Lin Yijin proposed the "Digital News Development and Democratic Resilience Law Draft", which clearly stipulates the media bargaining and negotiation regulations, and also stipulates that large digital platforms should allocate a certain percentage of revenue to establish a fund.

(Photo: Photo by reporter Tian Yuhua, Agence France-Presse, synthesized by this newspaper)

[Reporter Chen Zhengyu/Taipei Report] Controversy over the monopoly of media interests by large digital platforms continues to rage. Democratic Progressive Party legislator Lin Yijin proposed the "Digital News Development and Democratic Resilience Law Draft", which clearly stipulates media bargaining and negotiation regulations, and also regulates a certain percentage of large digital platforms. Revenue, set up a digital development and democratic resilience fund, and manage it through an independent committee to help improve the quality of news and improve the working conditions of journalists.

In view of the fact that the digital advertising market is monopolized by large multinational digital platforms, which has led to an existential crisis in the news media industry, the Australian Parliament passed the News Media and Digital Platform Compulsory Bargaining Law, clearly stipulating that multinational digital platforms such as Google and Meta should pay for the news content they use, Europe, America Countries are also gradually following up the legislative process to ensure the development of journalism in the digital market.

On the domestic front, DPP legislators Zhang Liao Wanjian, Lin Chuyin and others have successively proposed the "Draft Law on Mandatory Bargaining on News Media and Digital Platforms", hoping to complete the third reading of the legislation as soon as possible.

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Lin Yijin proposed the "Digital News Development and Democratic Resilience Law Draft" and sought joint signatures from the ruling and opposition legislators. She explained in an interview that this draft was discussed repeatedly with front-line journalists, experts and scholars, and also integrated the "News is Valuable! Digital News" held in February this year. Platform and News Media Bargaining Policy Suggestions and Prospects of the Bill” was put forward after the opinions of all parties at the public hearing; at the same time, it also referred to Lin Chuyin’s draft version, which included the allocation of bargaining profits to improve the labor conditions of the media.

Lin Yijin pointed out that the draft calls for the establishment of a "Digital Development and Democracy Resilience Fund", which will be managed by an independent committee and used in a reasonable proportion for the needs of public, independent and commercial media operations to ensure that the fund can really help improve the quality of news.

According to the general statement of the draft, digital platforms, such as search engines or social media, use news reports produced by news media operators to obtain huge digital advertising revenue without paying. While producing good news and supervising social responsibility, they failed to obtain reasonable income, which made the operating environment of Taiwan's traditional and digital news industries more and more difficult.

The draft stipulates that in order to establish a reasonable profit sharing mechanism between the news media industry and the digital platform industry, this law is specified in order to maintain a free and high-quality news environment, strengthen public discussion and democratic accountability; the competent authority of the Digital News Development and Democratic Resilience Law is the Ministry of Digital Development .

In order to substantially promote the development of news in Taiwan and improve the working conditions of front-line journalists, the draft stipulates that the competent authority should set up a digital news development and democratic resilience fund, and the source of funds for the fund includes, the announced digital platform operators, an annual allocation of local advertising 5% of the annual turnover, as well as donations from the central ministries, associations, and departments that prepare their budgets each year.

The draft stipulates that the news media industry may negotiate with digital platform operators on the part of original news content reprinted on digital platforms that affects their digital advertising revenue.

As for the definition of a digital platform operator, the draft stipulates that three conditions must be met and must be announced by the competent authority; one of the conditions is that the global website or online service directly or indirectly controlled by its ultimate controller must be registered within the previous 12 months or before The total average monthly active users in a fiscal year is more than 1 billion, or the average monthly active users in my country during the same period are more than 10 million.