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Hotwire Headlines #11

From Australia: The latest in tech and innovation

In recent news, the Australian federal government will introduce a legislation to force Google and Facebook to pay for content and the government has introduced long-anticipated data sharing laws to parliament. Plus, research has found that Australians have high levels of concern about fake news and disinformation being spread on social media.

World Is Watching Plan to Make Facebook And Google Pay for Content: Frydenberg

The federal government will introduce legislation forcing multibillion-dollar tech giants Google and Facebook to face arbitration if they fail to come to commercial deals with traditional media on payment for content. Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said it was the government’s intention “to ensure that the rules of the digital world mirror the rules of the physical world and ultimately to sustain our media landscape here in Australia”.

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Govt’s public sector data sharing bill enters parliament

In a bid to make it easier for the public sector to share data within government and the private sector, the federal government has introduced long-anticipated data sharing laws to parliament. The Data Availability and Transparency Bill 2020 was introduced by Government Services Minister Stuart Robert on the second last sitting day of 2020.

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NAB prepares open banking environment for multi-cloud

The National Australia Bank, a player of the Big Four, is “progressively building towards” a multi-cloud environment for hosting elements of its open banking platform, which mirrors a broader effort to move outside of its initial heavy alignment to AWS to run more workloads in Azure.

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Social media alarms a majority of Aussies

More than one in two Australians have high levels of concern about fake news and disinformation being spread on social media, with 58 percent worried that their personal information could be hacked or misused on digital platforms. In light of the governments move to legislate powers forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news content and share data collection methods, the survey showed 67 percent of Australians wanted online search engines to seek approval when disseminating their consumer behaviour to third parties.

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Home Affairs to Take Control of Data and Cloud Infrastructure During Major Cyber Incidents Under Proposed Legislation

“Data and the cloud” would be recognised as critical infrastructure in Australia under changes to legislation recently introduced by the federal government. The proposed amendments would also support the government during a cyber-attack.

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