French watchdog orders Google to pay media groups copyright

France’s competition regulator said Thursday that Google must start paying media groups for displaying their content, ordering it to begin negotiations after refusing for months to comply with Europe’s new digital copyright law.

The agency said it “requires Google, within three months, to conduct negotiations in good faith with publishers and news agencies on the remuneration for the re-use of their protected contents”.

“This injunction requires that the negotiations effectively result in a proposal for remuneration from Google” that must be applied retroactively to October 2019, when France became the first country to ratify the EU law.

NEIGHBOURING RIGHTS

The new rule on so-called “neighbouring rights” is designed to ensure news publishers are compensated when their work is shown on websites, search engines and social media platforms.