Web giants should compensate Swiss media, says government

Search engines and other internet services pull in users by reproducing snippets of journalistic content. Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Internet giants, such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, should pay media companies for posting their journalistic work online, says the Swiss government.

Switzerland wants to follow the example of the European Union by forcing compensation of journalists when snippets of their articles appear in search engines, social media and multimedia sites.

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“For example, if a major search engine shows excerpts from newspaper articles in its search results, the online service should pay a fee for this in future,” the government stated on Wednesday.

Last year Google agreed to pay over 300 publishers in Germany, France and four other EU countries for their news. This followed the adoption of landmark EU copyright rules.

The government recommends that payments should apply to online companies with an average annual number of users equivalent to 10% of the Swiss population. This equates to just under 900,000 users.

Parliament will be asked to vote on an amendment to the copyright act following a consultation period that will last until September 15.

A proposed new collection agency, representing media groups and journalists, would negotiate and collect fees.

“The additional income for media companies and media professionals cannot be estimated at the moment, as this depends on the negotiations between the collecting societies and the user associations,” the government said.

Google should in theory pay Swiss publishers at least CHF154 million ($166 million) per year, according to a study from the German-language publishers’ association Schweizer Medien earlier this year.