Related rights: 5 year agreement Google - French Agency for online content use
Agreement between Google and French Agency for Related Rights. It provides for the payment of compensation for the presentation of the agency's content online.
It marks the "end of a long battle" and the proof of the will to "turn the page": after hard, bitter negotiations for the implementation of the so-called kinship rights, the Google and the French Agency reached an agreement on Wednesday to provide compensation. next five years for the presentation of the content of the international news organization by the American giant of the Internet.
This is the first agreement of this kind that closes a news agency regarding related rights, after the European directive which France was the first country to include in its national law in 2019. The issue of the distribution of income provided by the giants on the web technology is at the heart of many tensions between them and the media internationally.
The agreement "covers the entire EU, all AFP languages, including those countries that have not adopted the directive," said Fabrice Free, president and general manager of the French agency. He described the agreement, which the two sides had been negotiating for 18 months, as "pioneering".
The French Agency produces and transmits multimedia content (texts, photos, videos, graphs ...) in six languages, which it has to its clients in France and internationally.
For Mr. Free, the signing of the agreement, in addition to "recognizing the value of the news", marks the end of a long battle (...). "We fought for news agencies to be fully eligible to benefit from related rights." The "difference" with this agreement is that it will have a "duration", added the president and general manager of the French Agency.
"We signed this agreement to turn the page and move on. "We did it to show that the actors can come to an agreement and find a solution," said Sebastian Misoff, Google's general manager in France.
The amount to be paid was not disclosed. What is certain is that "it will contribute to the production of quality content and to the development of innovation in the agency", Mr. Free noted.
"Thanks to the" precedent "created by this agreement," we will be able to conduct similar negotiations with other platforms, "Fabrice Free added in an internal message to AFP staff.
The agreement with Google will be completed "very soon" with a "program to combat misinformation," the two companies said in a joint statement.
In his message to employees, Mr. Free notes that Google will become "one of the agency's biggest customers, alongside Facebook." The American Meta Group, which owns the social networking site, rewards more than 80 media outlets internationally, including Agence France-Presse.
The concept of related rights allows newspapers, magazines, and news agencies to be compensated when their content is reproduced on the web. It was created for online platforms under Article 15 of the European Copyright Directive, which was adopted by the European Parliament in March 2019, after more than two years of dialogue, often tense.
Although initially reluctant to pay French newspapers for the use of their content, Google ended up signing a framework agreement in early 2021 - but which in the meantime was suspended - with part of the French press for three years.
Following appeals from publishers, the French Competition Authority imposed a fine of € 500 million in mid-July for not negotiating in good faith. Google has filed an appeal while continuing negotiations with a number of French media groups.
For its part, Facebook announced in October a number of agreements, including one with the Alliance pour la presse d'information générale (APIG), which provides for a two-year payment to French publishers. daily press for the use of their content. The agreement provides for the participation of publishers in the Facebook News application, already available in the US and the UK, which will be launched in France in January 2022.
Negotiations and tensions are many around the so-called GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) and copyright, according to APE-MPE. In Spain, Google announced that it would reopen Google News in early 2022, which it had shut down seven years ago in response to a copyright law that required it to pay media. In Denmark, major media outlets announced in June that they would team up to negotiate copyright collectively with internet giants. In Australia, a law has been passed to oblige technology companies to compensate the media for reproducing their content.
