This is the first partnership concluded by a press agency for rights related to copyright, a European directive that France was the first to transpose into its national law in 2019. The question of sharing the income generated on the web by the tech giants is at the heart of great tensions with the media around the world.

The agreement "covers the whole of the EU, in all AFP languages, including in countries which have not transposed the directive," said the CEO of Agence France-Presse, Fabrice on Wednesday. Fries, who described as "pioneer" this agreement negotiated for 18 months.

AFP produces and distributes multimedia content in six languages ​​to its clients in France and around the world.

For Mr. Fries, this signature is "the culmination of a long struggle. (...) We fought for the agencies to be fully eligible for neighboring rights. The difference with a commercial partnership is that a neighboring rights contract is intended to be sustainable, "continued the CEO of AFP.

"We sign this agreement to turn the page and move forward. We are here to show that the players can get along and that we have found a solution," said Sébastien Missoffe, general manager of Google in France. , interviewed jointly by AFP journalists.

The amount of the agreement, lump sum, was not disclosed.

It "will make it possible to contribute to the production of quality information and to the development of innovation within the Agency", indicated Mr. Fries.

"The precedent created, we will be able to engage in similar negotiations with other platforms," ​​said Fabrice Fries in an internal message to the employees of the agency.

Fact-checking training

The agreement with Google must be supplemented "very soon" by "a program relating to the fight against disinformation", affirmed the two companies in a joint statement.

AFP will notably offer fact-checking training.

In his message to employees, Fabrice Fries added that Google would "thus become one of the very first clients of the Agency, alongside Facebook."

The American group Meta, owner of the social network, pays more than 80 media outlets around the world, including AFP, under a content verification program.

The notion of rights related to copyright allows newspapers, magazines or press agencies to be remunerated when their content is reused on the Web.

It was established for online platforms by Article 15 of the European Copyright Directive, adopted in March 2019 by the European Parliament after more than two years of fierce debate.

After initially reluctant to pay French newspapers for the use of their content, Google ended up signing a framework agreement in early 2021, suspended since, with part of the press in France for a period of three years.

Seized by the press editors, the French Competition Authority imposed a fine of 500 million euros on him in mid-July for not having negotiated "in good faith".

Google has appealed, and at the same time continues negotiations with certain French media groups.

For its part, Facebook announced several agreements in October, including a framework agreement with the Alliance for the General Information Press (Apig) which provides for paying French daily press publishers for two years for the use of their contents.

This agreement provides for the participation of these publishers in Facebook News, a service dedicated to information, already launched in the United States and the United Kingdom, and that Facebook will deploy in France in January 2022.

Negotiations and tensions are numerous around Gafam and copyright.

In Spain, Google has just announced the reopening in early 2022 of its Google News service, which was closed seven years ago in this country in reaction to the adoption of an intellectual property law obliging it to pay the media.

In Denmark, the mainstream media announced in June that they would unite to negotiate their copyright with the web giants.

In Australia, a law was passed to force the tech giants to pay the media for the recovery of their content.

© 2021 AFP