The Court of Justice has ruled that Italy’s AGCOM can require Meta to pay publishers for news snippets, the first time the bloc’s top court has weighed in directly. Meta lost its bid to overturn an Italian regulatory order requiring it to compensate publishers for the use of their news snippets, after the Court of Justice of the European Union sided on Tuesday with Italy’s telecoms watchdog AGCOM in Case C-797/23. The ruling is the first time the EU’s top court has weighed in on whether member states may oblige platforms to pay for publishers’ content, and it has settled the question in favour of the publishers. “The right of publishers of press publications to fair remuneration is permissible,” the court wrote, “provided that such remuneration constitutes consideration for the authorisation granted to providers to reproduce those publications or to make them available to the public.” Publishers, the court added, retain the right to refuse authorisation altogether, or to grant it free of charge.…