Big Tech payments for news an open-ended soap opera in Brazil

Countries such as Australia and Canada are establishing regulations for Big Tech platforms to compensate journalism companies for showcasing their content on social networks. Meanwhile, Brazil has yet to make progress on this front — and the unlikely sticking point is the high number of soap opera reruns on Brazilian TV.

The monetization of journalism is a topic discussed in the so-called “Fake News Bill”, which aims to regulate social networks in Brazil. The proposal was supposed to be voted on in May, but lawmakers decided to split it up into separate bills to facilitate its approval.

The section regarding payment for news sources was tacked on to a 2019 bill that originally dealt with paying musicians and actors for their copyrighted work. In recent weeks, popular Brazilian actors and singers went to the House to lobby for its approval, hoping to increase their income from residual payments from reruns or syndication.

But Brazil’s largest media group, Globo, fears that if the new rules are approved in their current form, they will force the company to pay large sums to its talent — especially those featured in soap opera reruns. For this reason, Globo is actively lobbying for the bill to be shelved. 

With a decades-long...