France’s AFP Sues Musk’s X Social Media, Cites Refusal to Focus on Fee for Information

(Reuters) – Agence France-Presse (AFP) mentioned on Wednesday it filed a lawsuit in Paris towards 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 information company’s content material.

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

“Agence France-Presse has expressed its considerations over the clear refusal from Twitter (not too long ago rebranded as ‘X’) to enter into discussions concerning the implementation of neighbouring rights for the press,” the information company mentioned in an announcement.

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

“That is weird. They need us to pay *them* for visitors to their web site the place they make promoting income and we do not!?” he mentioned.

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 information publishers.

Since then, Google has dedicated to resolving the dispute and has introduced offers with AFP and a number of other different main French information organisations. Meta Platforms’ Fb too has signed agreements with some French publishers.

(Reporting by Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Enhancing by Edwina Gibbs)

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