Competition and Consumer Act 2010

This section applies if a responsible digital platform corporation for a designated digital platform service, either by itself or together with other corporations, operates or controls a digital service (whether or not the designated digital platform service).

The responsible digital platform corporation must ensure that the supply of the digital service does not, in relation to crawling, indexing, making available and distributing news businesses’ covered news content:

differentiate between registered news businesses, because of any of the following matters:

a corporation being registered under section 52G, or being endorsed under that section as the registered news business corporation for a news business;

a bargaining news business representative for a registered news business making a notification under 52ZE(1), or not making such a notification;

a bargaining news business representative for a registered news business giving a notice under 52ZL(2), or not giving such a notice;

a registered news business being paid, or not being paid, an amount of remuneration for the making available of the registered news business’ covered news content by a designated digital platform service (whether or not the remuneration is paid in accordance with a determination of a panel under section 52ZX));

a registered news business being the subject of, or not being the subject of, an agreement of a kind described in section 52ZZK or 52ZZL;

a registered news business being the subject of, or not being the subject of, an agreement resulting from the acceptance of an offer of a kind described in section 52ZZM; or

differentiate between registered news businesses and news businesses that are not registered news businesses, because of any of the following matters:

a matter mentioned in subparagraph (a)(ia), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) or (v);

a news business covered by subsection (3) being paid, or not being paid, an amount of remuneration for the making available of the news business’ covered news content by a designated digital platform service;

a news business covered by subsection (3) being the subject of, or not being the subject of, an agreement of a kind described in section 52ZZK or 52ZZL;

a news business covered by subsection (3) being the subject of, or not being the subject of, an agreement resulting from the acceptance of an offer of a kind described in section 52ZZM; or

differentiate between news businesses that are not registered news businesses, because of any of the following matters:

a corporation being eligible to be registered under section 52G, or being eligible to be endorsed under that section as the registered news business corporation for a news business;

a corporation applying under section 52F for registration of itself, or of a news business, or for endorsement of itself as the registered news business corporation for a news business.

This subsection covers a news business if:

the news business is not a registered news businesses; and

none of the news sources that comprise the business form part of a registered news business.

Subsection (2) does not apply in relation to differentiation if:

there is an agreement between:

the responsible digital platform corporation, or a related body corporate of the responsible digital platform corporation; and

a corporation that is registered (or is eligible to be registered) under section 52G and, either by itself or together with other corporations, operates or controls a news business; and

the agreement provides that a corporation mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) will ensure that remuneration is to be paid to the news business for the making available of the news business’ covered news content by the digital service; and

the differentiation arises solely from the amount of that remuneration.

Subsection (2) does not apply in relation to differentiation if:

there is an agreement between:

the responsible digital platform corporation, or a related body corporate of the responsible digital platform corporation; and

a corporation that is registered (or is eligible to be registered) under section 52G and, either by itself or together with other corporations, operates or controls a news business; and

the agreement provides that:

a corporation mentioned in subparagraph (a)(ii) will ensure the provision of a specified type of covered news content to be made available by the digital service; and

a corporation mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) will ensure that the content is ranked preferentially when the digital service distributes the covered news content; and

the differentiation arises solely from that preferential ranking.

For the purposes of this section:

treat the reference in the definition of news source in section 52A to “it produces” as instead being a reference to “it regularly produces”; and

treat the reference in that definition to “news content” as instead being a reference to “covered news content”.