France Hits Google With $593 Million Fine In News Copyright Battle (reuters.com) 44
Google was fined 500 million euros ($593 million) Tuesday by French competition regulators for failing to comply with an order to negotiate fair deals with news publishers for the use of their content. CNBC reports: France's Competition Authority said Google had breached an April 2020 ruling that ordered the company to negotiate "in good faith" licensing deals with publishers and news agencies for any reuse of copyrighted content. In January, Google agreed to a major digital copyright deal with French publishers. As part of that deal, the company said it would negotiate individual licenses with members of France's press alliance covering related rights and access to a new service called News Showcase. France's competition agency took issue with this, saying it did not include a discussion on remuneration for current uses of content covered by "neighboring rights" for the press. The regulator added that Google restricted the scope of talks with the media by refusing to include the use of press images.
It is the largest-ever fine imposed by France's competition watchdog for a company's failure to adhere to one of its rulings, according to French news agency AFP. Google was ordered by the regulator to present an offer of remuneration for the use of protected content to publishers within two months or risk facing fines of up to 900,000 euros per day. Google said it was "very disappointed" by Tuesday's decision. "We have acted in good faith throughout the entire process," a Google spokesperson told CNBC. "The fine ignores our efforts to reach an agreement, and the reality of how news works on our platforms." "To date, Google is the only company to have announced agreements on neighboring rights," the spokesperson added. "We are also about to finalize an agreement with AFP that includes a global licensing agreement, as well as the remuneration of their neighboring rights for their press publications."
It is the largest-ever fine imposed by France's competition watchdog for a company's failure to adhere to one of its rulings, according to French news agency AFP. Google was ordered by the regulator to present an offer of remuneration for the use of protected content to publishers within two months or risk facing fines of up to 900,000 euros per day. Google said it was "very disappointed" by Tuesday's decision. "We have acted in good faith throughout the entire process," a Google spokesperson told CNBC. "The fine ignores our efforts to reach an agreement, and the reality of how news works on our platforms." "To date, Google is the only company to have announced agreements on neighboring rights," the spokesperson added. "We are also about to finalize an agreement with AFP that includes a global licensing agreement, as well as the remuneration of their neighboring rights for their press publications."
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Bringez moi un rock.
Re:I know this "good faith" game! (Score:4, Informative)
Literally, "Apportez moi un rocher" but something like "Donne moi une pierre" ("Give me a stone") is probably more colloquial.
Re:A tickle for Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Fines need to be based on percentages of turnover; any fine on Google that's less than several billion will achieve nothing.
You have to place that under the revenue generated by the country where the fine come from. The French market is much smaller than the US market so a half billion fine is a significant dent in the company revenues for the country, especially their revenue from News.
We'll have to see if the fine actually ever get collected since there will be appeals, and going through various courts and not to mention the changes of political regime that occur over the year. That last one is definitely harder to pull for a US company in a country where they avoid taxes.
Overall ... this seems like a bit more than a symbolic slap on the wrist.
Not the UK's approach over GDPR (Score:3)
We're setting the max at 4% of GLOBAL revenue
https://www.itgovernance.co.uk... [itgovernance.co.uk]
Re:A tickle for Google (Score:4, Insightful)
But at the same time, Google News can't be that profitable for Google.
If the fine is too high, then they can just shut that site down.
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I don't think Google News the website makes a lot of money but as a service it adds a lot of value to other Google products. For example most Android phones have the Google news feed thingy if you swipe left from the home screen. Chrome for Android includes news stories on the new tab page.
The user's interest in these stories helps Google target ads at them.
FTFY (Score:1)
...and the reality of how news works on our platforms
... and we don't want to change how we do things even if you tell we have to; the money looks good to us as it stands right now.
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Governments across the world such as here in Australia have been pursuing agreements with big tech to launder money to incumbent media empires such as Rupert.
One would have thought Google would have learned to roll over by now.
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Re:FTFY (Score:5, Funny)
Many would argue that the tax havens are still better than giving money to Rupert Murdock.
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confused (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this basically the snippets on news.google.com or something else? If it is, can't news websites just use robots.txt to stop it? Doesn't news.google.com help bring people to news websites? Am I missing something here?
Re: confused (Score:2)
That's pretty much exactly it. The (French / German / Italian / Australian / ..) government wants to force Google to show news content on Google sites and then force Google to pay the news providers more $$ for it than free market.
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They could, but they want forced customers (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, they could use robots.txt to tell Google not to use snippets from their site. Then Google would use AP directly, or a competing site, rather than going through the local site, since the local site doesn't want Google sending people to their site. Of course, they'd make no money from Google traffic, if they decided to refuse Google traffic via robots.txt.
Much more profitable for them is to have the government force people to use their site, and force them to pay for it. So they have Google forced to use them, rather than Google just not using that site.
Maybe Slashdot can get that deal. Get some lawmaker to force Google to send people to Slashdot, and pay Slashdot for the privilege, rather than Google sending people to competing sites.
Re: They could, but they want forced customers (Score:3)
those kind of puppet-government deals are only for special people, and we're not the right kind of special.
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This isn't about "copying" anything. It's literally France deciding that Google should pay for the "privilege" of giving French news organizations free advertising, and "fining" them if they don't pay money for no reason.
Google isn't always in the right, but here they absolutely are. This is bullshit.
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This exact argument could be made for someone like the pirate bay !
Or i could say that the only reason google has users is because obviously they want to go read stuff at the news site !
Do you go to Google to gaze at their search home page ?
So its clear Google's a middleman / tout / broker trying to make money from both parties to the transaction, which was fine till it became making money by essentially monopoly and criminal collusion.
Tomorrow Real Estate brokers or insurance salesmen might claim they brin
Re: confused (Score:1)
How is Google pirating news content? If anything, slashdot does that more than Google does as slashdot tends to have much larger snippets from the articles. So when do the lawsuits against slashdot come?
Oh wait, silly me, slashdot isn't available in Frog. Well what else can you expect from people who surrender to Nazis?
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Amazing when chinese factories copy americans complain about piracy but when google pirates news content, thats ok becaue google gets the money.
Google only shows snippets, and that's fair use in jurisdictions with such a thing. People who call copyright infringement piracy are trying to manipulate people emotionally, that means you. Google actually pays French publishers for news, so they're not "pirating" anything. France alleges that they're not abiding by the agreement, but that's probably bullshit as usual.
Americans are worse than whores
What do you have against whores? They provide value for money.
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You beter tell that to the american legal system,
Oh yeah, ours is shit too. I'm not here to defend it. Pharma, Miltech, and Hollywood IP are a distressingly big deal economically unfortunately so...
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They link to news. This is what search engines do. They don't publish the article, they show you headline and link to the article on "publisher's website". It's kind of funny on one hand you support going back to stone age where news aggregation and search doesn't exist, but post it on slashdot that does exactly that. Would you have even heard of France fining google if this story wasn't plucked from another site and shown to you? How would you have found it? Via some French news website, if you browse thos
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Just get out of French news (Score:2, Insightful)
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Google, why not take the simple route? (Score:2)
Just delist them until they give you a written statement that you can use their content free of charge. And if they don't, well, 9 out of 10 times it ain't really a loss.
Won't stand (Score:2)
The ECJ will send the French packing.
Just love it (Score:2)
And yet, they fine ALL OF their local car makers less than
So much for justice or fairness.