Licensing can’t guarantee fair deals for publishers.
Zoë Brown & Akshat Agarwal 23. *Intern at the Information Policy Lab; **JD Candidate at Yale Law School; “Sustaining Journalism, Sustaining Democracy: A Policy Guide on Platforms and the Press.” Institute for Technology, Law and Policy. https://itlp.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/ITLP_PLATFORMS_AND_THE_PRESS.pdf
It is becoming increasingly clear that focusing on enhancing news publishers’ copyright protections does not by itself enable them to obtain better deals from digital platforms. Digital platforms remain extremely powerful, enabling them to pursue tactics of attrition in negotiations, like withdrawing or modifying their news products to circumvent the intended outcome of the law. In the absence of additional measures, such as those in France, news publishers may be given take-it-or-leave-it deals, with the underlying threat of diminished reach and viewership as a consequence of not having their content on platforms. By themselves ancillary rights may not be successful in compelling platforms to come to the negotiating table, and they cannot guarantee a fair deal will be struck. Greater focus is needed on the nature of the negotiations themselves, to ensure they are carried out in a fair manner, free from the undue influence that platforms may enjoy by virtue of their deep pockets and scale – millions of users that publishers may depend on them to reach.