France fines Google €500M over copyright row

PARIS, July 13 (Reuters) – France’s antitrust watchdog slapped a 500 million euro ($593 million) exquisite on Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) on Tuesday for failing to conform with the regulator’s orders on be taught how to conduct talks with the country’s news publishers in a row over copyright.

The exquisite comes amid rising world stress on online platforms similar to Google and Facebook (FB.O) to share extra earnings with news shops.

The U.S. tech community need to now give you proposals all the plan by the subsequent two months on the plan in which it can compensate news companies and other publishers for the usage of their news. If it does not attain that, the company would face extra fines of up to 900,000 euros per day.

Google acknowledged it was very upset with the decision but would comply.

“Our goal stays the identical: we determine to flip the page with a definitive agreement. We can use the French Rivals Authority’s feedback into consideration and adapt our affords,” the U.S. tech enormous acknowledged.

A Google spokesperson added: “We have now acted in appropriate religion all the plan by the total technique. The exquisite ignores our efforts to reach an agreement, and the actuality of how news works on our platforms.”

Info publishers APIG, SEPM and AFP accuse the tech company of having did not retain talks in appropriate religion with them to procure basic flooring for the remuneration of experiences inform online, below a most standard European Union directive that creates so-known as “neighbouring rights”.

The case itself centered on whether Google breached non eternal orders issued by the antitrust authority, which demanded such talks happen within three months with any news publishers that ask for them.

“When the authority decrees an responsibility for an organization, it need to comply scrupulously, every in the spirit and letter (of the decision). Here, this was sadly not the case,” the antitrust physique’s chief, Isabelle de Silva, acknowledged in a observation. She also acknowledged the regulator regarded as as that Google had not acted in appropriate religion in its negotiations with the publishers.

APIG, which represents most main French print news publishers including Le Figaro and Le Monde, stays one of the significant plaintiffs, even though it signed a framework agreement with Google earlier this yr, sources have steered Reuters. This framework deal has been placed on retain pending the antitrust decision, the sources acknowledged. be taught extra

The framework agreement, which many other French media shops criticised, was one of the significant absolute top-profile provides below Google’s “Info Showcase” programme to give compensation for news snippets broken-down in search outcomes, and the main of its kind in Europe.

Google agreed to pay $76 million over three years to a community of 121 French news publishers to entire the copyright row, documents considered by Reuters confirmed.

It adopted months of bargaining between Google, French publishers and news companies over be taught how to coach the revamped EU copyright tips, which allow publishers to impeach a price from online platforms exhibiting extracts of their news. be taught extra

Reporting by Christian Lowe, extra reporting by Supantha Mukherjee
Writing by Mathieu Rosemain and Ingrid Melander; making improvements to by John Irish, Keith Weir and Jane Merriman

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