4 questions to Frédéric Besson, deputy director of the CFC Business and Administration department.

 What are the legal obligations with regard to copies of press articles in companies, communities, associations?

Frédéric Besson: No one should be unaware that to be lawful, a reproduction of a protected work requires authorization and that in return a royalty must be paid. Also, all organizations have the obligation to subscribe an authorization license with the CFC or to have an agreement with the publisher concerned, when their employees, within the framework of their professional activities, make and distribute copies. newspaper articles or book pages.

What are the types of licenses offered by the CFC?

Frédéric Besson: You will understand, the organization does not buy articles but pays a royalty to have the right to lawfully reproduce articles. To do this, it has two types of licenses adapted to its needs. The first is the contract authorizing press panoramas. There, a professional makes available in a periodic and structured way print or web press articles or audiovisual extracts to a list of predetermined recipients. To do this, he has the obligation to contract with the CFC, or to have prior agreement with the publisher (s) concerned. In fact, he will therefore have to declare the number of articles disseminated and the number of recipients of the panorapresse. Ultimately, the annual amount of the royalty will then be determined according to usage. Then, there is a contract authorizing professional internal copies (apart from press panoramas). Concretely, this is a license which covers more particularly reproductions and unitary or unstructured distribution of articles or pages of books in the form of photocopies or scans, as well as distribution by e-mail or on the internal network of 'press articles or the creation of documentary databases of press articles. This practice also responds to a need for knowledge sharing within organizations.

What are the risks incurred in the event of non-compliance with legal obligations?

The CFC has a control service made up of sworn officers. Field checks are frequent - nearly 400 per year - random or targeted. The copy of a press article or a book page, made without the authorization of the authors or the beneficiaries and outside the family circle is illegal and constitutes an infringement, it constitutes an offense which can be punished either at civil or criminal. We are talking about maximum sentences of 3 years in prison and a fine of € 300,000. The responsibility of the leader can also be engaged and the reputation of the organization damaged. Finally, damages can be claimed.

What's your advice?

The best is to take precautions and ensure your rear. In absolute terms, anything is possible. More and more organizations are now calling on external service providers for their monitoring and the production of press reviews. The Panorapresse solution, which brings together all the print and web publications of the SIPA Ouest-France group, is an example of this. The advantage is that this type of solution is customizable to your liking and that the question of rights is settled upstream. This avoids unpleasant surprises. There remains one question to be addressed: that of social networks. The subject is complex but we hope to be able to propose an authorization contract for external copies during 2019. It will cover both corporate sites and the social networks of professionals (apart from individuals), as well as sending digital copies to outside organizations (for example, an association to its members).

THE QUOTE AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE

In French law, there is, with respect to the right to copy, what is called the short quotation exception. Provided for by the Intellectual Property Code (L.122-5 and L.211-3), this provision - justified by the "critical, controversial, educational, scientific or informational character" - makes it possible to reproduce a few lines of one or more articles or even books. To be able to benefit from this exception, the citation must be short, that it be introduced in a new work (a compilation of quotes does not benefit from the exception), that the destination medium be original and testify of an effective creative work, respects the moral rights of the author and does not alter the spirit or the form of the original work. The citation must be accompanied by the mention of the source. And then, in practice, clearly mentioning one's sources is a way of reassuring the reader as much as an act of dissent in the face of the diktat of immediacy and the reign of "fakes news." "