Alphabet Inc’s Google has agreed to pay $76m over three years to a group of French news publishers to end a more than year-long copyright spat, documents seen by Reuters news agency show, a deal one news publishers’ lobby deemed unfair.
The two documents, seen by Reuters and disclosed publicly for the first time; include a framework agreement that stipulates Google is ready to pay $22m annually in total to a group of 121 national and local French news publications; after signing individual licensing agreements with each of them.
The second document is a settlement agreement under which Google agrees to pay $10m to the same group of publishers in exchange for their commitment to end all present and future potential litigation tied to copyright claims over the duration of the three-year agreement.
Google declined to comment. The tech firm and the publishers announced that they had reached an agreement last month; but financial terms were not disclosed.
“These opaque agreements don’t ensure the fair treatment of all news publishers; since the calculation formula isn’t made public”; the union for independent online news publishers SPILL said earlier this week.
It said it regretted that the profession had not offered a united front in the talks with Google. “Google took advantage of our divisions to advance its interests,” it said.
Signing an individual licensing agreement with Google
In order to receive a share of the $22m that will be split among the publishers; each organization will be obliged to sign an individual licensing agreement with Google.
The fees range from $1.3m for France’s reference daily Le Monde at the top of the list to $13,741 for local publisher La Voix de la Haute-Marne, documents show. The document did not specify how these amounts are calculated.
Leading national dailies Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Liberation and their respective groups negotiated about 3 million euros ($3.6m) each per year on top of this; notably by agreeing in November to sell subscriptions through Google; one source close to the matter said.