

In addition, the key points of the draft are as follows: news media that have benefited from bargaining, mediation or arbitration should allocate a certain percentage of special funds to improve the working conditions of news media workers; mediation or arbitration can be initiated after reporting to the competent authority , and the provisions of the Arbitration Law shall apply mutatis mutandis.

In addition to the draft proposed by Lin Chuyin, Zhang Liaowanjian, a legislator of the Democratic Progressive Party, also recently proposed the "Draft Law on Mandatory Bargaining between News Media and Digital Platforms", referring to the "Australian model" to promote communication and negotiation between platforms and media as a starting point, combined with " There are two elements: “give sufficient room for negotiation” and “determine the final payment amount by arbitration”.

The draft was first read by the Legislative Yuan on the 17th of this month, and related drafts will be reviewed in a committee in the future.