![[Freelance]](../gif/fl3H.png)
Le Monde journalists get their fair share
JOURNALISTS AT Le Monde are set to receive around €2000 (£1675) from their publisher's "neighbouring rights" income. This includes payments from the likes of Google and Facebook - mandated by the 2019 European Union law the Directive on Copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market. More controversially, it includes a share of income from a "partnership agreement" that Le Monde signed with OpenAI in March.
It remains to be seen now much cash comes in future.
In both cases the journalists are getting 25 per cent of the gross income received by the publisher. The EU law specifies that journalists must receive "an appropriate share of the revenues" from the internet giants. How this is panning out varies widely between EU member states.
In the law of almost all countries outside the English-speaking world, employed journalists have authors' rights (roughly, copyright) in their work and are also entitled, for example, to a share of income from photocopying and press clippings licences.
The partnership agreement allows OpenAI "to use Le Monde's corpus, for the duration of the agreement, as one of the major references to establish its answers and make them reliable. It provides for references to Le Monde articles to be highlighted and systematically accompanied by a logo, a hyperlink, and the titles of the articles used as references. Content supplied... by news agencies and photographs published by Le Monde is expressly excluded."
On 22 May NewsCorp, publisher of the Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Sun and more, announced an equivalent deal with OpenAI. Needless to say, there is no mention of a share for journalists.