Canada and Australia are united to organize GAFA

The two heads of government spoke to each other on Monday after Facebook blocked news content in Australia. (Image: Getty Images)

Ottawa announced on Tuesday after a meeting between the two leaders that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison will coordinate their efforts to force tech giants to pay media for their content.

The statement said, “Premiers referred to the increasing cooperation between Canada and Australia in regulating Internet platforms.”

“They have agreed to continue to coordinate their work to address the online harm and make sure that the revenues of the web giants are shared more equitably with the creators and the media,” he says.

The two heads of government spoke to each other on Monday, after Facebook banned news content last week in Australia in response to a bill on the matter before Parliament.

The move by the tech giant, which is part of Gafa (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple), sparked outrage in Australia as well as in several countries before the US social media giant announced the lifting of the ban on Tuesday.

The bill, the first of its kind in the world, is stirring opposition from the giants of the sector: it is supposed to govern relations between media outlets facing major financial difficulties and the giants who dominate the Internet.

Canada, the European Union and other countries intend to regulate this sector, as France did in July 2019 by imposing a tax on the Gafa sales volume.

At the same time, negotiations began under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to reach an agreement on establishing such a tax at the international level, in accordance with rules acceptable to all countries.