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SACRAMENTO, Calif. —A California proposal that would require tech giants, including Google and Facebook, to pay news outlets a fee for posting their content has been shelved for the year, state lawmakers announced Friday.
The bill, known as the California Journalism Preservation Act, is primarily meant to help generate funds for newsrooms across the state. News outlets that collect the fee would be required to spend at least 70% of the money on news journalists and support staff. The bill’s author, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, said the decision to hold off on moving the measure forward this year was meant to give lawmakers more time to work on what would be a first in the nation law.
“My priority is making sure this bill does exactly, and only, what it intends: to support our free press and the democracy sustained by it, to make sure publications get paid what they are owed, and to hold our nation’s largest and wealthiest tech companies accountable for repurposing content that’s not theirs,” Wicks said in a statement Friday.
The bill, which has bipartisan support, recently cleared the Assembly in a 55-6 vote and will be held in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
State Senator Tom Umberg, the chairman of that committee, said in a statement Friday the bill will be heard in his committee in 2024, with an informational hearing on the proposal scheduled for later this fall.
“This interim hearing underscores my commitment to protecting journalism, California journalists, and the access to a free and vibrant press that is essential to our democracy,” Umberg said. “My greatest concern is that we enact legislation that is fair and that the benefits in this bill flow specifically to support local journalists – and in turn, all Californians. I look forward to working with Assemblymember Wicks and my colleagues to help save this foundation of our democracy.”
The update comes as the Computer and Communications Industry Association began running TV ads in Sacramento on June 22 against the measure, calling it a “Link Tax.”
“Income tax, sales tax, gas tax, but now lawmakers are proposing a link tax that would charge websites every time they link to a news article,” the narrator says in the ad. “Experts warn it could undermine the open internet, punish local newspapers while subsidizing hedge funds and big media corporations. Another new tax is the last thing we need.”
Chris Micheli, a professor at the McGeorge School of Law, noted the fee is not a typical tax on an individual Californian, and would not be collected and administered by the state’s government.
“People put things on social media or buy advertising time to try to get the public riled up and so, by calling it something like a link tax, I think the goal is to generate interest in it and maybe people call their legislators to vote yes or no on such a bill,” Micheli said.
Meta, Google, Twitter and Apple are members of the CCIA. The CCIA did not respond to a request for comment on this story as of Friday afternoon.
A spokesman for Meta in May said the company would pull news from Facebook and Instagram if California lawmakers move forward with the proposal.
Click here to read the full article in KCRA
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