ABSTRACT
The rapid rise of large digital platforms, such as Google and Meta, and their unauthorized use of news snippets and crawling adversely influence the incentives and remuneration received by press publishers, and journalists. To remedy this adverse outcome, in 2019, the EU’s Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (2019 CDSM) implemented in Article 15, a new neighbouring right, namely the press publishers right. The said right seeks to facilitate the sustainability of press publishing, and thereby, contribute to the constitutional ideal of an independent and pluralist press. As Google attempted to circumvent the right, the French Competition Authority (FCA), Autorité de la Concurrence intervened early on and imposed a series of measures against non-compliance by Google. To further this delicate discussion at the interface of innovation laws (namely intellectual property and competition policy), technological innovations, media plurality and journalism, this research article follows an inter-disciplinary approach. Section 2 reflects on the interface between media plurality and democracy against the backdrop of the platform economy, and generative AI. Section 3 discusses how the rise of generative AI further strengthens the urgency to address media plurality. Section 4 explores the EU and Australian approach to remedy press publishers concerns. It assesses the effectiveness of these approaches, and identifies whether they are sufficient to address the additional concerns as we move from the digital platforms to the era of generative AI. Section 5 develops a normative framework on media plurality and weaves the discussion with recent technological developments. Section 6 concludes and offers roadmap for further research.
Tyagi, Kalpana, Generative AI, EU Press Publishers’ Rights and the Australian News Bargaining Approach: Copyright and Competition Law as Enablers of Media Plurality (May 4, 2026), Nordic Intellectual Property Law Review.
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