On August 2, Agence France-Presse (AFP) made an announcement that it had initiated legal action against Company X (formerly referred to as Twitter) under European "right to the neighbourhood" legislation. This move comes as AFP seeks to compel Company X , or Twitter, to provide data related to the sharing frequency of an article on its platform. The purpose behind this legal action is to obtain the necessary information to calculate compensation owed to AFP in accordance with the neighboring rights laws.
The European Union's neighboring rights legislation, updated in 2019, extends to news organizations and their published works. It enforces that social media platforms within the EU cannot reproduce news content without a valid agreement with the original publisher. This legal framework essentially establishes a royalty- like system similar to entertainment media, requiring compensation for the use of copyrighted material, including news articles, images, videos, and audio files.
The law prohibits the use of hyperlinks, specific words, and "very short" snippets of text without proper authorization. This indicates that AFP might be targeting instances where fragments of images, videos, or text shared on Company X's platform exceeded the defined limit for "very short." Elon Musk, the owner of Company X, responded swiftly to the reports of the lawsuit on the platform, describing the situation as "strange."
This is not AFP's first encounter with tech giants over neighboring rights laws. In 2021, after a two-year legal dispute, Google was eventually compelled to reach an agreement with the French news outlet regarding neighboring rights. The legal act ion against Company X follows a similar trajectory in AFP's efforts to protect its intellectual property rights within the digital landscape.
