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Google Begins Removing AFP From Google News
An anonymous reader writes "Google has began removing web-based content of Paris-Based news agency Agence France Presse (AFP), from the Google News service. This past weekend we reported that the Agence France Presse had sued Google for displaying their photo's, stories, and news headlines on Google News without permission. AFP is seeking damages of around $17.5 million and requested the courts that Google News is not to display any of its copyrighted material. It appears Google is complying with what the AFP is requesting. Google doesn't have a timetable for when all AFP links and content will be removed from Google News, but the company is actively working on the matter, said Steve Langdon, a Google spokesman."
I think this is a case of a dinosaur making last ditch efforts to try to save themself from certain destruction. AFP wants to try to control the flow of news (from them to other newspapers) and defend the natural monopolies involved with physical media since it's hard for customers to compare items for free. Now that AFP isn't listed, customers will just see other sites and flock to them first. This is what happens when you apply the old methods of business to the new world.
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Wired article as proof
I was just going to say that. Why are they suing Google who is giveing them more exposure and potentially widening there audience?
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This scene is somewhat reminiscent of the scene from the Incredibles where victims of crimes start suing the superheroes for helping them.
Google has become the doorway to the internet. Your site doesn't exist until Google indexes it. Anyone who sues them isn't trying to prevent copyright infringement or reproduction of their data, they are most likely looking for a reason to press charges and make a quick franc.
>> Why are they suing Google who is giveing them more exposure and potentially widening there audience?
$17.5 million seems like a good reason.
Search Engine Optimization Tool
The ones who don't get this concept will just quietly go under or be bought up by other news organizations that "get it". This is exceptionally silly on AFP's part since once a user clicks on a link from Google News to go to AFP's site they can display banner ads to help pay their costs.
Looks like this will be one of those cases where the company deserves exactly what it's asking for. I wonder how they'll try to spin their declining web readership?
AFP make their money by selling their stories to other media organizations. If they allow their news to be disseminated without the appropriate fee being paid (as Google News is doing), they will be cutting off their main source of revenue.
All AFP is doing is using legitimate means to protect a legitimate business model.
why? because they're a news organization. they get money from selling the stories(and associated photos), not from giving them away for free so that another organization can get the ad revenue as well without paying them anything.
i'm pretty sure they would have happily sold the stuff to google under normal terms...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Teach those assholes a lesson. Really, Google linking to them looked to me like FAIR USE that could only improve traffic to the French news site - and the news site's profits!
:-)
I can not imagine how the Google News links could do anything but help make more profit for news sites that Google links to.
Google News could link to my sites anyday - I will not complain
Not every source will do so unless they want $$$ for people to read their online material. Some are doing that right now. see: Wall Street Journal. Sure, there's a free story here & there, but they want to restrict content to subscribers.
/. story)
Papers which have less than the WSJ's stature pretty much know they are leaping from shrinking pond to shrinking pond. Paid readership is dropping....fast. And they don't have a solution. They know they have to have an online presence in order to compete against everyone else who knows they need to be online. And if they aren't online, most people aren't going to follow that newspaper.
The bottom line is those (readers) who are online will read online - in many cases moreso than hardcopy; especially if it's free. Those who aren't wired aren't in a number big enough to keep the paper in business across the long haul.
I have a silly question:
what are "photo's"? (see main
> I doubt it'd hit the AFP much (or any agency) if their own sites were
> totally blacklisted by Google.
Depends just how much Google wanted to make an object lesson of them. Remove ANY page anywhere with material from AFP. Basically, to Google AFP wouldn't exist anymore and for most intents and purposes if it ain't on Google it ain't on the Internet. How long would news organizations pay AFP for content nobody would ever see online?
And if France (and Germany, I haven't forgot them either when they harrassed Yahoo! and eBay) doesn't stop this practice of trying to make American companies subject to their wierd laws it is getting time to just pull the fibers connecting France to the rest of the world. They need the world a hell of a lot more than the world needs them.
Democrat delenda est
why? because they're a news organization. they get money from selling the stories(and associated photos), not from giving them away for free so that another organization can get the ad revenue as well without paying them anything. Excuse me? Google News is a free service, with no ads whatsoever. As others have pointed out, the only ones to lose revenue from this will be the AFP.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Well I can't help but wonder if the AFP's customers-- you know, the actual news sites google links-- are going to be particularly happy that that the AFP just got them blacklisted from google.
I mean, if I ran a news site of some sort, and I found that one of my content providers was engaging in direct and successful lobbying efforts to get me kicked off google news because I'd been buying content from them, I'd definitely start looking for an alternate provider for that content immediately.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Thinking it over, Google is quite definitely copying some of their content, so any organisation on google news can C&D google for this. Still, any news organisation that makes money from website hits would be stupid to do so, as Google is probably one of their biggest referrers.
If they allow their news to be disseminated without the appropriate fee being paid (as Google News is doing),
If a link, a headline and a half-paragraph quotation is "disseminating", we're all fucked.
Can't wait to see where we go next with this amazing new logic. "Amazon.com book reviews banned in france because people were quoting sentences from the books they reviewed, the book companies make their money by selling those books to customers, if they allow those sentences to be disseminated without the appropriate fee (as amazon.com book reviewers do) they will be cutting off their main source of revenue"...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
for the sake of the free press, i would think National Vanguard should stay.
but of course, that would make me a great big evil racist...
*AFP is now officially irrelevant. If you're not on Google, you simply don't exist.*
is that so? so everybody stops buying from de facto newswire because it's not on google news, which doesn't really matter at all in the 'rest of the world'?
btw you don't know jack about history apparently either, so I guess partially to blame why you don't understand shit about the oldest news agency in the world...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Oh god... please... stop this. AFP is a massive, globally recognised news organisation. Just because they're not on Google News doesn't mean they will sink into a void. The French - to their enormous credit - are fiercely nationalistic. You're not French (forgive the assumption, but I'm fairly sure it's valid) and therefore have no idea as to the scope of AFP's influence within France. It's like saying "if the BBC refuse to allow Google to index their content, BBC News will disappear within a month!!". Utter, complete nonsense. As a Brit, news.bbc.co.uk is the only news source I check. Google News can go jump. The whole world does not think like you, America. Sorry if that upsets you.
User-agent: * /
Disallow:
AFP didn't do their homework, and that's a poor way to protect any investment.
To sum up: AFP, of their own volition, paid to get on the web. They completely ignored RFCs. They ignored standard practices by established companies in their business sector. They wait until $17M in damages accrue, which doesn't happen overnight. Only then do they cry foul, and sue using copyright law to protect something they won't protect themselves when they have the chance. If you were a judge, which way would you rule?
Notice that I didn't even need to talk about fair use rights. France doesn't use the US Constitution. My arguments are purely economic, and I'm fairly sure the French understand money. If any lawyers at Google are reading this, please fight this suit. AFP are being unreasonable, and need to be taught a lesson.
Where shall we get our news from?
Obviously from the clued-in news services who realize that staying with Google means more viewers directed to their sites, thus more ad revenues, especially when all their competition are willfully removing themselves from the game. Watch the free market work.
On another note, anyone want to wager on how long it will be till AFP quietly allows their content to be reinserted into Google search results?
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Dude, they're French. They care not about readership, they are heavily subsidized by the French gonvernment.
Arbitrary sig
From the news organizations that realize being listed on Google News or other news aggregators (such as Topix.net) is beneficial to them because it directs users to their websites.
AFP doesn't want users directed to their website. Their business model is damaged by direct customer interaction: they want users directed to the websites of newspapers who reproduce their stories, and that won't happen if viewers can see the original source indexed alongside all the paying clones.
Who will decide to go read more ads and intrusive branding, when you can get the original just as easily?
Yes, yes... Yet, I can't see their point.
1. AFP is hurt in its sales because Google lets end-users get their news for free, so that they don't flock any longer to sites which buy news from AFP. I can see how going up against Google may be useful there, yet wouldn't it be faster and more effective to "secure" your own site? i.e.requiring registration etc...
2. AFP is hurt by other commercial sites getting and reproducing AFP news for free, and displaying them. Alright, teach'em a lesson by suing Google. Then again, I've never heard a news agency having these kinds of problems, as there are usually many value-added services clients get when they subscribe to services - such as actual "real time" news feeds.
3. At least according to Wikipedia, AFP is a government-subsidized news agency whose most important market is an artificial one -- i.e. France, where it's the "official" agency. Why go after Google like you were a real company, aggressively protecting your fictitious market?
It seems to me as though they're looking for additional funding for fiscal 2005, more than protecting a supposed market... After all we all have national budget problems in the EU (and not only there...)
> France is an insignificant piss ant country, not so much a nation as a rabble united by a variety of cheeses.
Wow, you look like an intelligent person capable of insightful discussion, now, grats.
> AFP is nothing compared to the Beeb.
Indeed. Let me explain it for you slowly : the BBC and AFP are not in the same business. BBC gives news to citizens, while AFP gives news to BBC (and about all newspapers in the world).
> How many shortwave programs does AFP broadcast?
Let me explain it for you slowly : AFP doesn't broadcast anything, they sell news to newspapers.
> The Beeb could get along quite well without Google News
And AFP doesn't give a fuck about google news, since, they're not a newspapers. Every major newspapers in the world is a customer of AFP. NYT, BBC, Washington Post, The Economist, all of them buy content and pictures from AFP. AFP is as widely known and as widely respected as Reuters. Both of them are the first and most respected content provider of every newspapers in the world. Without Reuters and AFP, you would more or less see no pictures on any newspapers. If you don't believe me, buy the NYT, and look for credits on their pictures. 90% of them are from AFP and Reuters.
You and I are not custumers of AFP, NYT, BBC and all are.
Basically, Google News is trying to take AFP work without paying for it. AFP is not happy with that, and they have every right to be, since Google is effectivly warezing from them.
This lawsuit has nothing to do with the French lawsuit on Yahoo, which was quite stupid. This lawsuit is very valid, and Google removing their content shows that they know they would loose in a lawsuit.
Next time you launch in a flamefest, try to educate yourself, you really do look like a moron talking out of his ass.
+4 Informative comment? I'd rather say -1 Speculative Troll.
What would be good about sinking AFP in search result? Do you think this is fair regarding google customers? AFP might not be the best news organisation out there, but if google does what you say, I don't want to hear about them either.
The above comment speaks for itself. There is something very wrong with the American psyche. The poster is completely unable to see that every statement made about the 'Dastardly French' is actually much more relevant to their own country and its media-fed mass psychosis. http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm
Ok, this makes no sense.
I own a news site, and I buy a story from the AFP I'm not allowed to be on google news. But I want to be on google news because it brings traffic to my website.
Maybe the AFP should tell the people who buy its storys not to put them out on a public internet. Sure google shows an image and a blurb of text, but to read the whole story you still have to go to the website that actually published it.
If this is true, then the failing is in the aFP's buisness model and not google news, google is just providing an index of news sites based on my keyword search.
When google requested the various columns and images from the news site, did google agree to any type of non-redistribution of materials?
I'd imagine that google's bot simply asked the news site's webserver for the information via http requests; and the webserver handed out the goods with no conditions.
Enjoy
... make a clean break, and pull all AFP (and preferably AFP-sourced articles) out of the general search as well as the news site.
Black hole those bitches.
You, as an individual who reads the news, are not their customer.
Individuals who read the news are not the customers of any news outlet. This is a fundamental mistake. Individuals who read the news are the product, sold to the advertisers who are the actual customer.
News outlets exist to bring eyeballs to advertisers at a profit, no different from any other form of for-profit media.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Me? I remeber alot of it. It's important to look at a subject from multiple angles.
I'm a Historian, I don't read one book or source on something and decide, well that's it.
The BBC or CNN or Foxnews or FT aren't enough.
The goal of a copyright when copyrights were established was the have a short window for the author, then to open it wide for people to copy. Copy Right.
Look at Piri Reis's atlas of 1517, it says that those who copy it and offer it freely are doing the work of God and will be blessed by the Creator of the Universe.
So, hell, Google is doing God's Work.