BJP Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Kumar Modi mentioned in his speech in Rajya Sabha that major tech companies like Google, Meta-owned Facebook and YouTube, should ideally share the advertising revenue generated by accounts posting news reports with the media organizations who produce the original content.
In his speech he added that Indian newspapers and TV channels have significantly lost profits on advertising revenue after the entry of these tech giants in the Indian market. The BJP Rajya Sabha MP added that print and electronic media companies have been spending thousands of crores of Rupees on news content creation and publication. He also noted that traditional print and electronic media companies hugely rely on advertising revenue as their main source of income
The BJP MP informed the Parliament that recent data suggest that Google India generated an income of Rs 24,927 crore in 2021-22. Meanwhile, META’s Facebook’s generated a revenue of Rs 16,189 crore in the previous fiscal year – which exhibits a rise of around 75% over the preceding year.
Sushil Kumar Modi mentioned his opinion that these companies make advertisement revenue off readymade content created by agencies and individuals across the globe. In this context, platforms like Google, Facebook and YouTube should provide revenue benefits to the creators of the content available that acts as the source of this revenue.
Modi mentioned in the Upper House that “these big tech companies do not spend money on content creation. But show the readymade content for free.” The BJP Rajya Sabha added that a provision on this matter should be included in the Digital India Act to support Indian digital content creators.