AFP is seeking an urgent court order in Paris to force X to provide the necessary information on how it reuses AFP’s content. This information is needed to calculate the amount of money AFP is owed under France’s neighboring rights legislation.
In 2019, the European Union made a decision to extend copyright law to include excerpts of news content that are shared on digital platforms. This means that using parts of news articles or content when sharing them online now falls under the scope of copyright protection in the EU.
After news of the lawsuit emerged, Musk responded in his typical manner by replying to the news tweet. It appears that he disagrees with AFP’s position.
This is bizarre. They want us to pay *them* for traffic to their site where they make advertising revenue and we don’t!?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 3, 2023
Not only in the European Union but also in other regions, digital platforms are required by law to negotiate with publishers for remunerating news reuse. Canada recently passed the Online News Act, which also obliges tech platforms to negotiate with publishers for fair revenue sharing of their content.
