Challenging a proposed regulatory framework, 23 international press organizations have jointly urged the Greek Prime Minister to ensure fair remuneration for news publishers. The coalition, led by the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organization (IFRRO), argues that the current approach will undermine the economic viability of the Greek news sector by minimizing compensation from digital platforms that profit from publishers' content.
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
Image by Pexels from Pixabay - Free for use under the Pixabay Content License
