Hundreds of journalists yesterday called for European officials to take action against Google over its refusal to pay media companies for displaying their content in defiance of a strict new EU copyright law.
France was the first country to ratify the law, which was passed this year and comes into force today to ensure publishers are compensated when their work is displayed online.
However, Google last month said that articles, pictures and videos would be shown in search results only if media firms consent to let the tech giant use them for free.
If they refuse, only a headline and a bare link to the content would appear, Google said, almost certainly resulting in a loss of visibility and potential ad revenue for the publisher.
About 800 journalists as well as photographers, filmmakers and media CEOs signed an open letter published in newspapers across Europe urging governments to ensure that Google and other tech firms comply with the new EU rule.
“The law risks being stripped of all meaning before it even comes into force,” the letter said, calling Google’s move “a fresh insult to national and European sovereignty.”
“The existing situation, in which Google enjoys most of the advertising revenue generated by the news that it rakes in without any payment, is untenable and has plunged the media into a crisis that is deepening each year,” it said.
The presidents of the European Alliance of News Agencies and the European Newspaper Publishers’ Association also signed the letter.
Google has countered that it benefits news publishers by sending more than 8 billion visits to their Web sites each month in Europe alone.
However, news publishers say such links to their Web sites are unable to help them cope with plummeting revenues, as readers migrate online from traditional media outlets.
French President Emmanuel Macron has said Google would have to comply with the law, and the European Commission said it stands ready to assist member states, which must translate into domestic legislation by June 2021.
The new rules create so-called neighboring rights to ensure a form of copyright protection — and compensation — for media firms when their content is used on Web sites such as search engines or social media platforms.
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