Why Microsoft’s Bing will shell out 780 thousand dollars to Gedi (Republic)
Agcom, in an absolute first, established the fair compensation owed by Microsoft to Gedi for the use of his journalistic content on the Bing search engine. The Commissioner of the Authority, Elisa Giomi, however, voted against, raising some doubts… All the details
Gedi – publisher, among others, of Repubblica and La Stampa – will receive 780 thousand dollars over two years from Microsoft. This was established by the Communications Regulatory Authority (Agcom), which approved for the first time the fair compensation that the tech giant owes to the group chaired by John Elkann for the online use of journalistic publications on the Bing search engine.
But figures aside, this is a precedent that could open a new phase in the long ongoing battle between publishers and web platforms.
THE AMOUNT MICROSOFT OWES GEDI
According to Il Sole 24 Ore , the fair compensation that Microsoft owes Gedi amounts to 360 thousand dollars for 2021 and 420 thousand dollars for 2022, for a total of 780 thousand dollars. However, 2023 is missing since not all the data was yet available.
It is "the first provision that involves an information society service provider [Microsoft, ed. ] other than media monitoring and press review companies", specifies anote from the Authority.
THE CRITERIA TO CALCULATE FAIR COMPENSATION
Agcom explained that "the fair compensation due to publishers is calculated on the basis of the advertising revenues of the provider", in this case Microsoft, obtained "from the online use of the publisher's journalistic publications". This, "net of the revenues" that the publisher collects, because Bing – like other engines – drives traffic to its sites.
A rate of up to 70% is applied to this calculation base – the Authority always specifies – and is determined on the basis of certain criteria, which are:
a) number of online consultations of publications (to be calculated with the relevant reference metrics);
b) relevance of the publisher on the market (online audience);
c) number of journalists, classified pursuant to national collective agreements for the sector;
d) proven costs incurred by the publisher for technological and infrastructural investments intended for the creation of journalistic publications distributed online;
e) proven costs incurred by the provider for technological and infrastructural investments dedicated exclusively to the reproduction and communication of journalistic publications disseminated online;
f) adhesion and compliance, by the publisher and the provider, with self-regulation codes (including journalists' codes of ethics) and with international standards regarding the quality of information and fact-checking;
g) years of activity of the publisher in relation to the historicity of the newspaper.
Finally, Agcom ruled on "very short extracts", recognizing journalistic dignity also to the summaries of the articles that the Internet returns to us when we query the search engines.
THE RULES
The Agcom regulation on fair compensation, which the Authority adopted in January 2023, transposes the European Copyright Directive and establishes that publishers of journalistic publications must be paid fair compensation for the exploitation of their contents. Furthermore, last April the Council of State, with a decision that represented a victory for Agcom and the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers (Fieg) in the legal dispute with Meta-Facebook, overturned the TAR's decision which had suspended the Agcom regulation on fair compensation.
A MILESTONE
As Il Sole observes, Agcom's decision towards Microsoft is not particularly significant for the figure itself (which in publishing does not significantly change the dramatic situation in which it finds itself) but rather for the novelty it represents in the ongoing conflict has been going on for years between publishers and web platforms, "divided by the issue of the value gap: the subtraction of financial resources from advertising, which has inexorably moved towards online platforms that use traditional media content".
Furthermore, 780 thousand dollars may not be a lot in publishing but, as the economic newspaper underlines, Bing is certainly not among the top search engines in terms of use and therefore if the same Agcom decision is applied to others the order of magnitude should inevitably be different.
QUESTION MARKS
A historic decision therefore but not definitive because, as Repubblica observes, "there is always the possibility for the parties to appeal in court". Furthermore, the decision was taken with the negative vote of Agcom commissioner Elisa Giomi, for whom the Authority's ruling has "historic significance", but poses two problems.
“The first – he explained – is in the precedent that is created with the comparison between a very short extract and a full journalistic publication. The EU directive exempts short extracts from the payment of fair compensation while Agcom arbitrarily applies it. The second problem is that the fair compensation is not calculated based on the actual use of the short extracts, but through an estimate of the engine's advertising revenues".
However, there are no doubts for Alessandra Costante , general secretary of the national journalists' union (Fnsi): “Agcom's decision is epochal. […] In the decision the Authority uses an objective parameter, strongly anchored to reality and difficult to contest, from our point of view, such as turnover, calculating the compensation due to publishers on the basis of the advertising revenues of the search engine for the consultation of that article."
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/perche-bing-di-microsoft-sborsera-780mila-dollari-a-gedi-repubblica/ on Fri, 26 Jul 2024 08:55:03 +0000.