A number of main French newspapers have mentioned they’re suing the social media platform X, accusing it of operating their content material with out fee.
The joint motion in opposition to the corporate run by the US billionaire Elon Musk is being led by a number of every day newspapers – Le Figaro, Les Echos, Le Parisien and Le Monde – and contains different titles such because the tradition journal Telerama, Courrier Worldwide, HuffPost, Malesherbes Publications and the Nouvel Obs information weekly.
They accuse the positioning, previously referred to as Twitter, of violating “neighbouring rights”, which, below a European directive adopted into French legislation, are due when social media platforms republish information content material.
The newspapers, in addition to the French information company Agence France-Presse (AFP), had already requested for an emergency injunction in opposition to X, which they accuse of not negotiating.
On 24 Could, a Paris tribunal agreed with the media corporations, and gave X two months to offer business information that might permit the retailers to evaluate the revenue the platform earns from their content material.
X “has not but complied” with this resolution, “demonstrating its continued intent to keep away from its authorized obligations”, the newspapers mentioned in a press release, justifying their newest swimsuit.
France has been preventing for years to defend the publishing rights and income of its press and information companies in opposition to what it phrases the domination of highly effective tech corporations that share information content material or present information tales in net searches.
To sort out this, the EU has created a type of copyright, known as neighbouring rights, that enables information media to demand compensation for the usage of their content material.
France has been a check case for the EU guidelines. In 2019, it was the primary EU nation to enact the directive on the publishing rights of media corporations and information companies, which required massive tech platforms to open talks with publishers in search of remuneration to be used of stories content material. After preliminary resistance, Google and Fb each agreed to pay some French media for articles proven in net searches.
In March, a French lawyer for X mentioned the social community was not topic to the neighbouring rights directive as a result of, not like Google or Fb, X rests on “what customers put up” and never on what it publishes itself, the general public broadcaster France TV reported.
Final 12 months, Musk posted on X in regards to the AFP case, writing: “That is weird. They need us to pay *them* for site visitors to their web site the place they make promoting income and we don’t?!”
X has been approached for remark.
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