French news payments deal shows Australia what to expect

Australia’s old media and big tech subsidiaries are edging forward on their seats, waiting to see the final shape of the news bargaining mandatory code to be tabled before parliament rises for the year at the end of next week.

There have been a few background briefings out of Canberra through an interested media: looks like the ABC and SBS will be included in the money pot; the code will take into account the value the platforms’ facilitated discovery brings to old media (or maybe it won’t); publishers seem to have backed off demands for access to more Google data and privileged insights into algorithmic changes.

And now, from France, there’s some indication of just how much money might go into the pot — a lot less than the ambitious billion-dollar claims of News Corp earlier this year.