• by Ray Schultz , June 2, 2025

The Oregon legislature is mulling a bill that would force large tech platforms like Google and Meta to compensate Oregon news organizations for using the content they scrape from the newsrooms’ websites.

SB 686 was introduced earlier this month by Sen. Khanh Pham (D-Portland).  

The Senate Committee on Rules recommended passage with amendments, and the bill will now proceed to the full Senate.

An editorial supporting the measure is being jointly-published by more than 50 Oregon newspapers and is supported by the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association. 

“Platforms scrape and summarize journalism, keeping users on their sites and siphoning away the revenue that once supported local reporting, and this problem has only gotten worse with the advent of artificial intelligence,” the editorial says. 

Under the bill, the tech platforms would compensate journalism providers in one of two ways: “either pay a dollar amount annually, based on the number of worldwide monthly active users, or enter into a final arbitration process to determine the percentage of advertising revenue to be paid.”

The platforms with six billion or monthly active users would have to pay $104 million per year. 

Newsrooms would be required to spend “at least 70% of funds received 70 percent of funds received on news journalists and support staff, except providers with five or fewer employees must only spend at least 50 percent.” 

In addition, the bill would establish the Oregon Civic Information Consortium to support newsrooms, following the example of New Jersey. 

It is not yet clear whether Meta and Google will threaten the state with cutoff of news if the legislation is passed, or whether accommodations will be reached.