Digital Publishing
1 min read

Press agencies want Google, Facebook et al to pay for aggregating news

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Publishers have relied on referral traffic to gain readership for years. Now nine European press agencies such as Agence France-Presse (AFP), Germany’s Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA), and Britain’s Press Association are calling on Google, Facebook and others to pay copyright fees for using their content, which these Internet giants make a profit on.

Free is a myth, and informing the public costs a lot of money, according to one report.

The push comes as the European Union debates a directive to require that Facebook, Google, and others pay for the news articles they aggregate and serve up in search engine queries or social feeds.

“The draft directive would require the major players of the Internet to pay a fee to the media for the millions of content accessed on their platforms by Internet users in search of information,” reports one publication.

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