Can you talk a little bit about the history? What is the News Bargaining Code?

Code?Yeah, absolutely.

And thanks so much for having me, Mike.

So Australia's News Media Bargaining Code came into effect in 2021, often described as the world's first link tax, quote unquote, even though the government of course does their best to avoid that term.

At its core, it's a law that forces certain digital services and Australian news publishers into mandatory bargaining over payments for news content, so just for linking to news.

And then of course, that process going on with an arbitrator able to set the price if those negotiations break down.

If we're looking back, the code emerged from a previous investigation back around 2017 by Australia's Competition Authority, which argued that digital services had stronger bargaining power compared to traditional news outlets.

Mm-hmm.

I want to start by asking what does it mean that the internet is open, and how has that enabled innovation and various benefits to users?

Yeah, for sure, and thanks so much for having me, Mike, really appreciate it and happy to be on.

So that's a great starting question, right.

Like, what is an open internet specifically? So, an open internet really gives internet users the means to publish, to link to, to really build on information that they find online, without needing any prior approval or special access.

It's kind of that system based on shared standards, hyperlinks, indexing, re-tweeting, whatever you wanna say, that makes knowledge discoverable and reusable as well, right? So that openness specifically has fueled decades of innovation and have given people the opportunity to, again, like you said, build on this information, right? For example, it- it allows journalists and educators and creators as well to reach audiences without n- negotiating gatekeepers, right, and asking, "Am I allowed to post this?" Or getting explicit permission from something.

It enables academia, right, we're seeing students and researchers have the opportunity to learn, experiment, create using that shared information.

Allows small startups as well to have access to that information, to be able to build and innovate, and overall it really supports kind of that global participation where anyone, anywhere has the opportunity to contribute to the internet and the world's knowledge base, right? I'm thinking about maybe times of- of natural disaster, right, where we've been seeing almost like a crowdsourcing of news and information on different social media platforms.

Can you give us kind of a- a state of play of what is happening currently?