Facebook will pay part of the French press for “neighboring rights” – archyworldys

Facebook has reached an agreement with part of the French daily press to remunerate it under “neighboring rights” – a copyright reserved for the press, born from a European directive in March 2019 -, announced, Thursday, October 21, the social network, a few weeks after announcing agreements of the same type with The world and Le Figaro.

This “License agreement” signed with the General Information Press Alliance (APIG), which represents in particular national and regional dailies, “Provides that Facebook obtains and remunerates licenses for neighboring rights”, according to the press release. “In addition, it will give the possibility to the editors of the alliance who so wish to participate in Facebook News”, a new service dedicated to information to be launched in France in January 2022, said the social network.

“The terms we have reached will allow Facebook to apply the directive and French law, while generating significant funding for the alliance’s editors, especially the smallest of them”, welcomed Pierre Louette, President of APIG and Chairman and CEO of Les Echos-Le Parisien Group, quoted in the press release.

Neither the amount of compensation nor the method of calculation was disclosed.

Framework agreement

Neighboring rights are explicitly provided for by new European legislation adopted in 2019, immediately transposed in France. They open the way to remuneration for the authors of press content extracted from articles, photos, videos, infographics, etc. – presented on the results pages of major Web platforms. But these have long contested their principle, and negotiations with the press were very laborious.

A framework agreement on the subject was announced in January between APIG and Google, but it must be revised to take into account a condemnation, in July, of the search engine by the Competition Authority to a fine of 500 million euros for not having negotiated ” in good faith “ with press editors. The body asked the American giant to resume negotiations with publishers, to offer them a new compensation offer.

The groups The world and Le Figaro both announced separate agreements with Facebook less than a month ago, as they had previously done with Google, for compensation and promotion of their content.