Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Yijin collected opinions from all walks of life and proposed a draft of the Digital News Development and Democratic Resilience Act, 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 to help improve the quality of news and improve journalists working conditions.

(Photo: Photo by reporter Tian Yuhua, Agence France-Presse, composed of American editors of this newspaper)

[Central News Agency] People from all walks of life are concerned about the issue of media bargaining. Lin Yijin, a legislator of the Democratic Progressive Party, collected opinions from all walks of life and proposed a draft of the Digital News Development and Democratic Resilience Law. Help improve the quality of news and improve the working conditions of journalists.

Lin Yijin sought joint signatures from ruling and opposition legislators in the Legislative Yuan today. She said in an interview that this draft was discussed repeatedly with front-line journalists, experts and scholars, and consolidated the "News has a price! Digital platforms and news media bargaining policy proposals and bills" held in February this year. Prospects" were put forward after the opinions of various parties at the public hearing.

Lin Yijin pointed out that the highlights of the draft include that large platforms should allocate a certain percentage of revenue, establish a digital development and democratic resilience fund, and manage it through an independent committee, and use it in the operation of public, independent and commercial media.

The general description of the draft mentioned that 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 high-quality news and supervising social responsibility, failure to obtain reasonable income has resulted in an increasingly difficult operating environment for Taiwan's traditional and digital news industries.

Looking at foreign countries, the Australian Congress passed the news media and digital platform mandatory bargaining law, clearly stipulating that multinational digital platforms such as Google and Meta should pay for the news content they use. European and American countries are also gradually following up the legislative process to protect the news industry in the digital market. develop.

Regarding the issue of media bargaining legislation, there are currently a draft of the news media and digital platform mandatory bargaining law proposed by DPP legislator Zhang Liao Wanjian and others, and a draft news media and digital platform bargaining law proposed by DPP legislator Lin Chuyin and others. Still awaiting review by the committee, Lin Yijin's draft law on digital news development and democratic resilience has 5 chapters and 23 articles.

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 operator of the announced digital platform, an annual appropriation from the local 5% of the annual turnover of advertising, 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.

What is a digital platform operator? The draft stipulates that it must meet three conditions and 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, the previous 12 months or the previous accounting period. The annual average monthly active users totaled more than 1 billion, or the total average monthly active users in my country during the same period reached more than 10 million.