Today the Senate Judiciary Committee began markup of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) (S. 673 and H.R. 1735), a bipartisan bill that would allow local news publishers to come together to collectively negotiate with Google and Facebook for fair compensation for use of their content.
There was broad agreement voiced by members of the Committee that something must be done to solve the imbalance between Big Tech and local news, with healthy debate around how to best address the market imbalance in which the tech platforms create their own, selfishly motivated rules for the online marketplace around speech and compensation to publishers.
Though progress was being made during the markup and the bill sponsors successfully navigated several proposed amendments, debate was held to reconcile an amendment raised.