Facebook is blocking Australian users from sharing or viewing news content amid a dispute over a proposed law.  Australia wants tech giants like Facebook and Google to pay for the content reposted from news outlets.“A bombshell decision” is how Facebook’s move is being reported in Australia.  The social media giant said it was banning Australians from sharing and reading news stories on its platform with a “heavy heart.”   The government in Canberra, though, has said it won’t back down.  Ministers have said the Facebook ban highlighted the “immense market power of these digital social giants.”  About 17 million Australians visit Facebook every month.The media bargaining code legislation has already been passed by the lower house of the Australian parliament and is expected to receive final approval by the upper chamber, the Senate, next week.  It would make Australia the first country to force big tech firms to pay for news content.  Communications Minister Paul Fletcher is scathing about Facebook’s actions.“Facebook needs to think very carefully about what this means for its reputation and standing,” Fletcher said. “They are effectively saying on our platform there will not be any information from organizations which employ paid journalists.  They are effectively saying any information that is available on our site does not come from these reliable sources.”The progress of Australia’s social media laws is reportedly being closely followed in other parts of the world, including Canada and the European Union.Facebook said the legislation “fundamentally misunderstands” the relationship between itself and publishers.  Large technology companies, including Google, have argued that by using stories from other publishers they generate more internet traffic and revenue for the websites run by traditional media outlets.   They have complained that as their advertising revenues have collapsed, social media platforms have benefited from their quality journalism without paying for it.  In contrast to Facebook, Google has this week signed multi-million dollar deals with three major Australian broadcasters and publishers.
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For two decades, global news outlets have complained internet companies are getting rich at their expense, selling advertising linked to their reports without sharing revenue.
Now, Australia is joining France and other governments in pushing Google, Facebook and other internet giants to pay. That might channel more money to a news industry that is cutting coverage as revenue shrinks. But it also sets up a clash with some of the tech industry’s biggest names.
Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., has announced agreements to pay publishers in Australia while Facebook said Thursday it has blocked users in the country from viewing or sharing news.  What Is Happening in Australia?  
Facing a proposed law to compel internet companies to pay news organizations, Google has announced deals with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and Seven West Media. No financial details were released. The Australian Broadcasting Corp. is in negotiations.  
Google accounts for 53% percent of Australian online advertising revenue and Facebook 23%, according to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.  
Google had threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia in response to the legislation, which would create a panel to make pricing decisions on news.  
On Thursday, Facebook responded by blocking users from accessing and sharing Australian news.
Facebook said the proposed law “ignores the realities” of its relationship with publishers that use its service to “share news content.” That was despite Frydenberg saying this week Google and Facebook “do want to enter into these commercial arrangements.”  What Is Happening in Other Countries?  
Australia’s proposed law would be the first of its kind, but other governments also are pressuring Google, Facebook and other internet companies to pay news outlets and other publishers for material.  
In Europe, Google had to negotiate with French publishers after a court last year upheld an order saying such agreements were required by a 2019 European Union copyright directive.
France is the first government to enforce the rules, but the decision suggests Google, Facebook and other companies will face similar requirements in other parts of the 27-nation trade bloc.
 
Google and a group of French publishers have announced a framework agreement for the American company to negotiate licensing deals with individual publishers. The company has deals with outlets including the newspaper Le Monde and the weekly magazine l’Obs.  
Last year, Facebook announced it would pay U.S. news organizations including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and USA Today for headlines. No financial details were released.  
In Spain, Google shut down its news website after a 2014 law required it to pay publishers.  Why Does This Matter?  
Developments in Australia and Europe suggest the financial balance between multibillion-dollar internet companies and news organizations might be shifting.
Australia is responding to complaints internet companies should share advertising and other revenue connected to news reports, magazine articles and other content that appears on their websites or is shared by users.  
The government acted after its competition regulator tried and failed to negotiate a voluntary payment plan with Google. The proposed law would create a panel to make binding decisions on the price of news reports to help give individual publishers more negotiating leverage with global internet companies.What Does This Mean for The Public?
Google’s agreement means a new revenue stream for news outfits, but whether that translates into more coverage for readers, viewers and listeners is unclear.
The union for Australian journalists is calling on media companies to make sure online revenue goes into news gathering.
“Any monies from these deals need to end up in the newsroom, not the boardroom,” said Marcus Strom, president of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. “We will be pressing the case for transparency on how these funds are spent.”
In the meantime, access occasionally could suffer: Facebook’s move Thursday initially blocked some Australian commercial and government communications pages.
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Facebook has blocked Australian account holders from viewing or sharing all news content over a dispute with a government proposal to make digital giants pay domestic news outlets for their content.Thursday’s move by the U.S.-based social media company was made despite ongoing negotiations between Facebook and rival Google with Australian media companies.Facebook regional director Will Easton said in a written statement that the proposed law “fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content.”Easton said the proposal left Facebook “facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter.”The websites of several public agencies and emergency services were also blocked on Facebook, including pages that include up-to-date information on COVID-19 outbreaks, brushfires and other natural disasters.Treasurer Josh Frydenberg tweeted Thursday that he and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg had “a constructive discussion” in which Zuckerberg “raised a few remaining issues” with the government’s news media bargaining code.Australian media companies have seen their advertising revenue increasingly siphoned off by big tech firms like Google and Facebook in recent years.Google had also threatened to block news content if the law were passed, even warning last August that Australians’ personal information could be “at risk” if digital giants had to pay for news content.But the company has already signed a number of separate agreements with such Australian media giants as the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp, Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media.
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Facebook announced Thursday it has blocked Australians from viewing and sharing news on the platform because of proposed laws in the country to make digital giants pay for journalism.Australian publishers can continue to publish news content on Facebook, but links and posts can’t be viewed or shared by Australian audiences, the U.S.-based company said in a statement.Australian users cannot share Australian or international news.International users outside Australia also cannot share Australian news.”The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content,” Facebook regional managing director William Easton said.”It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter,” Easton added.The announcement comes a day after Treasurer Josh Frydenberg described as “very promising” negotiations between Facebook and Google with Australian media companies.Frydenberg said after weekend talks with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google, he was convinced that the platforms “do want to enter into these commercial arrangements.”Frydenberg said he had had a “a constructive discussion” with Zuckerberg after Facebook blocked Australian news.”He raised a few remaining issues with the Government’s news media bargaining code and we agreed to continue our conversation to try to find a pathway forward,” Frydenberg tweeted.But communications Minister Paul Fletcher said the government would not back down on its legislative agenda.”This announcement from Facebook, if they were to maintain this position, of course would call into question the credibility of the platform in terms of the news on it,” Fletcher told Australian Broadcasting Corp.”Effectively Facebook is saying to Australians, ‘Information that you see on our platforms does not come from organizations that have editorial policies or fact-checking processes or journalists who are paid to do the work they do,’” Fletcher added.The Australian Parliament is debating proposed laws that would make the two platforms strike deals to pay for Australian news.The Senate will consider the draft laws after they were passed by the House of Representatives late Wednesday.Both platforms have condemned the proposed laws as unworkable. Google has also threatened to remove its search engine from the country.But Google is striking pay deals with Australian news media companies under its own News Showcase model.Seven West Media on Monday became the largest Australian news media business to strike a deal with Google to pay for journalism.Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has since announced a wide-ranging deal.Rival Nine Entertainment is reportedly close to its own pact and ABC is also in negotiations.News plays a larger part in Google’s business model than it does in Facebook’s.Easton said the public would ask why the platforms were responding differently to the proposed law that would create an arbitration panel to set a price for news in cases where the platforms and news businesses failed to agree.”The answer is because our platforms have fundamentally different relationships with news,” Easton said.Peter Lewis, director of the Australia Institute’s Center for Responsible Technology think tank, said Facebook’s decision “will make it a weaker social network.””Facebook actions mean the company’s failures in privacy, disinformation, and data protection will require a bigger push for stronger government regulation,” Lewis said. “Without fact-based news to anchor it, Facebook will become little more than cute cats and conspiracy theories.”  
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The U.S. Justice Department has indicted three North Korean computer programmers for trying to extort and steal more than $1.3 billion as part of a global cyber scheme that included the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment.A Canadian American who allegedly laundered some of the stolen money also pleaded guilty in the scheme.North Koreans Park Jin Hyok, Jon Chang Hyok and Kim Il are charged with criminal conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.Park, a computer programmer for North Korea’s intelligence service, was charged two years ago for his role in the Sony hack.That hack erased corporate data, obtained sensitive company emails among top Hollywood executives and forced the company to rebuild its entire computer network.The motivation for the hack was believed to be retaliation for the 2014 movie “The Interview,” which ridiculed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and even portrayed an assassination plot against him.As part of the scheme, the Justice Department said, the three plotted to steal more than $1.2 billion from banks in Vietnam, Mexico, Malta and other places. They also stole $75 million from a Slovenian cryptocurrency company and $11.8 million of digital currency from a New York financial services company.”The scope of the criminal conduct by the North Korean hackers was extensive and long-running, and the range of crimes they have committed is staggering,” Tracy L. Wilkison, acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement. “The conduct detailed in the indictment are the acts of a criminal nation-state that has stopped at nothing to extract revenge and obtain money to prop up its regime.”The three are also believed to have been behind the 2017 WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack, which affected computers in 150 countries and most notably crippled the computer network of Britain’s National Health Service.The three North Koreans are unlikely to ever appear in a U.S. courtroom.  
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The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday indicted three North Koreans for their alleged role in the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a scheme that involved efforts to steal and extort more than $1.3 billion in cash and cryptocurrency.A Canadian American who allegedly laundered some of the stolen money also pleaded guilty in the scheme.North Koreans Park Jin Hyok, Jon Chang Hyok and Kim Il are charged with criminal conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.Park, a computer programmer for North Korea’s intelligence service, was charged two years ago for his role in the Sony hack.That hack erased corporate data, obtained sensitive company emails among top Hollywood executives and forced the company to rebuild its entire computer network.The motivation for the hack was believed to be retaliation for the 2014 movie “The Interview,” which ridiculed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and even portrayed an assassination plot against him.As part of the scheme, the Justice Department said, the three plotted to steal more than $1.2 billion from banks in Vietnam, Mexico, Malta and other places. They also stole $75 million from a Slovenian cryptocurrency company and $11.8 million of digital currency from a New York financial services company.”The scope of the criminal conduct by the North Korean hackers was extensive and long-running, and the range of crimes they have committed is staggering,” Tracy L. Wilkison, acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement. “The conduct detailed in the indictment are the acts of a criminal nation-state that has stopped at nothing to extract revenge and obtain money to prop up its regime.”The three are also believed to have been behind the 2017 WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack, which affected computers in 150 countries and most notably crippled the computer network of Britain’s National Health Service.The three North Koreans are unlikely to ever appear in a U.S. courtroom.  
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A slew of attractive toy robots on the market today are teaching children important language and science, technology, engineering and math skills, while keeping them entertained. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.Producer: Julie Taboh/Adam Greenbaum     
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The information technology giant Google has agreed to pay an Australian media company to host news material ahead of a planned mandatory bargaining code. Google’s deal with Seven West Media, which publishes the Perth-based West Australian newspaper and other titles, is the first of seven such arrangements the tech giant is expected to make in Australia.  A law being introduced this week in federal parliament in Canberra would require large technology companies to pay to use Australian news stories.  The legislation would make Australia the first country to force big tech firms to pay for news content.  Google, which had called the law unworkable, and Facebook have threatened to downgrade their services to Australians or even walk away. They have argued that by using stories from other publishers they generate more internet traffic for the websites run by traditional media outlets.  But in an apparent softening of that stance, Google has reached an agreement with Seven West Media, reportedly worth $23 million a year.  Belinda Barnett is a lecturer in media at Swinburne University of Technology, a public research university based in Melbourne. She believes it is a good result for the Australian company. “It does sound like they have come up with a fairly lucrative deal for them, around AUD$30 million, but that figure has not been confirmed yet. Seven West owns quite a lot of regional outlets as well. So, it has the potential to benefit the regional news outlets that it owns and the journalists employed by them,” Barnett  said.The Australian government said a deal with Facebook was “very close.” As their advertising revenues collapsed, traditional broadcasting and publishing companies have for years complained that social media platforms have benefited from their quality reporting without paying for it.  
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Parler, a social media service popular with American right-wing users that virtually vanished shortly after the U.S. Capitol riot, relaunched on Monday and said its new platform was built on “sustainable, independent technology.”Known as an alternative to Twitter, Parler has struggled after Amazon stripped it of its web-hosting services on January 11 over Parler’s refusal to remove posts inciting violence. Citing the same reason, Google and Apple also removed the Parler app from their stores.  In a statement announcing the relaunch, Parler said it had appointed Mark Meckler as its interim chief executive, replacing John Matze who was fired by the board this month. Despite the relaunch, the website was still not opening for many users and the app was not available for download on mobile stores run by Apple and Alphabet-owned Google.  While several users took to rival Twitter to complain they were unable to access the service, a few others said they could access their existing account.Parler, which asserted it once had over 20 million users, said it would bring its current users back online in the first week and would be open to new users in the next week. Founded in 2018, the app has styled itself as a “free speech-driven” space and largely attracted U.S. conservatives who disagree with rules around content on other social media sites. On Monday, Parler said its new technology cut its reliance on “so-called Big Tech” for its operations. It’s unclear what company was hosting Parler.  “Parler is being run by an experienced team and is here to stay,” said Meckler, who had co-founded the Tea Party Patriots, a group that emerged in 2009 within the fiscally conservative Tea Party movement and helped elect dozens of Republicans. It is also backed by hedge fund investor Robert Mercer, his daughter Rebekah Mercer and conservative commentator Dan Bongino. 
 
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When NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, a robotic astrobiology lab packed inside a space capsule, hits the final stretch of its seven-month journey from Earth this week, it is set to emit a radio alert as it streaks into the thin Martian atmosphere.   By the time that signal reaches mission managers some 204 million kilometers away at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, Perseverance will already have landed on the Red Planet — hopefully in one piece.   The six-wheeled rover is expected to take seven minutes to descend from the top of the Martian atmosphere to the planet’s surface in less time than the 11-minute-plus radio transmission to Earth. Thus, Thursday’s final, self-guided descent of the rover spacecraft is set to occur during a white-knuckled interval that JPL engineers affectionately refer to as the “seven minutes of terror.”   Al Chen, head of the JPL descent and landing team, called it the most critical and most dangerous part of the $2.7 billion mission.   “Success is never assured,” Chen told a recent news briefing. “And that’s especially true when we’re trying to land the biggest, heaviest and most complicated rover we’ve ever built to the most dangerous site we’ve ever attempted to land at.”   Much is riding on the outcome. Building on discoveries of nearly 20 U.S. outings to Mars dating back to Mariner 4’s 1965 flyby, Perseverance may set the stage for scientists to conclusively show whether life has existed beyond Earth, while paving the way for eventual human missions to the fourth planet from the sun. A safe landing, as always, comes first.   Success will hinge on a complex sequence of events unfolding without a hitch — from inflation of a giant, supersonic parachute to deployment of a jet-powered “sky crane” that will descend to a safe landing spot and hover above the surface while lowering the rover to the ground on a tether.   “Perseverance has to do this all on her own,” Chen said. “We can’t help it during this period.”   If all goes as planned, NASA’s team would receive a follow-up radio signal shortly before 1 p.m. Pacific time confirming that Perseverance landed on Martian soil at the edge of an ancient, long-vanished river delta and lakebed.   Science on the surface From there, the nuclear battery-powered rover, roughly the size of a small SUV, will embark on the primary objective of its two-year mission — engaging a complex suite of instruments in the search for signs of microbial life that may have flourished on Mars billions of years ago.   Advanced power tools will drill samples from Martian rock and seal them into cigar-sized tubes for eventual return to Earth for further analysis — the first such specimens ever collected by humankind from the surface of another planet.   Two future missions to retrieve those samples and fly them back to Earth are in the planning stages by NASA, in collaboration with the European Space Agency.   Perseverance, the fifth and by far most sophisticated rover vehicle NASA has sent to Mars since Sojourner in 1997, also incorporates several pioneering features not directly related to astrobiology.   Among them is a small drone helicopter, nicknamed Ingenuity, that will test surface-to-surface powered flight on another world for the first time. If successful, the four-pound (1.8-kg) whirlybird could pave the way for low-altitude aerial surveillance of Mars during later missions.   Another experiment is a device to extract pure oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere, a tool that could prove invaluable for future human life support on Mars and for producing rocket propellant to fly astronauts home.   ‘Spectacular’ but treacherous The mission’s first hurdle after a 293-million-mile (472-million-km) flight from Earth is delivering the rover intact to the floor of Jerezo Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45-km-wide) expanse that scientists believe may harbor a rich trove of fossilized microorganisms.   “It is a spectacular landing site,” project scientist Ken Farley told reporters on a teleconference.   What makes the crater’s rugged terrain — deeply carved by long-vanished flows of liquid water — so tantalizing as a research site also makes it treacherous as a landing zone.   The descent sequence, an upgrade from NASA’s last rover mission in 2012, begins as Perseverance, encased in a protective shell, pierces the Martian atmosphere at 12,000 miles per hour (19,300 km per hour), nearly 16 times the speed of sound on Earth.   After a parachute deployment to slow its plunge, the descent capsule’s heat shield is set to fall away to release a jet-propelled “sky crane” hovercraft with the rover attached to its belly.   Once the parachute is jettisoned, the sky crane’s jet thrusters are set to immediately fire, slowing its descent to walking speed as it nears the crater floor and self-navigates to a smooth landing site, steering clear of boulders, cliffs and sand dunes.   Hovering over the surface, the sky crane is due to lower Perseverance on nylon tethers, sever the chords when the rover’s wheels reach the surface, then fly off to crash a safe distance away.   Should everything work, deputy project manager Matthew Wallace said, post-landing exuberance would be on full display at JPL despite COVID-19 safety protocols that have kept close contacts within mission control to a minimum.   “I don’t think COVID is going to be able to stop us from jumping up and down and fist-bumping,” Wallace said.   
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The Biden administration asked a U.S. court Thursday to suspend litigation connected to former President Donald Trump’s proposed ban on WeChat while it reviews the policy. The Justice Department filed a request with the U.S. Court of Appeals seeking a suspension of the case. That followed action Wednesday in which the department asked a federal court for a pause on proceedings aimed at banning TikTok. Newly installed Commerce Department officials have begun a review of the prior administration’s actions on WeChat, including “an evaluation of the underlying record justifying those prohibitions,” the DOJ said in the filing. “The government will then be better positioned to determine” whether “the regulatory purpose of protecting the security of Americans and their data continues to warrant the identified prohibitions,” the filing added. Trump issued an executive order last August declaring both WeChat and TikTok as threats to national security because of data collection practices affecting Americans. However, U.S. courts have blocked the bans from going into effect, leading to appeals lodged in the final months of the Trump administration seeking to override the lower courts. The DOJ said the Commerce Department “remains committed to a robust defense of national security as well as ensuring the viability of our economy and preserving individual rights and data.” 
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Microsoft on Thursday lobbied for other countries to follow Australia’s lead in calling for news outlets to be paid for stories published online, a move opposed by Facebook and Google.Microsoft last week offered to fill the void if rival Google follows through on a threat to turn off its search engine in Australia over the plan.Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement the company fully supports proposed legislation in Australia that would force Google and Facebook to compensate media for their journalism.”This has made for an unusual split within the tech sector, and we’ve heard from people asking whether Microsoft would support a similar proposal in the United States, Canada, the European Union and other countries,” Smith said in a blog post.FILE – This combination of file photos shows a Google sign and the Facebook app. “The short answer is, yes.”Facebook and Google have both threatened to block key services in Australia if the rules, now before Parliament, become law as written.The situation raises the question of whether U.S. President Joe Biden will back away from his predecessor’s objection to the proposal in Australia.”As the United States takes stock of the events on January 6, it’s time to widen the aperture,” Smith said, referring to a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol building by a mob of Trump supporters out to overturn the election results.”The ultimate question is what values we want the tech sector and independent journalism to serve.”Smith argued that internet platforms that have not previously compensated news agencies should now step up to revive independent journalism that “goes to the heart of our democratic freedoms.”“The United States should not object to a creative Australian proposal that strengthens democracy by requiring tech companies to support a free press,” Smith said. “It should copy it instead.”Bing goes big?The proposed law in Australia would govern relations between financially distressed traditional media outlets and the giants that dominate the internet and capture a significant share of advertising revenues.Microsoft’s search engine Bing accounts for less than 5% of the market in Australia, and from 15% to 20% of the market in the United States, according to the tech giant based in Washington State.”With a realistic prospect of gaining usage share, we are confident we can build the service Australians want and need,” Smith said.”And unlike Google, if we can grow, we are prepared to sign up for the new law’s obligations, including sharing revenue as proposed with news organizations.”Under the proposed News Media Bargaining Code, Google and Facebook would be required to negotiate payments to individual news organizations for using their content on the platforms.Australia’s biggest media companies, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Nine Entertainment, have said they think the payments should amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year.If agreement cannot be reached on the size of the payments, the issue would go to so-called “final offer” arbitration where each side proposes a compensation amount and the arbiter chooses one or the other.Google and Facebook, backed up by the U.S. government and leading internet architects, have said the scheme would seriously undermine their business models and the very functioning of the internet.Both Facebook and Google have insisted they are willing to pay publishers for news via licensing agreements and commercial negotiations, and both have signed deals worth millions of dollars with news organizations around the world.Google has said the bargaining code should focus on facilitating these kinds of negotiations, but it rejected the idea of mandatory “final offer” arbitration.
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