Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Canada finally announced draft regulations on the “Online News Act” that require platform providers such as Google and Facebook to pay for news content produced by media companies.

In the draft proposal, the Canadian government hopes that Google will pay media companies $126.6 million, or about Rp. 1.9 trillion per year. Meanwhile, Facebook was asked to pay $44 million, or around Rs.670 billion.

According to the Canadian government, this draft rule will address concerns from Google and Meta (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram) that they are required to pay unlimited amounts.

By setting prices based on calculations from the government and several institutions, it is hoped that Google and Facebook can respond in a win-win manner.

However, this new regulation has not made Facebook move. The social media giant said it would continue to block news content in Canada, as long as the Online News Act rules were still in effect.

“The proposed new regulations will not impact our business decisions to block news content in Canada,” said Rachel Curran, Meta's head of public policy in Canada.

The Online Information Act regulations were adopted last June and will come into force from the end of December. So far, only Facebook has firmly answered this question.

Meanwhile, Google, which also protested against this regulation, has not taken action like Facebook.

The online news law's rules were drawn up based on complaints from media companies who feared their role was being marginalized by Google, Facebook and others. In fact, news content delivered through Google and Facebook primarily comes from media companies.

As a result, more revenue from reader traffic goes to Google and Facebook. In fact, they say, media companies should have rights to it.

This rule caused Facebook to leave the country, as it was reluctant to follow local government regulations. According to Facebook, traffic from news doesn't have much impact on its platform's revenue.

For information, Indonesian President Joko Widodo also launched a similar regulation called Publishers' Rights. Until now, this regulation is still under review by the Ministry of Communication and Information (Kominfo). Let's wait and see what happens next.

(fabulous/fabulous)