The corrupt and immature world of the Internet is to be given a wake-up call where exploiters, users and intellectual property thieves will be exposed and made to pay. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Internet and the world it has delivered to us all, but there has always been a problem — there’s a lot of ripping off going on.

Today we’ve learnt from major news outlets such as The Australian and the AFR that the Morrison Government will bounce Google and Facebook to make them pay for the content they use that has been generated by other media businesses.

(Note: I’ve recognised my rival media businesses and given them a free plug for their stories, which is a lot more than other Internet operators who take information, use it and give no attribution.)

Between the Government and the Australian Competitions and Consumer Commission (ACCC), a mandatory code is coming, making these huge US-owned media businesses pay for the content they use to drive enormous numbers of people to their platforms, upon which they derive an enormous share of the ad dollars that have streamed away from newspapers, TV stations and radio businesses.

This has been a complaint that old world media has levelled at new world media for a long time but the collapse of ad revenue because of the closures of businesses and big parts of the economy has forced the Government’s hand to bring Google and Facebook to book.

These guys have been seen as users of media content created by others so the plan is that revenue sharing will be enforced between Google and Facebook and the media businesses they use to attract eyeballs.

This strong-arm action follows the big Net companies doing their best to avoid negotiating with local media outlets, so this big compulsory stick has been brought out.

Before Google, I’d wake up every morning and scan newspapers to find stories to report on. Now I go to Google and sometimes use the content from outlets where I pay as a subscriber but other times I might access other content where no payment results. I recently used the The Jerusalem Post for the first time in my life. While I gave the media outlet a plug, I’m sure Google gave nothing to the business that attracted me.

Politicians have never been good dealing with the invasion of the Internet and digital disruption. How Uber was able to set up without the rules that prevailed for cabs has always shocked me. And how did Airbnb set up with its suppliers of rooms, ignoring rules governing the setting up of a bed and breakfast?

The answer is simply that politicians were gutless and bowed to consumers who wanted a cheaper, better way of getting transport and accessing accommodation. As a consumer, I loved it but as a business commentator, I was surprised about the tolerated double standards that could only be explained by the gutlessness of our leaders.

There’s a lot of bad stuff about the digital world that goes unchecked. I know I’m marketed to by groups who paid to access a database that was created by something that once would have been seen as sneaky.

I know my smartphone is effectively listening and reading me and then I get marketed to.

I was surprised to hear a friend of mine was into Formula One car racing and when I spoke to her about it, I was sent photos from my phone of the time three years ago when we went to Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi!

I’ve always thought that Twitter should charge people who love to be commentators. And what about Skype?

Hasn’t the Coronavirus shown us the value of this service? It has always shocked me that the company that owns it — Microsoft — doesn’t charge for it but tech friends explained that they make money out of the data and related marketing.

It’s because we want it all and we’re tightwads that the business world has discovered that the Internet can be used in other ways to get something out of us and we cop it because we get some value out of using Facebook and Google.

However, the media companies think it has been a one-way street for too long and the Government agrees and I bet other governments around the world will follow suit.

Local media companies are looking for revenue sharing coming from news, ranking of local news and data sharing.

But this should lead to two responses.

First, Google and Facebook are bound to fight this in court. Second, if they lose, what we currently get for ‘free’ (if you ignore how these outfits ‘exploit’ us through sneaky marketing and data plays), you could end up seeing us charged for the value that currently we’re not physically paying for.

The AFR showed how significant the issue is in a University of Canberra study that “found that 46 per cent of surveyed consumers used social media such as Facebook for news and 18 per cent said it was their main source of news.”

Political gutlessness has created some unacceptable practices in the digital world but we could end up being hit in the hip pocket if Google and Facebook lose out in this brave new world created by the Morrison Government.