Paris, France – International news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) has announced that it has sued X, the platform formerly known as Twitter and owned by Elon Musk, to provide all the necessary elements required for assessing the remuneration owed to AFP under the neighbouring rights legislation.
In a recent statement, AFP said that X had refused to enter into discussions regarding the implementation of neighbouring rights for the press.
For the news agency, these rights were established to enable news agencies and publishers to be remunerated by digital platforms which retain most of the monetary value generated by the distribution of news content.
AFP filed its legal action in the judicial court of Paris.
“As a leading advocate for the adoption of neighbouring rights for the press, AFP remains unwavering in its commitment to the cause, even four years after the law’s adoption. The legal proceedings initiated against Twitter today are in line with this ongoing commitment,” the company said.
The added, “The agency will continue to employ the appropriate legal means with each relevant platform to ensure the fair distribution of the value generated by the sharing of news content.”
In response, Elon Musk tweeted saying, “This is bizarre. They want us to pay *them* for traffic to their site where they make advertising revenue and we don’t!?”
Musk rebranded Twitter to X on July 23, months after Twitter merged with X Corp., the technology company helmed by Musk. The new updates comes over a month after Twitter named former NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino as its new chief executive officer. Musk completed its acquisition of Twitter back in October 2022.
