Hey, everyone. Before we start the show, just want to warn you that there are curse words in today's episode.

Okay, here's the show.

There's this story we've been watching unfold in Australia.

We've almost done a show about it several times.

So this story's been ongoing for a better part of a year and even a little bit longer.

That's James Hennessey, the editor of Business Insider Australia.

Back in April, Australia started working on a law to make Facebook and Google pay news publishers

if they wanted to link to their content.

And it was one of those things where, you know, the government talks about doing something,

fighting big tech, taxing big tech, doing something like that, and then nothing really

comes of it.

But over the past few months, the law gains steam.

The tech companies dug in against it and threatened to pull out of Australia entirely.

If this version of the code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop

making Google search available in Australia.

Then last week, Facebook banned news from its platform in Australia, angering the Prime

Minister.

The idea of shutting down the sort of sites they did yesterday as some sort of threat, well, I know how Australians react to that, and I thought that was not a good move on their part.

It's been a fascinating high-tech and high-stakes game of chicken.

Australia being a relatively small market, we don't normally throw our weight around,

especially in this kind of space.

But this time they did, and passed the law this week.

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