Google cut a deal with News Corp. that will ensure its services continue to be provided in Australia, and Facebook walked away from the bargaining table and began preventing people from sharing news links from Australian publishers around the world.
In development for three years, the bargaining code is intended to give Australia’s heavily concentrated media industry more leverage as publishers seek direct payment from Google and Facebook for the right to display links to their work. It does this by forcing the platforms into binding arbitration with publishers who bring cases, and puts the decision for how much the platform has to pay the publishers into the hands of the arbiter. Each side throws out a number, and the arbiter picks the one they think is most fair.
By design, the arbitration process favors the publisher. Also by design, it encourages platforms to avoid the process altogether by signing one-off deals with individual publishers in hopes that they can get better terms that way.