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France: Google must negotiate publisher payments

April 9, 2020

France’s competition authority has ruled Google must start good faith negotiations with press publishers on the remuneration for the re-use of their protected content on its news and search pages.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) accused Google of disregarding legislation transposing the latest EU copyright directive into French law. This follows Google’s response to the new rules at the end of September, when the company announced that it would stop showing snippets of news articles on its news and search pages in France.

The regulator has ordered Google to conduct negotiations within three months of receiving a request to open remuneration talks from a press publisher or news agency.

The regulator said that Google’s policies are causing serious harm to the press sector, while the copyright law in question aims instead at improving the remuneration they derive from protected content.

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