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“Politicians! Don’t kill Polish media!” read a banner posted on major Polish news websites and papers’ front pages and homepages on Thursday.
A group of about 350 local news organizations launched a joint, one-day campaign to put pressure on Polish politicians to introduce fairer copyright rules in a draft law currently making its way through the national parliament, according to Radio Poland.
“We are facing the threat of domination of the Polish media market by global tech giants,” the group wrote in an open letter.
Last week, the parliament known as the Sejm passed an amendment to Poland’s copyright legislation implementing the European Union’s 2019 directive requiring large internet platforms to compensate publishers for the reuse of their content on services like Google’s search and Meta’s Facebook.
Publishers lobbied to amend the draft law to set rules that would allow them to better negotiate compensation with Big Tech giants. But the government largely ignored their pleas in the final amendment to the law, media groups said.
“Due to their rapid development, [technology companies] have taken the lion’s share of the advertising money that used to finance Polish media. They use the content we create for free and without punishment, while the profits are sent abroad,” the open letter said.
Media organizations said they need the support of the Polish state to have fair legislation. They warned that if there’s no regulation between media actors and big tech companies, it will all end in a years-long battle in the courts.
In countries like France, publishers and tech firms have already fought long courts cases. The French competition authority fined Google €250 million in March this year for failing to comply with the rules and the French news agency AFP is currently pursuing a copyright case against X.
