Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 17 June 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport

General Scheme of the Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill: Discussion (Resumed)

2:00 am

Mr. Bob Hughes:

One of the challenges we have faced is the copyright question and the appropriation and use of our content for AI learning. Various countries have attempted to take on the tech platforms and some have partially succeeded, such as Australia, Canada and France. The UK has used the EU model, despite Brexit, to try to bring in a digital market unit within the equivalent of its department of trade and enterprise. This is another way in which platforms can be brought to the table to properly remunerate us for the content, which they are currently not doing. There is a big debate on how much value news brings to their traffic; we believe it brings a lot. There are many studies, including those in America, which support that.