Several major French newspapers have said they are suing social media platform X, accusing it of publishing their content without payment.
The joint action against the company of American billionaire Elon Musk is led by several newspapers – Le Figaro, Les Echos, Le Parisien and Le Monde – and includes other titles such as the cultural magazine Telerama, Courrier International, HuffPost, Malesherbes. Nouvel Obs weekly publications and news.
They accuse the site, formerly known as Twitter, of violating “neighboring rights,” which, according to a European directive adopted into French law, must be respected when social media platforms republish news content.
The newspapers, as well as the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), had already requested an emergency injunction against X, whom they accuse of not negotiating.
On May 24, a Paris court agreed with the media companies and gave
X “has not yet fulfilled” this decision, “which demonstrates its continuous intention to avoid its legal obligations,” says the newspaper in a statement, justifying its last lawsuit.
France has been fighting for years to protect the publishing rights and revenues of its press and news agencies against what it calls the dominance of powerful technology companies that share news content or display news in web searches.
To address this, the EU has created a form of copyright, called neighboring rights, which allows media outlets to demand compensation for the use of their content.
France has been a test case for EU rules. In 2019, it was the first EU country to enact the directive on publishing rights for media companies and news agencies, which required large tech platforms to start talks with publishers seeking remuneration for the use of content. of news. After initial resistance, Google and Facebook agreed to pay some French media for articles shown in web searches.
In March, a French lawyer for X said the social network was not subject to the neighboring rights directive because, unlike Google or Facebook, , public broadcaster France TV reported.
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Last year, musk aware in X about the AFP case, writing: “This is strange. “They want us to pay *them* for traffic to their site where they get ad revenue and we don’t?!”
X has been contacted for comment.