L’Antitrust announced the start of an investigation against Meta Platform, the controlling company Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to check if they have abused one dominant position in the social network market to impose unfair conditions in Siaethe company that manages the copyrights of Italian musicians.
Meta vs SIAE, the Antitrust opens an investigation
The Authority that regulates the market and competition, chaired by Roberto Rustichelli, launched an investigation into Meta. To verify if he has violated the contractual rules with Siae, the company that manages music rights in Italy.
Meta would have stopped negotiations for the renewal of the license to use music content on its social platforms and would have removed songs protected by Siae. Preventing users from listening to them. Also, Meta he would not have given Siae the information necessary to negotiate transparently and fair. And he would impose one economic offer too low, exploiting the economic dependence of Siae.
The Antitrust has also launched a precautionary procedure to protect the rights of users and musical authors.
The Antitrust suspects that Meta has took advantage of Siae’s economic dependencewhich has no credible alternative to reach the large audience of social networks, to impose a lower remuneration for the use of rights.
For its part, Meta complained that SIAE had too high demands, which would have required remuneration of four times higher than the old contract. However, the fact that Meta has not shared data on streaming and has blocked music on all platforms appears to be at the heart of the investigation by the Antitrust. Which does not evaluate the convenience of a contract, but protects that companies are free to accept or not.
An eventual agreement could resolve the dispute, but at the moment the Antitrust seems willing to continue the proceedings. We will keep you posted.