New Delhi : Meta Platforms has lost its fight against an Italian regulatory order that it should compensate publishers for using snippets of their news articles after Europe’s top court sided with the Italian telecoms watchdog.
This is the second significant legal setback for Meta, In 2025 an advisor to the European Union’s top court sided with Italy and the Italian regulator and on May 12, 2026 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled against Meta and backing the need to compensate publishers for using news snippets or sourcing content from them taken online.
The case reflects the ongoing copyright battle between news publishers and tech companies over the use of newspaper articles or authors’ work for AI training and this has triggered litigation against companies including Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic.
Google has also faced similar compensation disputes and has faced multiple setbacks across Europe- in France, Germany and Italy. The conclusion in the past legal battles has varied from defeats, fines and even forced settlements.
In April 2020 French regulators ordered Google to negotiate payments with publishers under EU copyright rules. The ruling was based on accusations that Google abused its dominant position by refusing to pay for displaying snippets of news content in search results. The regulator ordered Google to open negotiations within three months of being asked to do so by publishers.
In July 2021 the French competition authority fined Google $593 million for failing to comply with injunctions to negotiate “in good faith” with news publishers regarding the remuneration for using their content. In June 2022, Google dropped the appeal against the $593 million fine imposed by the French competition authority and accepted the fine and the associated commitments to settle the case with French news publishers.
In March 2024, the French competition watchdog fined Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, Google Ireland Ltd and Google France for around $272 million, this penalty resulted from violations related to publisher-payment commitments and the use of media content to train the AI model, Gemini.
While Google has managed to maintain its operations in Australia as of mid-2026 by renewing commercial deals under the News Media Bargaining Code, it remains under intense government pressure to ensure fair compensation for local journalism, and the story is no different in India.
Indian digital news publishers are pushing the government to mandate revenue-sharing agreements with the ‘Big Tech’ in particular, Google and Meta to ensure fair compensation for content. Publishers have raised concerns over the uneven playing field and declining advertising revenue and currently the government is considering a new law on fair payments altogether.
