Because publishers and authorities are ganging up against Meta on fair compensation
Fieg also supports AgCom which saw all its powers frozen by a referral from the Lazio Regional Administrative Court to the EU Court of Justice following an appeal by Meta. And in the stamped papers the question of data arises, unrelated to the present case. Facts, documents and insights
The all-Italian clash continues between publishers and Meta, a group which includes Facebook and Instagram, which has quickly become a clash also between AgCom (which Italian law, transposing European law, has given a mandate to draw up an ad hoc regulation and assist the negotiation between the parties) and the Lazio Regional Administrative Court.
THE UNEXPECTED DECISION OF THE LAZIO TAR
The administrative judges of Lazio, called to review the appeal presented by Meta with sentence number 18790 , accepting the requests of the Menlo Park giant, have in fact simultaneously suspended the AgCom erga omnes regulation, maintaining that the Italian Authority has crossed the limits deriving from the relevant community regulations. And, for clarification, he forwarded the file to the EU Court of Justice which will then have to have its say.
EVERYTHING BLOCKED?
With the result that AgCom now finds itself without powers and unable to act in other cases as well, not only in the one that gave rise to everything and which concerned Gedi and Meta. In response, the authority has, predictably, decided to appeal to the Council of State.
The AgCom has appealed – as the newspaper Repubblica (newspaper of the Gedi Group, party in question) pointed out – to the second and final level of administrative justice, explaining that pending a response from the Court of Justice of the EU (only one for all 27 countries of the Union: for this reason it takes, on average, a year and a half to respond) the negotiations between the publishers and the Web giants are now frozen because the AgCom regulation has been deprived of its effects by this appeal.
META ENJOYS BETWEEN THE TWO FIGHTERS
The appeal had been made, as already mentioned, by Meta but this suspension paralyzes all negotiations between the publishers and any other Internet company. AgCom for its part, assisted by the State Attorney's Office, reminds the magistrates of the Council of The market capitalization of the company set up by Mark Zuckerberg was: over 1,190 billion dollars.
The fair compensation provided for by EU law would hardly damage it in any way, even if the Italian law had gone "too far". While the same cannot be said of Italian publishers who, as is known, are not always in good conditions. AgCom also underlines that its regulation certainly does not oblige Internet companies to pay fair compensation.
ARE SOCIAL MEDIA FEARS OF HAVING TO DISCLOSE THE DATA?
Among the various points on which the Lazio Regional Administrative Court wants to see clearly, there is one that deserves attention because, although hidden in the folds of the stamped papers, it could have value for BigTechs, that is, "if the art. 15 EUCD is an obstacle to national provisions, such as those indicated in the previous point 1), which impose on providers of information society services (in this case, Meta) an obligation to disclose data, subject to supervision by the same National regulatory authority, failure to comply with which leads to the applicability of administrative sanctioning measures".
Yet the AgCom in responding to the objections of the administrative judges points out that "in the context of the procedure for determining the fair compensation requested from Meta for the online use of Gedi's journalistic publications, where the Authority has only facilitated the ongoing negotiations between the parties, fully respecting and safeguarding their negotiating autonomy […] no request for information has been made to Meta". In short, why all this emphasis on the data that could be requested from Meta and the other partners, if in the case in question AgCom limited itself to facilitating the negotiation and the Italian publisher did not ask Menlo Park for anything?
An all-Italian controversy which, for obvious reasons, is good for Meta and the entourage of other owners of the major platforms. Which, it is known, obtain the so-called reactions (likes, shares, comments) generally precisely to the circulation of journalistic content. Furthermore, recent Meta algorithm changes aimed at retaining users on its pages are penalizing publishers.
WHAT FIEG SAYS ABOUT THE DISPUTE BETWEEN AGCOM AND META
This is also why the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers makes it known that it is "alongside the Communications Regulatory Authority, chaired by Giacomo Lasorella , against the suspension of the Regulation on fair compensation for the online use of journalistic publications". We read, again, in a note from Fieg, chaired by Andrea Riffeser Monti (in the photo): "The editors, in sharing what was written by the AgCom Commissioner Antonello Giacomelli (on the Huffington Post ) underline the importance of acting in all fora to protect the quality and sustainability of information, a guarantee of the principles of pluralism and freedom of expression of every democratic society".
And again: “The AgCom Regulation on fair compensation explains the rationale of the legislation transposing the Copyright Directive, i.e. guaranteeing the effectiveness of the related right recognized by it to publishers for the online use of journalistic publications, thus reducing the value gap between the publishers who produce the contents and the platforms that reproduce them".
ALL THE DAMAGES FROM THE TAR FOR HAVING FREEZED THE AGCOM REGULATION
For Fieg, "the AgCom Regulation – the result of discussion with the associations and trade representatives of the sector – is fundamental for the successful outcome of negotiations between publishers and platforms, also because it identifies the reference criteria for determining the fair compensation due for the online use of editorial content and obliges the platforms to make available the data necessary for this purpose" and "the suspension of the AgCom Regulation ordered by the TAR effectively relieves the platforms from the obligations established by the legislation transposing the Copyright Directive and distances itself from the objective of adequately protecting the editorial product".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/perche-editori-e-authority-si-coalizzano-contro-meta-sullequo-compenso/ on Tue, 27 Feb 2024 09:40:21 +0000.