Google has appealed the decision of the Competition Authority forcing it to negotiate "in good faith" with publishers and news agencies on the remuneration of their content protected by neighboring rights, he said. "We have decided to appeal to have more legal clarity on certain elements of the decision. Of course, our priority is to continue discussions with French publishers on the way forward," said the American giant in a statement.
The Competition Authority confirmed that it had been informed of the appeal, without giving further details. On April 9, the Authority imposed on Google this negotiation "in good faith" as emergency protective measures, until it published a decision on the merits concerning the application of the so-called reform "neighboring rights", following a complaint from certain press publishers and AFP.
Newspaper publishers accuse Google of seeking to bypass the law
The reform of neighboring rights, voted by the European Parliament in spring 2019 as part of a copyright law, opens the way to remuneration of the press by web platforms for content (photos and videos in particular ) displayed in the thumbnails proposed by the search engine in response to requests from Internet users.
But press publishers accuse Google of seeking to circumvent the law, by deciding to remove these thumbnails for publishers who do not accept the principle of free, and leaving only a few words of text as a reference instead. Google does not want to pay for these displays, arguing the huge traffic brought in exchange to the sites concerned.