The Paris commercial court ordered, on Wednesday, November 13, the search engine Google to abandon its plan to make invisible some articles from the media with which it maintains a dispute over related rights.
Justice was done, through an emergency procedure, by the Union of Magazine Press Editors (SEPM), which learned that Google planned to test this means of pressure starting on Thursday.
According to Google, this is“an experiment limited in time” For “evaluate the influence of the display of content from European press publishers on the search experience of our users and on the traffic that Google sends to the publishers”.
The two parties have been negotiating for several years over rights related to copyright, established for digital platforms by a 2019 European directive.
Sanction of 900,000 euros per day
These rights allow newspapers, magazines or press agencies to receive remuneration when their content is reused by large digital groups (in this case, titles and extracts of articles), in Google search results or the Google News portal.
The court ordered Google LLC, an American company, Google Ireland and Google France “do not take the test”on pain of “penalty of 300,000 euros per day each”or 900,000 euros in total, according to a decision consulted by Agence France-Presse.
The case must later be decided by a judge in summary proceedings.
“The SEPM is delighted with this result that preserves the interests of the entire French press and will be very attentive to the evolution of this case before the summary judge and before the Competition Authority”The professional organization, which brings together 80 companies, that is, 500 paper titles and 200 online, indicated in a statement.
“Very surprised”
“We are very surprised by the SEPM’s position, even though it itself asked us for this data in writing”Google reacted in a press release.
The company claims to have attempted to collect data from a limited number of Internet users, because “Independent administrative authorities and press editors have asked us for more information about the impact of displaying news content on our search engine.”.
In March, Google received a fine of 250 million euros from the French competition authority, which accused it of not having respected some of the commitments made in 2022 in this case.
The subsidiary of the Alphabet group is not the only one that maintains disputes with the French media on this issue. Accused of bad faith in its negotiations, the social network the world, The Figaro EITHER The Parisianas well as by the Agence France-Presse.
