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.
France’s Autorité de la concurrence said Google had breached a ruling in April 2020, which ordered the company to negotiate “in good faith” licensing deals with publishers and news agencies for any re-use of copyrighted content.
In January, Google agreed on 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.
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