[inopinatus]

It’s about News Corporation’s exceptionally close ties to the party that currently holds the majority in Australian federal parliament. This grants them the opportunity to use Australia as a licensing model test venue, as well as hoping to normalise the idea as acceptable rather than farcical in at least one western laissez-faire capitalist democracy in the hope this can be leveraged into others.

[marcus_holmes]

Also about journalism's complete failure to adapt to a changing business landscape and find a different business model.

In one way, this is good. It will fail miserably, and demonstrate to newspaper CEO's that "Big Tech" is not stealing their revenues. Then they can move on to try something different.

[sjy]

If the system fails, and consequently newspapers fail, while tech companies thrive, how will that demonstrate to newspaper CEOs that big tech isn’t stealing their revenue?

[marcus_holmes]

Because newspapers are failing anyway, and tech companies are thriving anyway. So if this system fails, nothing changed.

If this system works, and suddenly Australian newspapers are viable while newspapers elsewhere are still struggling, then it will prove that forcing tech to pay for content works, and that therefore tech was probably stealing media's revenue.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

It doesn't seem necessary for tech to be stealing revenue from publishing for this system to function. If I hold a gun to your head and say give me a thousand bucks, and you do, I'll be a thousand bucks richer, whether or not I was stealing your revenue.

[inopinatus]

What it'd prove is that regulatory capture works.