“Illegal exchange [de jornais e revistas] had a very significant impact on bank sales in those first six months, not to mention what happened last year and is happening on social media, especially in conversational “software” such as Telegram and WhatsApp, ”said Carlos Eugenio. , executive director of Vitapress Luce.
The organization responsible for the collective management of the immanent copyright of newspapers, magazines and journalists analyzed the main Telegram groups that share newspapers and magazines and concluded that the national press in the first six months of 2021 was unable to collect more than 22 million euros in publications sold at the newsstand.
Sharing publications on these platforms “seriously harms bank sales (…) and digital subscriptions, and the € 22 million value from the beginning of the year to that date is related to the number of shares listed on the Internet.” – he stressed.
Carlos Eugenio noted that there are groups on Telegram that are growing “exponentially”, which is worrying.
“Even due to the fact that the ineffectiveness of the existing legislation and the insufficient speed that exists in the current legislation, it is obvious that it is necessary to stop illegal actions with the content that we present, namely with newspapers and magazines,” he criticizes. …
“I think someone was completely confused when, for example, we filed an injunction that needs to be quickly resolved, and for purely procedural reasons, we have been waiting for a decision from November,” he explained.
On average, 88 posts are shared daily in Telegram groups.
“In other words, the spread is so massive and so fast that we waited from November until that date for the court to order Telegram to block these shares or do something to prevent these actions from happening, this is something that the editors of the press do not like at all,” – he stressed.
Regarding what can be done to prevent the spread of unauthorized editorial content, the chief executive said it is already being done.
“What we do on a daily basis” is to ask Telegram through the means they provide and WhatsApp whenever it detects unauthorized posts, as well as other social networks, with a request to “remove the same content”.
But “the problem is that these networks have a will of their own, are guided by their goals and have rules created by them, and for the most part, Olympic ignore our requests,” said Carlos Eugenio.
“Therefore, if we cannot, through the way they suggest that we make a request and demonstrate that it is necessary to remove this content because it is illegal, we should look at what the law gives us and try to fulfill what it gives law, we can help, ”he said.
“However, we believe that we need a law that gives us greater speed, a more effective, especially effective law that helps us to suppress illegal actions as quickly as possible, because today, as we all know, the Internet is secondly, the law does not mean that content is removed as quickly as we need it, ”said the executive director.
In addition, situations like this lead to “consumers feel like they don’t have to pay for quality news, which is very serious,” he adds. “They think they are robbing the rich when we know that all the media in Portugal is getting poorer, ”he said.
Ultimately, he said, this practice impoverishes “the entire journalistic ecosystem” and affects democracy.
Visapress considers the Anti-Piracy Act 706, which is said to have been phased out, as important.
“We were very pleased to see Bill 706 being discussed in the specialty, which could be one way to immediately block the removal of content in a more coercive manner, but as the final balance of all efforts, we had to develop in the sense that we call platform-owned organizations.” as the so-called pirates do it repeatedly.
In other words, “we always try to get platforms to remove them at will,” he stressed.
“We were very pleased with the speed with which this bill was discussed,” but “now we understand that it seems to have stopped, stalled,” that if it is approved, “as such, it could become a guarantor of the protection of our people with very significant speed “, – says the head of Visapress.
Resolution 191/2021, published on Monday, which recommends the government to combat piracy of journalistic publications by promoting more independent and pluralistic journalism, ”essentially summarizes Visapress’s concerns.
“Even the Assembly of the Republic has already realized that the government must do something, it must pass laws, it must help the press in the fight against violence, which is a robbery that occurs daily on social networks,” he stressed.
Not only does the media sector lose money due to the illegal distribution of editorial materials, but also the state receives less tax revenue.
Visapress estimates that the state has suffered, as more than € 1.3 million in VAT was not collected in the first half of this year.
According to Carlos Eugenio, all this also reinforces the false news, because “all this leads to the fact that at some points the entire news ecosystem is slightly distorted.” And he gave an example of what happened in the second conclusion, in which “it was in the” software “of the conversation” that there was an “indication” of the measures to be applied by the authorities, which was “false.”
In other words, “networks that in their infancy, because of what they do daily with quality newspapers and magazines, have seized the opportunity to distribute content that was not true, and this is also very disturbing,” he warned.
“We would like the government to somehow look at the resolution of the Assembly of the Republic, speed up the adoption of bill 706 as much as possible and help the press fight all the illegalities that happen on the Internet and that are becoming poorer, plus periodicals that, in turn impoverishes democracy in Portugal, ”concluded Carlos Eugeniu.
