Facebook has signed a multiyear contract to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Australia for the use of its content.
The deal is the agreement reached by Facebook after Australia passed a world's-first law that forces social media companies to pay for news content.
News Corp. did not disclose how much Facebook had agreed to pay for its content but it did say that the social media company had signed a three-year contract. Last month, News Corp. agreed a contract with Google for the use of its content.
On Tuesday, the news network operator's chief executive officer Robert Thomson said the deal should serve to transform the "terms of trade for journalism" moving forward.
"Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch led a global debate while others in our industry were silent or supine as digital dysfunctionality threatened to turn journalism into a mendicant order. This digital denouement has been more than a decade in the making," Thomson said.
News Corp. is Australia's largest news network, controlling about 70% of the country's newspaper circulation. The company owns major newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun, and The Australian. It also owns the online news website news.com.au and TV network Sky News Australia.
News Corp. currently has an existing deal with Facebook for its U.S. news content. Facebook had agreed to pay the company for content and stories that it includes in its Facebook News tab.
The Australian government passed the policy earlier in the year amid an increasing call by local media outlets for legal intervention. News Corp. spearheaded the campaign in Australia with the support of its traditional rivals.
Officials said that the legislation was to encourage "fairer" contract negotiations between social media companies and content providers.
Facebook and Google were initially resistant to the new policies. Facebook pulled all news content for all Australian users. The move led to a massive exodus of Australian users from the platform. Facebook conceded and reinstated news content after it said that it had reached an agreement with the Australian government.
