Greece may favour platforms’ wishes on the calculation of press publishers’ remuneration, against EU law and setting at a serious risk the viability of the Greek news sector. Joint letter initiative by IFRRO members across Europe, Australia and South Africa.
By Creatives Unite Newsroom
Platforms gain a substantial part of their revenues, by exploiting publishers’ content, such as in search engines or news aggregation, without authorization and without fair compensation, explain in their letter, the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organization (IFRRO), its Greek member OSDEL and 21 more press publishers organisations.
The European Union has addressed this “value gap” by adopting the new Press Publishers’ Right, which establishes the legal framework for claiming fair remuneration. As Greek authorities work on specifying this mechanism for calculating publishers’ remuneration, they consider excluding the indirect revenues of the large platforms, which would “drastically minimize the remuneration due to publishers, leaving only a negligible fraction of the platforms’ vast revenues to be shared”.
The signatories provide international evidence and court decisions contradicting this approach, which “in effect coincides with the wishes of the platforms”.
They “respectfully urge” the Prime Minister of Greece, the birthplace of democracy, to take all necessary measures “to ensure that the Greek regulatory framework fully achieves its intended purpose: to guarantee fair and effective remuneration for publishers, in line with European law and international best practice”.
Find the letter here
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