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"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story [arstechnica.com]:

Elon Musk is at the center of yet another legal battle over money allegedly owed by X, the company formerly known as Twitter. A French international news agency, Agence France-Presse (AFP), announced [afp.com] yesterday that it has taken legal action in the Judicial Court of Paris to compel X to provide the data needed to assess compensation owed for X users sharing AFP news content on the platform.

Musk's only reported response so far comes in a post [twitter.com] formerly known as a tweet.

"This is bizarre," Musk wrote. "They want us to pay *them* for traffic to their site where they make advertising revenue and we don’t!?"

Musk is seemingly unaware of a European Union directive [europa.eu] from 2019 granting news agencies' so-called "neighboring rights." These rights were designed to reduce the "value gap" between publishers and the online platforms that profit off of promoting publishers' content.

AFP filed the copyright case after becoming concerned about "the clear refusal" from X to "enter into discussions regarding the implementation of neighboring rights for the press," the AFP press release said. During discussions, AFP said that X was expected to share data that would help the news agency calculate how much money X owed for profiting off of AFP's news content.

Now AFP is seeking an "urgent injunction" ordering X to "provide all the necessary elements required for assessing the remuneration owed to AFP under the neighboring rights legislation."

X and AFP did not immediately respond to Ars' request to comment.

X is not the only platform that AFP said it will be targeting for compensation.

"The Agency will continue to employ the appropriate legal means with each relevant platform to ensure the fair distribution of the value generated by the sharing of news content," AFP's press release said.

News organizations like AFP pushed for the neighboring rights legislation as the bulk of online ad revenue shifted away from news publishers to giant social media platforms. The concern remains that if platforms don't share ad revenue, quality news organizations will be forced out of business.

Other online platforms have resisted negotiating with EU news organizations since the neighboring rights legislation passed. Copyright battles raged between Big Tech companies and EU news publishers for years, Euronews reported [euronews.com]. Last year, Google finally caved and signed an agreement with the Alliance for the General Information Press (APIG), which represents hundreds of French news groups, Euronews reported. That deal happened after APIG also reached a deal with Facebook.

As more countries pass regulations compelling online platforms to pay news providers, though, platforms have not grown less resistant to signing such deals. Currently, Meta is blocking news on Facebook and Instagram in Canada, The New York Times reported [nytimes.com], protesting a new law requiring tech companies to pay news outlets.

In the US, a similar law known as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act [congress.gov] is advancing in Congress and is designed to "provide a temporary safe harbor for publishers of online content to collectively negotiate with dominant online platforms regarding the terms on which content may be distributed."

California—where many Big Tech companies are based—has floated its own version of the law, the California Journalism Preservation Act [ca.gov] (CJPA), and tech companies aren't the only ones opposing that legislation.

Internet law expert Eric Goldman posted a blog [ericgoldman.org] back in June explaining why he opposes the California law. Among what he sees as major policy flaws—such as allegedly violating the First Amendment and potentially incentivizing platforms to remove news content (as is happening in Canada)—Goldman suggested that "the principles behind CJPA have been tried in other countries, with no apparent success anywhere."

Ars could not immediately reach APIG to determine whether France publishers have benefited from deals with Google and Facebook. Goldman did not immediately respond to Ars' request to comment. [Update: Goldman told Ars that "it seems ironic for AFP to prioritize Twitter as a test case given that Twitter isn't profitable itself and is struggling to retain users and advertisers. As the expression goes, you can't get blood from a turnip. Worse, because 'neighboring rights' mis-assess the value of links (treating links as an economic benefit to the linker, rather than the recipient of the extra attention and traffic), a service like Twitter has every incentive to eliminate or reduce the links rather than pay for them."]

Like APIG, AFP has positioned itself as a defender of France news agencies' rights and says this week's copyright action taken against X is "in line" with its "ongoing commitment" to ensure platforms comply with the EU and France laws.

"As a leading advocate for the adoption of neighboring rights for the press, AFP remains unwavering in its commitment to the cause, even four years after the law’s adoption," AFP said.

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