After the setback suffered by the PPL Darcos, Pierre Petillault, director general, and Léa Boccara, legal manager of the Alliance, are counting on a new parliamentary niche in the fall. Membership in SPUR is under consideration.
JDN. The Balanant bill strengthening neighboring rights having been approved by the Senate on Tuesday June 16, is the battle about to be won against the platforms?
Léa Boccara. The Balanant law changes everything, since negotiations can be done in a few months with the support of Arcom, instead of years of procedure. Publishers will be able to contact Arcom to force the platforms to provide them with all the data on the use of their content, which they currently refuse to transmit to them, under penalty of heavy fines. Arcom may even set the amount of neighboring rights, if our negotiations are unsuccessful. And even if the platforms file an appeal before the Paris Court of Appeal, it will not be suspensive. As soon as the law comes into force, we will be able to use it even for ongoing procedures (Microsoft, LinkedIn, Meta, etc.). Suffice to say that this will come as a great relief to publishers who have to endure years of legal proceedings.
Pierre Petillault. With this new law we will have a dedicated arbitrator, Arcom, who we hope will intervene quickly and decisively, as the Competition Authority has done in the past, with a clear effect on negotiations and the conclusion of agreements. But the Authority can only intervene in the event of a competitive problem and the deadlines for judicial justice are not currently compatible with the urgency of the subject.
To date, only Google has agreed to negotiate with press publishers…
L.B. We signed two contracts with Google, an ENP contract (for Extended News Previews, editor’s note) and a Google News ShowCase contract. For everyone else, things are at a standstill. Meta offered us absolutely derisory amounts at the time of the renewal of the contract, which expired in January 2025. We were obliged to refer Meta to the Competition Authority last September and we hope that a decision on the precautionary measures will be given to us before the summer. As for Microsoft and LinkedIn, who have never paid us anything, we have taken them to court in 2024 and the procedure is ongoing, but it is extremely long. Their strategy is to burden publishers with incidents and therefore procedural costs. As for X, we are trying to relaunch negotiations, the procedure being much too cumbersome for the publishers individually.
The text must still progress, is it likely to move?
PP. We do not believe that there is a risk of significant modification given that the law is compatible with European law and that, in France, political alignment for its adoption is strong. We expect the law to be passed in the fall, that would be the ideal scenario.
Concerning the CJEU ruling validating the right of the Italian State to impose on Meta “fair remuneration” for the benefit of press publishers, the way in which the content is posted does not seem to have been decided. What do you say?
L.B. The CJEU ruling clearly states that Meta is subject to neighboring rights if press content circulates on the platform. But this judgment does not go into the details of how the content must be published to be subject to neighboring rights, in fact.
For Meta, from the moment it is the user or publisher who publishes the press content, it is not up to the social platform to be accountable, which strongly limits the scope…
L.B. This question of the granularity of acts of use falling or not within the field of neighboring law will soon be decided by the CJEU in the context of the Streamz case. If a restrictive interpretation were to be retained, it would be dramatic for publishers.
The majority buried the analysis of Senator Laure Darcos’ bill which aimed to establish a presumption of use of content by AI. What do you plan to do on this land now?
L.B. We still have hope of finding a new parliamentary niche in the fall. As long as these AI companies do not give us access to their data, presumption is the only leverage we can have to set up negotiations. This rebalances (a little) the balance of power which is now totally tilted in favor of AI companies.
Should we be interested, for example, in other forms of pressure tactics, such as SPUR?
PP. SPUR is an interesting and useful initiative that the Alliance is considering joining, but it is not the consortium that will lead the negotiations. We are trying to restart negotiations with the main generative AI suppliers.
