“These rights were established to enable news agencies and publishers to be remunerated by digital platforms which retain most of the monetary value generated by the distribution of news content,” the agency said in its statement.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Musk called the lawsuit “bizarre.”
“They want us to pay *them* for traffic to their site where they make advertising revenue and we don’t!?” he wrote on X, which he purchased in October.
Regulatory proposals to force social media companies to pay publishers for content featured on their platforms have been met with similar pushback. In June, Meta said it would block Canadians from sharing news on Facebook and Instagram in response to a new Canadian law that requires social media companies to pay domestic publishers for content.
In May, Meta threatened to block California users from sharing news on its platforms, as state legislators there have been weighing legislation requiring social media companies to pay news outlets for their content.
Australia passed a similar law in 2021, requiring the companies to strike deals with Australian news outlets for the content posted to their platforms — a move that prompted different responses from Meta and Google. The companies now strike deals with Australian news outlets for content posted to their platforms.
