The French Antitrust has imposed a record 500 million euro fine on Google for violating related rights legislation. The Authority beyond the Alps criticizes the Californian company for not having negotiated fairly with the publishers on the application of the so-called “related rights”, or those copyrights inherent in the use and dissemination of a work, hindering a comparison “In good faith” on content remuneration.
Now the US search engine giant controlled by the Alphabet holding will have to submit by September “a remuneration offer for the current use of protected contents ”of publishers and news agencies, otherwise the maxi fine could reach peaks of 900 thousand euros per day. Some publishers like Alliance de la presse d ‘information générale, Syndicat des éditeurs de la presse magazine and Associated French Press, for which Google applied “bad faith” in the negotiations.
The Antitrust ruling proved them right: Google would have violated the obligation to enter into “scrupulous” negotiations with publishers, which “cannot be considered conducted in good faith, as Google required that discussions necessarily take place in the context of of a new partnership, called Publisher Curated News, which included a new service called Showcase “, according to the antitrust chief Isabelle de Silva
According to the Authority, the company also refused to engage in “specific discussion on the compensation due for the current uses of content protected by related rights”, and would “restrict the scope of the negotiation without justification, refusing to include the content of the agencies. of the press taken up by the newspapers (images for example) and excluding from the discussion all non-IPG press, even if undoubtedly affected by the new law, and that its content is also associated with significant revenues for Google ”.
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A behavior “aggravated by the failure to transmit information that would have allowed a fair negotiation, and by the violation of the obligations aimed at guaranteeing the neutrality of the negotiation with respect to the display of protected content and the economic relations existing between Google and publishers and agencies. print. And that its content is also associated with significant revenue for Google ”.
The Mountain View company for its part said it was “disappointed” by the verdict, which it would not consider “efforts put in place” to reach a solution and ignores “the reality of how news works on our platforms”. The fine, among the highest decided by a single member state of the European Union in this area, is added to the other measures and investigations against Google initiated in recent years in Europe.