France has taken the lead in the EU in trying to win a new deal for media companies, and in 2019 it became the first EU country to pass regulations that required large tech firms to open negotiations with publishers seeking payment for use of their news content.
The head of the media group Les Echos-Le Parisien, Pierre Louette, led the negotiation on behalf of the APIG. While details of the agreement have not been released to the public, he described the outcome as positive, calling it, “The result of an outspoken and fruitful dialogue between publishers and a leading digital platform,” that will be generating significant funding” for news publishers in years to come. Louette said the impact will be felt most among the smaller publishers, who have seen their revenues crash in the face of Facebook and Google’s online ad offerings.
This is the second major victory for France and the APIG. Earlier this year Google announced it had reached a draft agreement with the APIG to pay publishers for a selection of content shown in its searches. While Facebook’s ad revenue is growing faster than Google’s, the search giant still earns the highest ad revenues in the world.
These deals are also the result of several other initiatives in a small number of companies, and particularly in Australia.
Both Facebook and Google have signed deals in Australia, and those agreements with Google have formed the basis for subsequent deals in other countries, including India and now France.
In the UK, news outlets including the global news giant The Guardian have signed on to a Facebook program to license articles that appear in a dedicated news section on the social media site, but that does not go as far as the terms of the deal with APIG, which also requires payment for news articles posted by Facebook users.
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