Musk and X, formerly Twitter, face more legal issues. AFP is suing X for not discussing payment for its articles on the platform.
France’s 2019 neighboring rights law extended copyright law to news publishers’ text and video content for two years after publication. Instead of sharing without compensation, sites must negotiate with publishers.
The AFP stated in a press release that it had “expressed its concerns over Twitter’s (recently rebranded as ‘X’) apparent refusal to enter into discussions regarding the implementation of neighboring rights for the press. These rights were established so that news agencies and publishers would be able to receive remuneration from digital platforms, which keep the majority of the monetary value generated by the distribution of news content. Specifically, this was done so that digital platforms could compensate news agencies and publishers.
X is not the first tech company against which AFP has competed. France’s competition authority ordered Google to negotiate with publishers in 2020. In early 2021, authorities fined Google $546 million for failing to secure a fair deal, despite reaching an agreement.
In this instance, the argument was made that if an equitable deal was not reached, Google could potentially abuse its position due to its control of 90 percent of the search market. It’s unclear if this part of the Internet will face a similar battle since Twitter doesn’t dominate it.
