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Google & co face tougher Swiss copyright fees

Parliament can decide on ancillary copyright for media
Parliament can decide on ancillary copyright for media Keystone-SDA

Large online services such as Google and X are set to pay copyright fees in Switzerland in future for displaying only short extracts from newspaper articles.

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Parliament can now decide on the controversial new ancillary media copyright rules.

The Federal Council adopted the dispatch on ancillary copyright on Friday. This concerns the use of so-called snippets – short texts or images created with journalistic services. They are currently not protected by copyright law.

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Accordingly, online services do not pay media companies any remuneration for the use of these texts. The Federal Council wants to change this and ensure that media professionals receive an appropriate share of the planned remuneration.

It is proposing that online services with an average number of users of at least 10% of the Swiss population per year must pay the remuneration.

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Translated from German by DeepL/mga

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