Mediapart brings AI critics together as disputes over news rights continue
Carine Fouteau’s call to mobilize accompanies an October 17 Paris event. French competition decisions provide concrete context for publishers’ disputes with Google.
Fouteau’s Guardian opinion column urges publishers to organize against AI platforms.
A call to mobilize
Her September 29 Mediapart blog post gives that position a practical setting. She argues that the power of technology companies threatens democratic life and calls for public mobilization. These are her political judgments. She says Mediapart is using press-related-rights payments from technology companies to support the event and public debate.
The official programme schedules Hacker la Tech for October 17, 2026, at Paris’s Espace Niemeyer, with an introduction by Fouteau. It brings together journalists, researchers and data workers. Sessions include democratic risks, the labour and environmental conditions behind AI, and investigating the technology. The programme names Guardian technology editor Robert Booth and Mediapart journalist Dan Israel for the reporting discussion.
What French enforcement actually established
There is a documented legal history behind disputes over news use. In Decision 21-D-17, dated July 12, 2021, France’s competition authority fined Google €500 million for failing to comply with earlier interim injunctions. Those injunctions included good-faith negotiations with requesting publishers and news agencies over remuneration for protected content.
The authority’s March 2024 announcement records a separate €250 million fine for breaches of commitments made binding in 2022. It also says Bard used press content to train its foundation model without notifying publishers or the authority, and that Google had not provided a way to refuse that use without affecting other protected-content displays.
The rulings concern specific obligations; Fouteau’s wider warning about democracy remains a political argument.