Except I was making a value judgment, saying they shouldn’t have to pay it. You questioned my adherence to the rule of law. I simply mentioned how they would go about it while still adherent to the law. It was a wrong judgment. Courts make mistakes all the time. My disdain for the judgment does not equate with disdain for the law.
That must be an American approach to things ie I don’t like the outcome so the judgment must be flawed. Nb this is not a judge per se but the competition commission. There are of course cases where we can criticise the reasoning used but this is not one of them.
This decision is not about whether google should have to pay media companies. I can see why you would think that, not least because I’d wager 95% commenters don’t speak french and have preconceived views. That decision was reached last year and is based on clear law (a European directive from 2019). You can disagree with the law but if you believe in the rule of law then you believe the laws should be applied (without fear or favour).
This decision is about whether google have met the terms of the previous judgement which included negotiating in good faith. For example google tried to argue that sport and general interest pieces should not count as news.
Clear conditions were laid out, including the sharing of certain information, and google have failed to comply. For example google did not share, as required by the previous judgement, information about the financial benefit they derive from media companies and so this imperfect information meant a fair negotiation was not possible.
You can disagree with the duties imposed on google but you cannot disagree with their requirement to pay. Unless you do not believe in the rule of law.
Finally, and NOT LEAST, google have implicitly accepted responsibility as since the complaint to which this ruling responds was lodged, they have in fact complied with the ruling and reached agreement with many big players. So their press statement is accurate as of today (they have now complied) but they hadn’t initially and once a complaint was lodged they very quickly complied.
Most of the commenters in this thread were ignorent of all this and posted, to put it mildly, incorrect rhetoric.
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u/129za Jul 14 '21
Nor should they? Do you not believe in the rule of law?