The European Union will oblige Google and Facebook to pay content authors for their use

The European Commission has approved a copyright reform project that has been discussed for more than two years. The reform should force content aggregators such as Facebook and Google to pay royalties to copyright holders for their use. But the Internet giants will not give up so easily. For example, when the same law was passed in Spain, Google simply disabled its Google News aggregator in the country.

More. The European Parliament and the EU Council are expected to approve the reform in the coming weeks. The new rules oblige aggregators and social networks to:

• pay publishers to display their content in the news;
• share revenue with video and music producers;
• remove copyrighted works.

To use content legally, social networks will have to sign licensing agreements with copyright holders, including musicians, writers and journalists. True, agreements will have to be concluded only at the request of the copyright holder. In addition, aggregators are required to ensure that protected content is not downloaded by users.

Exceptions are made for companies with less than 5 million users per month, with annual revenues of less than €10 million or less than three years old, as well as non-profit enterprises like Wikipedia, cultural organizations, scientists and students.

The European Commission, when adopting the new rules, relied on a 2016 study that showed that copyright holders lose up to half of the traffic due to aggregators and social networks. It showed that 57% of users consume news and articles through social networks, news aggregators or search engines, and in 47% of cases they do not go to the site of the copyright holder. The same is true for music and video, and the trend has only intensified over the years, writes the European Commission.

What will happen next. The European innovation means a likely loss of revenue and difficulties with the legalization of content in Europe for Internet companies. Google has already warned that it will not be able to enter into an agreement with each copyright holder at his request. But he managed to get significant concessions from the EU: the aggregator will not automatically be liable for copyright infringement if he made “due efforts” to prevent this content from appearing on his site.

Nevertheless, the benefits for copyright holders may turn out to be doubtful : the same Google warned back in 2016 that the result could be a reduction in traffic going to media sites. This is proven by examples from practice.

• In Germany, a law has been in force since 2014 requiring news aggregators to pay media outlets for content. Then Google offered the media a choice: either refuse the fee or be excluded from the news aggregator Google News. Publishing house Axel Springer chose an exception and lost 70% of the traffic. As a result, the company allowed Google to link to the texts for free.
• In Spain, when a similar law came into force in the same 2014, Google did not waste time on trifles and simply turned off Google News in the country. The service does not work in Spain until now, and in the very first months after its closure, the Spanish Publishers Association recognized the law as harmful - the traffic of all 84 largest Spanish online publications dropped significantly.

If the law becomes pan-European, Google News will not be shut down in all of Europe with its 500 million users, suggests Quartz . But the disunity of publishers will certainly come to the aid of aggregators. Some will probably prefer to save traffic by sacrificing unpredictable earnings on content licensing, and those who still want to make money on Google will lose market share in favor of the former.

Sergei Smirnov