France’s AFP sues Musk’s X social media, cites refusal to discuss payment for news

Agence France-Presse (AFP) stated on Wednesday it filed a lawsuit in Paris in opposition to Elon Musk’s X social media platform, previously often known as Twitter, accusing it of failing to debate potential fee for the distribution of the news company’s content material.

France in 2019 enacted a copyright rule dubbed “neighbouring rights” that compels massive on-line platforms to open talks with publishers in search of remuneration for news.

“Agence France-Presse has expressed its concerns over the clear refusal from Twitter (recently rebranded as ‘X’) to enter into discussions regarding the implementation of neighbouring rights for the press,” the news company stated in an announcement.

Musk criticised AFP’s transfer in an X social media put up.

“This is bizarre. They want us to pay *them* for traffic to their site where they make advertising revenue and we don’t!?” he stated.

X didn’t reply to a request for remark.

In 2021, France’s antitrust watchdog fined Alphabet’s Google 500 million euros for failing to adjust to orders on how you can conduct talks with the nation’s news publishers. Since then, Google has dedicated to resolving the dispute and has introduced offers with AFP and several other different main French news organisations. Meta Platforms’ Facebook too has signed agreements with some French publishers.

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