Apologies if this is too soon, soccer fans, but I’m rooting for Belgium in another showdown this week.
On Monday, the same day that Belgium trounced the U.S. in a Seattle World Cup match, the country’s lawyers were dueling with Google, Meta and other online platforms at the European Court of Justice.
Tech giants sued after Belgium created a law in 2022 helping authors, performers and journalists get compensated by digital platforms using their work.
This is another arena where European countries are ahead of the U.S.
Both regions are concerned about unfair competition by dominant tech companies and its effect on the local news industry.
But the European Union acted definitively. It passed a stronger copyright law in 2019 and a measure in 2022 designating and regulating “gatekeepers” to level the playing field.
European countries have since passed laws requiring gatekeepers to compensate journalists and others creating content appearing on their platforms.
Those countries want news outlets treated fairly because they believe journalism is essential to their democracies.
U.S. tech superstars responded with lawsuits.
In Belgium, Google and Meta sued to block portions of its law affecting journalists’ remuneration. Spotify, Sony Music and local streaming service Streamz sued over portions applying to subscription streaming services.
They were combined into a case heard Monday and Tuesday.
Google argued Tuesday that Belgium far exceeded the EU copyright directive and Meta argued that it blurred the distinction between publishers and platforms hosting content, Courthouse News Service reported.
France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Germany and Denmark sided with Belgium in the case, the report noted.
Denmark joined “because Google, Meta, Spotify and Sony have simply taken Belgium to court to avoid paying for the use of Belgian newspapers’ articles and photos,” Culture Minister Zenia Stampe wrote Monday on LinkedIn.
Stampe said “it should be self-evident and quite basic that you pay when you use articles or images to promote your platform, train your robots and make money.”
Tech giants “have already left a trail of destruction behind them,” the Danish striker continued:
“They have smashed the newspapers’ advertising economy, polluted our democratic discourse, stolen the rights of our journalists and artists, and created addiction and dissatisfaction among young people (and adults).”
The tech companies will have to pay eventually, according to Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, a U.S. trade group.
“They’ll just exhaust all potential remedies that they have, or legal mechanisms that they have, to try to stop the inevitable,” she said. “But the fact of the matter is they use our content and it’s getting worse.”
In the U.S., outlets are asking courts to protect their copyrighted work. I wrote Sunday about one of these cases, involving publishers of 400 small newspapers.
Right now Europe is well ahead of the U.S. in protecting this essential industry from online theft.
If U.S. publishers prevail in court, establishing strong copyright protection for their work online, we may leapfrog ahead of Europe in this game, at least.
Microsoft Australia deal: Microsoft will pay one of Australia’s largest news publishers to use its journalism in Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Terms of the deal between Microsoft and Australia’s Nine weren’t disclosed. Nine is a media conglomerate that publishes the Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review and other newspapers.
“Copilot will display snippets, headlines and summaries and will direct users to Nine’s mastheads, funneling them toward a trusted news source,” the Herald reported.
The story noted that Microsoft is also among several tech giants lobbying Australia’s government to “weaken copyright laws so they can more freely access content to train AI models” and offering more data center investments in return. Will they not build data centers otherwise?
Illinois report: Despite robust infrastructure to support local news, including a law intended to help keep outlets locally owned, Illinois saw its third-largest newspaper sold to a Wall Street firm known for cost cutting.
How that happened is dissected in a new report by the Local News Initiative at Northwestern’s Medill School. One factor was the Daily Herald’s complicated ownership structure, including an employee stock ownership program.
The Daily Herald’s owner also downsized before the sale, closing 13 other Illinois papers in June, creating at least five new news deserts, the report said.
Perhaps the analysis will help other states draft stronger policies to preserve and support their local news industries.
Local news slide: Local news remains more trusted than national news, but that trust is slipping, Pew Research Center researchers write at NiemanLab.
The share of U.S. adults who trust information from local outlets fell to 70% this year, down from 82% in 2016. Americans are increasingly getting local news from places like Facebook and Nextdoor or directly from government.
The researchers speculate that deteriorating quality may be a factor. Revenue and job losses severely reduced newsrooms and 39% of Americans now believe their local outlets aren’t doing well.
“The challenge now for local news organizations,” they wrote, “is to convince the public of their value to their communities — despite daunting financial woes, technological upheaval and growing political divisions.”
This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress.
