French international news agency, Agence France-Presse, has sued microblogging platform, Twitter, over the latter’s refusal to engage in talks regarding the implementation of neighbouring rights for the press.
“Neighbouring rights” refers to a French copyright law enacted in 2019, which grants news publishers the right to compensation from social media platforms that distribute their content.
In light of this, AFP filed an injunction to compel Twitter to provide the information needed for calculating the publisher’s compensation for news redistributed on the microblogging site.
“Today, AFP announces that it has taken legal action to obtain an urgent injunction before the Judicial Court of Paris. This move is aimed at compelling Twitter, in accordance with the law, to provide all the necessary elements required for assessing the remuneration owed to AFP under the neighbouring rights legislation,” the company said in a press release shared on Wednesday.
AFP also claimed in the statement that digital platforms “retain most of the monetary value generated by the distribution of news content”, and the rights were established to enable news agencies to earn their fair share of that revenue.
“As a leading advocate for the adoption of neighbouring rights for the press, AFP remains unwavering in its commitment to the cause, even four years after the law’s adoption. The legal proceedings initiated against Twitter today are in line with this ongoing commitment.
“The Agency will continue to employ the appropriate legal means with each relevant platform to ensure the fair distribution of the value generated by the sharing of news content,” the statement continued.
Reacting to the news on Thursday, Twitter owner, Elon Musk, stated that the suit was “bizarre”.
“This is bizarre. They want us to pay them for traffic to their site where they make advertising revenue and we don’t!?,” he tweeted.
The tech company, Google, was fined 500 million euros in 2021 under the same law, for its refusal to enter into negotiations with news publishers. It afterward signed a deal to pay for content published by French news agencies that appear on its search engine result.
Canada has also recently enacted a similar law that will also require digital platforms to pay news agencies for sharing their publications.
Due to the legislation, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced on Tuesday that it will be cutting off news access to Canadian users on its social media platforms.
