French Publishers Set Sights on Apple After Winning a Copyright Suit Against Google

Google announces its intent to not sign license agreements 

In September of 2019, Google announced that it would avoid signing license agreements with press publishers. The tech giant stated in a statement that it will only display a quantity of text necessary to meet baselines set out in the EU’s copyright directive. According to the directive, there are no restrictions on posting “very short extracts” of the news. 

At the time, this move caused a huge backlash angered French policymakers, with France’s former Culture Minister Franck Riester calling Google’s decision “unacceptable”.

Publishers lodged complaints against the tech giant

In November 2019, several publishers grouped together in the Syndicat des editeurs de la presse magazine and the Alliance de la Presse d’Information Generale as well as Agence France-Presse lodged complaints. As a result, the Alphabet unit was ordered by French antitrust regulators to pay publishers to display snippets of their articles after years of helping itself to excerpts for its own news service.

French antitrust regulators ask Google to make deals with publishers 

The French antitrust agency gave Google three months to make deals with press publishers and agencies on how to remunerate them for displaying their content. This decision was upheld on Appeal to the Paris Court of Appeal. 

On October 7, Google and the French press group, the Alliance de la Presse d’Information Générale (APIG) struck a deal. 

Pierre Louette, CEO of Groupe Les Echos who negotiated on behalf of the French press, said that Google had accepted the ‘principle of remuneration’ for the republishing of works defined in the copyright directive.

The publishing groups have written a letter to Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook

After negotiating better terms from Google, french publishing groups now want to fight for better terms with another Silicon Valley giant, Apple.

Gaining confidence from the win against Google, the publishers have written a letter to Apple’s Tim Cook. The letter highlights their concerns over the company’s terms of service in the App store.

 The letter stated the following,

1. “Content publishers are in a situation of absolute economic dependence on Apple for the distribution of their content on the iPhone since the only store available on this device is the AppStore.”  
2. Apple’s 30% commission on sales made through apps on the platform, in addition to the prohibitions on ‘alternative forms of payment outside the application’, only leads to further market concentration. The 30% commission has significant anti-competitive effects because of its excessively high, unfair and discriminatory conditions under which it is applied. 
3. “If a consumer takes out a subscription to a magazine via the AppStore, the magazine has no means of contacting – directly or indirectly – the subscriber, to propose content that corresponds to his or her interests or promotional offers for renewal.” In this way, the company behaves as a “disintermediator between the publisher and its readership” with the goal of securing an ‘excessively’ high level of commission.