What are rights related to copyright in digital matters?

These neighboring rights are a new component of intellectual property, introduced for digital platforms after long negotiations during a European copyright reform in 2019.

The European directive strengthens the negotiating position of creators and rights holders (composers, artists, etc.) vis-à-vis platforms such as YouTube (Google), which use their content. It has also created rights related to copyright for publishers and news agencies when their articles or photos are reproduced by aggregators like Google News, or social networks, like Facebook.

For Jean-Marie Cavada, president of the new collective management organization which must negotiate on behalf of several media with platforms (Google, Facebook, but also Microsoft or Twitter), neighboring rights now constitute a long-lasting mode of funding for the press. .

"We can no longer avoid the idea that the press, which provides content and spends money to produce it, must receive fair compensation from digital platforms that borrow its content to make a fortune. right, "he told Le Point.

How are they calculated?

For a long time, the platforms considered that the redirection of the traffic towards the press editors, which touched the advertising revenues, acted as sufficient "remuneration".

Google, the dominant player in online research, for a time left the choice to publishers to cede their neighboring rights free of charge or to be dereferenced from its news pages.

But the Competition Authority considered that these negotiating conditions were a circumvention of the law.

According to it, "the remuneration due for neighboring rights for the reproduction and communication to the public of press publications in digital form is based on the revenue from exploitation of any kind, direct or indirect or, failing that , assessed at a flat rate ", as is the case for the agreement between Google and AFP.

Where are the different European countries at?

"Brussels has launched a call to order procedure against 22 countries which have not fully or correctly transposed the European provision", underlines Clara Payan, associate of the firm Derriennic associés.

Late Thursday afternoon, Google also announced in a blog post that it had signed an agreement on neighboring copyright rights with several German media, including Spiegel, Die Zeit and Handelsblatt.

These were not immediately available for comment.

What about in France?

France transposed the "neighboring rights" part of the 2019 directive very quickly, in July 2019.

After reluctance, Google and Facebook began to negotiate agreements with newspaper publishers, individually or with associations representing them, such as the Alliance for the General Information Press (APIG), and the Union of Press Publishers. magazine (SEPM).

Discussions with these two associations are still ongoing.

In early October, during the Médias en Seine conference, the director general of Le Monde Louis Dreyfus confirmed the signing of an agreement with Google and Facebook.

The newspaper received the "first financial flows", he explained.

Neither Le Monde nor AFP have indicated the amount of sums that Google would pay.

According to lawyer Fabrice Lorvo of the FTPA firm, this is a "good start".

Google having recognized that it had to pay to display this content, it will not be able to go back, he emphasizes.

bur-jub-vac-lby / ico / LyS

© 2021 AFP