Balanant bill on neighboring rights: what about authors?

European directive 2019/790, provides for remuneration of publishers and press agencies by major digital platforms such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft when their content is used, under "neighboring rights".

Transposed into French law by the law of July 24, 2019, this directive has not yet produced all the expected effects. In July 2021, the French Competition Authority fined Google 500 million euros for failing to respect neighboring rights, and in March 2024 a further 250 million euro fine was imposed for similar breaches. Despite this, publishers and news agencies are still struggling to obtain fair remuneration.

Faced with this situation, a new bill presented by MP Erwan Balanant, which takes up the bill tabled by MP Laurent Esquenet-Goxes during the previous legislature, aims to strengthen the negotiation procedure for neighboring rights.

Proposed measures :

1. List of mandatory information: Platforms must provide publishers and news agencies with a list of information relating to the use of their content and their financial results. The items on this list are defined by decree.

2. Deadline for submission: Information must be submitted within a maximum of six months, on pain of a fine of up to 2% of the company's worldwide sales.

3. Mediation procedure: In the event of disagreement, the Autorité de la concurrence acts as mediator. If no agreement is reached within one year, the Autorité de la concurrence itself determines the terms of remuneration.

4. Obligation of non-discriminatory treatment: During the negotiation period, platforms must treat rightsholder content in a non-discriminatory way.

The UPP, the photographic copyright societies (ADAGP, SAIF, SCAM) and the SNJ have entered into discussions with MP Balanant concerning this proposed law.

Indeed, while it organizes the remuneration of publishers and press agencies by platforms for the use of their content, it does not provide for the subsequent remuneration of the creators (journalists and authors) of said publishers and agencies. The value chain for content begins not with its distribution, but with its creation. It is therefore essential that the sums generated by the platforms remunerate the entire value chain, and not just the intermediaries, i.e. the publishers and press agencies.

If publishers and agencies are to be remunerated for the inclusion of their content on platforms, it is absolutely crucial to ensure that press photographers are in turn remunerated by press publishers for this new distribution.

That's what UPP is all about.

SdR