Copyright: EFJ joins IFRRO in asking Google to play fair

IFRRO, the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations, has written an open letter to Google to express concerns regarding its recent announcement to restrict content from European-based press publishers as part of an “experiment”. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) backs IFRRO’s letter and urges Google to reconsider its decision as a sign of respect for rightsholders and transparency obligations.

This decision follows a request from press publishers for greater transparency on the traffic that their press publications receive via Google News in particular. Instead of responding to this request for transparency, Google has decided to close access to press publishers’ publications in several European countries.

”..As outlined in Article 15 of the Copyright Directive, press publishers are granted the right to authorise the online use of their publications – specifically reproduction and communication to the public – and to receive remuneration for such use. Additionally, Article15.5 foresees that authors receive an appropriate share of the revenues that press publishers receive for the use of the press publication. Despite this clear legislative objective, large tech platforms have frequently failed to comply with the Directive, using their dominant market position to avoid proper negotiations and “free ride” on the press publications without remunerating publishers and authors,” reads the letter.

“Rather than fulfilling this reasonable request for transparency, Google decided to completely remove access to press publishers’ news in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain and deprive millions of users of their right to access information while also undermining the freedom of the press. Google claims that this will affect only 1% of users in these countries for a “limited time” but has not provided further details about how this 1% will be determined or what constitutes the “limited time period”.

Read the full letter.