Report from Courthouse News
In Brief – The Paris Court of Appeal has rejected Meta’s appeals of interim measures imposed by the French Competition Authority, upholding requirements that the social media giant negotiate fair rates with French publishers for using their content, provide the publishers greater transparency on the value of the content to the platform, and most importantly, not degrade the display conditions of press content. The antitrust regulator found in July that Meta was likely abusing its dominant market position by imposing unfair trading conditions and circumventing France’s neighboring rights law at the expense of press publishers. The interim measures will remain in effect while the authority investigates the merits of the case. Meta said it was disappointed with the rulings and will continue to comply with the interim measures.
Context – Media companies have been lobbying for years to convince governments to compel Google and Meta to pay them when news content appears on their platforms. Australia and France were the most responsive. Australia threatened to use a government arbiter to impose licensing rates on Google and Meta. France used the new neighboring rights provision of the 2019 European Copyright Directive, and most relevant for this case, when Google threatened to end media snippets to avoid paying, a tactic they had pursued elsewhere in Europe, the antitrust authority threatened sanctions. Google backed down and was fined too. In various markets since, Google has agreed to pay media tolls. Meta, starting in Canada in 2023, has pushed back. They blocked news in Canada rather than pay. In Europe, they have ended snippets for media posts in Poland to avoid payments. Earlier this year, while the Court of Justice of the European Union upheld Italy’s media payments regulatory regime, that ruling appears to leave open the option for platforms to cut off the use of media snippets and opt out entirely. The French antitrust regulator directly blocks that option, potentially setting up an EU court showdown to revisit the issue of whether a digital platform can be forced to carry media content and be forced to pay for it as well.