Google Will Pay French Publishers for Their News

Photo Credits to Jason Cohen

In 2021 Copyright laws are changing, and According to new approaches, Google agreed to pay French publishers, as this company is using their content online. According to CNN Business, there is a possibility that this landmark agreement might be used elsewhere in Europe soon.

APIG and the tech company are the French news media representatives, and they said on Thursday that Google and they agreed about the rules and principles of how those new publications have to be compensated for the distribution of their contents. They found the solution after months of talks, as Google representatives had a long conflict with publishers about how this company was displaying their content.

The European Union enacted new copyright laws in 2019,  according to which publishers must be paid for their news when they appear in search results. However, Google disagreed. The company mentioned that it would display headlines only. It was not acceptable for French publishers, and they claimed that Google had used its market dominance.

In order not to arise further conflict, Google and APIG agreed on the compensation criteria, as they are mentioning about this “the publisher’s contribution to political and general information, the daily volume of publications, and its monthly internet traffic,” this is only the information which they provided in this time, and the statement does not include further details how much will publishers get.

However, it is not an end, as Google has to negotiate with individual publishers to have a licensing agreement with them. The company was able to get deals with Le Monde and Le Figaro, which are daily newspapers in France. Today France is the only European Union member country that translated the Copyright Directive into their national law. Still, other European Union member states are expected to do so, as the implementation deadline is June 7 this year.