A measure aimed at enabling news organisations to collaborate in negotiations with Alphabet Inc.’s (GOOGL.O) Google and Meta Inc.’s (META.O) Facebook in order to increase income was approved by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
By a vote of 15 to 7, the bill was approved by the committee, a congressional aide reported. It now has to be approved by the Senate. The U.S. House of Representatives is debating a similar bill.
The legislation aims to give news and television organisations more sway in response to years of accusations that major digital companies exploit their material to drive traffic and ad income without fairly paying the publishers, many of which are in dire financial straits.
Senators John Kennedy and Lindsey Graham joined Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, in introducing the bill, which also received some support from Republicans. Senator Alex Padilla and other Democrats raised concern about it.
When Senator Ted Cruz obtained support for a proposal to include clauses addressing what he sees as platforms limiting conservative viewpoints, the bill struck a speed bump earlier this month.
On Thursday, Klobuchar was successful in getting support for an amendment that said that the problem was the cost of using the material.
At a committee meeting to vote on the measure, she stated, “The purpose of the law is to allow local news organisations to get paid when large titans, monopolies like Facebook and Google, access their material.”
