Online Content Cannot Remain Free

gamer4Life writes "Publishers from Europe are complaining that Internet search engines are making money off their copyright-protected material. 'This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.', says Francisco Pinto Balsemao, head of the European Publishers Council. These comments are despite the fact that Google does not place ads on their news service. 'Search engines do not reproduce content. They help users find content by pointing to where it exists on the Web.', says Google spokesman, Steve Langdon. This comes after a French news service sued Google for at least $17.5 million."

Comments

Profit Elsewhere

[biocute]

I don't think the European Publishers Council is only referring to Google News, but the whole idea of people start relying on search engines to get their news feed. And sometimes, you will be able to find a news that is free on one site, and by subscription on another (eg NYTimes vs CNN).

And what about cached news articles that could have already been removed from the news site and turned into a pay-per-view article?

I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy, if Google is making a huge profit, someone else is getting less.

These comments are despite the fact that Google does not place ads on their news service

But when I searched for "DeLay", there are few "news" links at the very top of the result page, and a sponsored link by www.nytimes.com.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[AKAImBatman]

And sometimes, you will be able to find a news that is free on one site, and by subscription on another (eg NYTimes vs CNN).

Which is how Capitalism is supposed to work. I realize that many companies are just looking after their own interests, but they probably don't even realize that they're actually being anti-competitive and that "fair-use" is intended to cover exactly this type of situation.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[ceoyoyo]

Google news gives you a little snippet of the article, then a link to the page it came from -- just like their search does. So, just like search, you click on the link and go to the copyright owner's page -- complete with revenue generating ads.

If the copyright owner doesn't like this he should block Google from indexing his pages and watch what happens.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Chowderbags]

So in other words it benefits the consumers of news. This isn't bad for people, it's only bad for those who refuse to change their business model. How does it cost more to make subscription-only archived articles available to the public? It's not like storage costs go up, and any decent news site isn't going to see a huge jump in bandwidth. They'd take a hit in revenue, yes, but that's only if they don't look into what other companys (for example, Google itself) do. True, I don't want endless popup advertisements, but a little text ad off to the side isn't going to hurt things.

Then again, I find it ironic that it's the European newspapers that are the ones who are trumpeting this. You'd think rabid corporatists in America would be screaming their heads off if they thought their bottom lines were hurting from Google.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[pla]

And sometimes, you will be able to find a news that is free on one site, and by subscription on another (eg NYTimes vs CNN).

And sometimes, I can make my own bread instead of paying SunBeam for the pasty white styrofoam they sell under that name.


I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy

You might think that, wouldn't you? But no. Spend all you want, the governments will print more. Of course, the money you have now becomes less valuable as a result, but if you think we don't have inflation by design, I have a bridge to sell you for just a dollar (inflation retroadjusted to the birth of the solar system).

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Guspaz]

So then you are saying that if people can get their news free on the internet from one source independantly of another source, people won't go to the non-free source?

Well, yes, why would we expect any differently? Here's the thing; it IS possible to make money on the internet. Banner advertising such as Google AdSense makes site owners a lot of money these days, as long as people can make money by putting stuff on websites they can continue to offer it for "free".

So yes, as far as the success of things like Google AdSense is concerned, online content CAN remain free. A good example is Digg. They're making all their money off a SINGLE GOOGLE AD, and now they've got millions in venture capital to grow much faster. Or look at sites like Anandtech that produce a LOT of money managing their own ads, and still produce an enormous amount of original content (More than computer magazines, but they're free).

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[xTantrum]

I'll never understand this about the states. they area capitalists and yet they still implement something such as anti-comptetice and fair-use. to me it seems if your're gonna be all about the "benjamins" be about it. but i guess the moto is, you can get big, just not too big. wonder what the cap is.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[IAmTheDave]

Agreed. Also, arguing that content that was once free is now pay-per-view is (excuse me) stupid, because once information is free it tends to remain free. Arguing that information already disseminated may now be locked up is half the reason that Secrecy News and the FAS exist. (It's a comparison.)

I understand (to a degree) copyright, but a redaction in previously public information by any party - government or private - is hardly ever good.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[heinousjay]

Then again, I find it ironic that it's the European newspapers that are the ones who are trumpeting this. You'd think rabid corporatists in America would be screaming their heads off if they thought their bottom lines were hurting from Google.

Seriously. I too have a hard time believing that Europeans aren't superior to Americans in every aspect of life. Hasn't Slashdot taught us all... oh, fuck this. I can't maintain it.

By the by, you share an incorrect definition of irony with Alanis. I find it poetic that you are wrong on so many levels in one post. I won't bother addressing your understanding of the issue displayed in your first paragraph.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[i.r.id10t]

Yup, they could even block all robots but googlebot (via robots.txt) and then use the appropriate googlebot no-cache header, or just block all the 'bots.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[soupdevil]

It's true that there's only so much money to go around. But it can go around any number of times, so there's no fixed "income pie" from which each company takes a slice.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

No, this is a astro-turfed meme. Maybe the parent poster isn't a shill himself, but when people who don't even know what copyright is, are standing around the coffee machine at work, and the subject comes up about how google is stealing from people who write books, something fishy is going on.

Google sends business to these retards, if anything. Those that can't make that simple connection need to do us all a favor, and stop breathing.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy, if Google is making a huge profit, someone else is getting less.

Wealth is created only through voluntary trade for mutual benefit. It doesn't just "exist", to be confiscated first come first serve. It is only created by free individuals. In a productive (voluntary) transaction, each party gains as a result of the transaction (+1 and +1). The net sum is positive, and therefore wealth is created. In an instance of theft, or taxing, by contrast, one side gains -- but only at the expense of the other (+1 and -1). The net sum is zero, and therefore no wealth is created (only moved around).

To summarize, wealth is created only through voluntary trade for mutual benefit. Any transaction which employs coercion does not create wealth, but simply transfers it from one party to another.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[gamer4Life]

These comments are despite the fact that Google does not place ads on their news service

But when I searched for "DeLay", there are few "news" links at the very top of the result page, and a sponsored link by www.nytimes.com.

Actually what you're doing most likely is search Google, the search engine.

When you search Google News, you won't see a single ad. So therefore, that statement above is correct.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[aussie_a]

But if they're in the right (which they believe they are) it shouldn't be opt-out, but opt-in. Having said that, they aren't in the right. They just think (or are at least claiming) they are in the right.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[susano_otter]

Clearly, what you don't understand about "the states" is that it's ruled by the consensus of its citizens, most of whom are not actually extreme capitalists. In fact, there happens to be a very large and vocal leftist faction in our population and political arena, which is why you actually see a hodgepodge of assorted compromise policies, rather than the extremist situation you were somehow expecting. But why were you expecting an extremist situation anyway?

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[GigsVT]

I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy, if Google is making a huge profit, someone else is getting less.

Economics is not zero-sum. That's a myth made up by people that want to force socialism down everyone's throat.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[sco08y]

GP: I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy

P: You might think that, wouldn't you? But no. Spend all you want, the governments will print more. Of course, the money you have now becomes less valuable as a result, but if you think we don't have inflation by design

First: the notion that there is "only so much money." It is true that there is are only so many nominal dollars/yen/etc. However, you can make money right in your own home! Just get a piece of paper and write "IOU $5" and give it to a friend. Congratulations. You have just increased the total amount of money in the world by $5.

That is, assuming you actually intend to pay your friend back *and* your friend trusts you to do so.

Now, governments *do* need to print money. Not to cause inflation, but because without enough cash people can't do business. Your IOU only works as well as people trust you to pay it back, the five dollar IOU from the federal government is viewed as considerably more reliable.

In the case of hyperinflation you see that a government is printing tons of money and the currency is becoming devalued and make the post hoc error that printing money causes the devaluing of the currency. But what's really happening is that people are losing faith that the government is good on its debts. In wartime Germany, was it the printing of money that made people lose faith in the mark, or was it the fact that they were losing the war?

When you understand that markets are a natural means of communicating information about scarcity of resources and talent you see why the idea that someone can "design" something like inflation is false. Maybe they can significantly influence it or maybe the whole regulating thing is a farce and politicians just take credit for upswings and blame others for downswings. At any rate, the sum value of everything in the world is most directly influenced by creativity and ingenuity, not accounting tricks.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Arandir]

I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy, if Google is making a huge profit, someone else is getting less.

That is a myth. The economy is not a zero sum game. Everytime you create something that someone else values, you have created new value.

Google and other search engines are creating new value by offering services that would not otherwise exist. There is a value to online news stories from European publishers, but there is more value in the market when they are combined with the search engines to find them. The former does not lose money when the latter makes money.

Of course, the publishers still need to stay current and remain flexible. Just because there is now more value in the market doesn't mean an individual publisher is guaranteed a piece of it.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Dun Malg]

I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy,

That's not how the economy works. Money doesn't vanish the first time someone spends it. It goes to someone else, who pays it to someone else, etc. Circulation is the real driving force.

if Google is making a huge profit, someone else is getting less.

It's not a zero-sum game. There's plenty of money for everyone so long as it keeps circulating. The oly way Google can get "someone else's" money is if they directly compete, and in that case it's no longer "their money", it's rightfully Google's.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Chowderbags]

I was more refering to the more collectivist nature of Europe. I'm not a commie, far from it, but I also realize that corporations are out to make profits, and I don't really see the NY Times, CNN, Fox News, etc sounding the horns for the lawyers over Google news.

Oh, and if you want to get bent out of shape in regards to the definition of irony, you might want to look up that under the first definition, the whole use of words other than their litteral intention, there's also a "Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs", which was perfectly correct in my post.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[letxa2000]

Google sends business to these retards, if anything. Those that can't make that simple connection need to do us all a favor, and stop breathing.

No kidding. I'm a published author and I'm currently trying to figure out if my publisher is going to get my book listed with Google or if I have to do it myself. One way or another I definitely want my book listed. I can't imagine why an author wouldn't want the contents of his or her book to be searchable on Google.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Ravatar]

By uploading their web page to a publicly accessable web server, they have opted in.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[aussie_a]

I don't buy that. You don't opt into anything someone can do with your content, merely by distributing your content.

Having said that, don't mis-read what I'm saying. Google is fine to do what they do.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[dirty]

irony -- "a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result." He finds the fact that the supposedly "rabid coproratists" in America aren't complaining, while the European newspapers are to be contrary to what he expects. Seems pretty dead on if you ask me.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[handslikesnakes]

I'm not sure what that has to do with socialism. There're plenty of socialists who simply think that putting money into helping the "less fortunate" creates more value than piling it into investments.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[defile]

Precisely. Watching Google profit off of meta-informaton based on actual information gets the information owner's panties in a bunch. It's almost like they resent the traffic because it's not exactly the traffic they wanted. In which case they shouldn't make the content public? Sounds like an easy enough solution...

Usually when I see this argument, it boils down to robots.txt and whether Google should assume the absence of a robots.txt is an opt-in to searching or an opt-out to searching.

Even if they did get their way (no robots.txt means assume opt-out), it would give rise to BLACK MARKET search engines that totally disregard robots.txt.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[martin-boundary]

Perhaps you need to stop with the superlatives, and say something relevant.

Google sends business to these retards, if anything. Those that can't make that simple connection need to do us all a favor, and stop breathing.

And that has precisely squat to do with copyright issues. It's a good thing you're not doing any astro-turfing yourself, because that sounds suspiciously like the argument the warez kiddies use to justify cracking software, eg if it's cracked and free to download, then more people will try the software and eventually buy it.

If you had any idea what you're talking about, then you'd have realized that the issue is copyright: the content producers (writers, photographers, wholesale news agencies) have it, the content consumers (online news and magazine websites) don't have it. Third level consumers like people and Google have no part in the contract between the media owners and the website operators.

Since the website operators have no rights to the material beyond a limited license to use them, the whole robots.txt issue is moot - there is no implied agreement between Google and the website operators, since one can't allow somebody else to copy something one doesn't own the rights to in the first place.

The website operators are guilty of the equivalent of leaving their keys in the car. Google is guilty of the equivalent of borrowing the key and making a copy, then offering paying joyrides to third parties.

And finally, you might find it interesting to know that most news media content available on the web is produced by a very small number of sources, with everyone else paying for the privilege to repackage it. If Google agrees to stop showing the material produced by the big three (Reuters, AFP, Associated Press), then 90% of international news on Google will disappear, and all you'll have is the local kitten stories and the odd op-ed.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[JesseMcDonald]

It is a long-standing tradition on the Internet that posting something in a public forum, or on a web site, confers the right to access the information to everyone on the 'net, whether or not they requested the data in question from the original site. It's like saying something in public: people have the right to quote you, even those who heard it second-hand, because you said it in a public place. Many basic Internet technologies, such as caching/filtering proxies, or Usenet, depend on this tradition. Things like the Google cache, which is like a traditional proxy in many ways, are just as dependent on the public nature of the Internet. Of course, commercial interests are attempting to change the traditions, but it remains to be seen just how much influence such interests really have in cyberspace.

The news organization have three realistic choices. They can restrict access to subscribers, removing themselves from the Google news feeds and probably cutting traffic to their site significantly. They can let Google index their publicly-available pages like everyone else. Or they can work out a private arrangement with Google allowing them to profit from their stories while remaining listed among the news feeds (Google Exclusives, anyone?).

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[martin-boundary]

That's exactly what the owners are doing. If you go on the AFP, Reuters or Associated Press websites, you'll find very little material. Google is taking its material primarily not from the content owners, but from the customers of the content owners who actually paid for a license to use the content in specific ways.

The fuss is about the fact that the owners want Google to stop copying materials that were offered to their own customers for specific uses. It's like if Microsoft sells you some software (eg Office), and you leave the sofware in a shared P2P directory. Now Google comes along, picks up the software from your P2P directory, and lets everyone use the software for nothing. Now Microsoft sues Google because they're offering Office for free to everybody, but everyone here is saying Google is doing nothing wrong because they followed robots.txt in your P2P directory.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[ceoyoyo]

Your own example makes the point that this is ridiculous. Google finds a file called "MS_OFFICE_WAREZ.RAR" and indexes it. What makes them responsible? Google is offering a map. The person who uploaded that file is the one breaking the law.

A better example is probably that of a library -- Reuters or the AP sell a story to the NY Times, say. Now, suppose the NYT publishes that article, both on the Internet and in print. The NY Public Library keeps an archive of the NYTs. As part of this, they make summaries of the articles searchable, say in their card catalogue. Google makes summaries of the articles searchable in their electronic catalogue. So... why is Google guilty and the library is not?

Reuters may have a bone to pick with the media outlets if they are publishing content online and they don't have a license to do so. They may have a case (albeit a stupid one) if their license with the outlet allows the article to be published online but requires that it not be indexed by a search engine. Either way, the issue is with the specific media outlet that has violated the license. Publishing something on the Internet is just like paper publishing -- that work is now subject to indexing and regular quoting rules -- you can use a small segment so long as you give credit (like Google is doing) but may not reproduce the entire article.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[cyberformer]

If the agencies really believed this, they could issue Google and the news sites' hosts with DMCA takedown notices, just like the RIAA, BSA, etc. do for music and software.

They could even try the RIAA's "sue your customers" business model, as the customers would appear to be in the wrong. (And the case ought to be much clearer, because unlike an average computer user who might accidentally place a Microsoft-copyrighted file in a shared directory, these are professional Web sites staffed by people who ought to know what they're doing.) But I guess they won't, as the customers in this case are large corporations who can finght back, not kids. Also, there are comparatively few customers, and the agencies don't want to lose them

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[martin-boundary]

Google is offering a map. The person who uploaded that file is the one breaking the law.

Not quite. Google is offering the images on its image search service, it's offering the cached text in its search service, it's offering the headlines in its news service. That's a lot of stuff it's doing.

Remember, Google is a company, but from the point of view of copyright, it's a single legal entity. So everything it does as a whole matters.

A better example is probably that of a library.

Libraries are explicitly exempt from copyright infringement, and Google is too so long as it complies with the DMCA. But if an owner says they have to stop offering their material, then either Google complies, or they can be sued for infringement. Clearly it's going to be technically extremely difficult to remove all the material promptly, so they've been sued.

Publishing something on the Internet is just like paper publishing -- that work is now subject to indexing and regular quoting rules -- you can use a small segment so long as you give credit (like Google is doing) but may not reproduce the entire article.

The trouble here is that Google is reproducing the entire article if you think about it. Imagine if you go to the library every day, and copy a single phrase in a book. If you do this a few thousand times, you've reproduced the whole book, and it's definitely no longer fair use. That's what Google is doing. They have internal copies of everything, and they serve small (but different) pieces to people.

Again, libraries can do this, but Google has now been explicitly told to stop from the copyright holders. I hope they find a way to license/settle this, because the net will be poorer otherwise.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[martin-boundary]

And lastly, Google is much richer than any other website operator. Obviously, there's an element of opportunism by the news publishers going on. I'm not defending the lawsuits as much as saying that legally, it's not obvious that Google is doing nothing wrong.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[ceoyoyo]

The other Google services above simple text searh offer excerpts, with links back to the original. For example, the image search offers a small thumbnail copy of the image that links back to the original page (not even just the original image). That's like taking a short quote from an article -- which is perfectly fine.

I haven't seen Google offer different excerpts from articles to different page visits -- when I go to Google news I get the standard first paragraph of the article -- that paragraph is purposely written as a summary of the entire article, and is meant to be quoted by itself. Then, if I want to see more, I have to click on the link, which takes me to the site that the article itself is hosted on. Seems like a practice that keeps with both traditional and legal fair use... well, in places that are not the US of A. I have no idea what the DMCA would have to say about this.

The solution is simple -- if the AP et al don't like Google indexing these articles, they need to write that into their contract. Then they can quietly fade away into irrelevance as other content producers who allow their content to be located by the growing majority of their audience take over.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Astro-turfing is when you're paid to do a fake "grassroots campaign". Unless you are suggesting Google (do no evil!) is paying me, then what you really mean is that I'm just an idiot. But suggesting that I'm the astroturfer, that's just dumb.

Second, copyright protects against others publishing your work, not against copying. I can't print up the latest stephen king novel at kinko's and then sell the thing for $0.50 at the local flea market. If recent addendums to the law word it differently, then you might wonder what that is the case... or maybe you don't. You do seem rather unintelligent.

I just made a neurally based copy of your post as I read it. Does this count? Does it not count because of "fair use"? You're another of the retards.

Google is a librarian. It's making a card catalog, not printing out extra copies of the expensive books. Get over it.

Unless you specifically like less-sophisticated card catalogs. I suspect you might.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[1u3hr]

The fuss is about the fact that the owners want Google to stop copying materials that were offered to their own customers for specific uses.

That's not "the fact". Google doesn't copy the materials (I'm talking about news.google.com), it just copies the headline and a line or two of text and perhaps a thumbnail of an image. If you actually want to read the article and see the pictures you have to go to the licenced customer's page. I fail to see any harm to the copyright owners. Only others who are making a news portal who fear Google directing people to other sources of the same news.

There's a separate issue with cached pages on the normal websearch; but Google will not cache that (or index it at all if you want) if you specify in robots.txt and you can't find much current news that way.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[ericspinder]

But why were you expecting an extremist situation anyway?

Duh, because this is, like, Slashdot. Where any topic can become a forum for bashing the U.S. As a left leaning moderate, I find these kinda attitudes from 'foreigners' as disturbing as the attitudes of the 'red line' voters from my country.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Pofy]

>Second, copyright protects against others publishing your work, not against
>copying.

You need to learn more about copyright. Copyright gives several (almost) exclusive rights to the copyright holder. One of those is copying!

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Decker-Mage]

I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy, if Google is making a huge profit, someone else is getting less. Total BS. Only the economically uneducated would think that. While the actual number of dollars at any point in time may be fixed at some amount, which isn't strictly true if you understand how our banking system really works, money has a velocity. Velocity is the number of times that money changes hands during a given period of time. It is not fixed. If anything, the velocity of money increases as our technology improves; it can change hands at a more rapid pace. When Google, or anyone else, makes a profit, that profit is not stuck under a matress. It is distributed to shareholders, invested in the form of new capital (either physical, financial, or human in the form of training or new hires), or given to the government. The economy can grow as a result. The economy, despite assertions from those without a clue, is not a zero sum game.

It is not surprising that the French are the ones most interested in taking down Google, and the 'net for that matter. Aside from being stuck in the mercatilist model of the 1700's, they have a demonstrated pattern of cultural superiority/xenophobia. And if that comment (fact actually) offends the French, tough.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[arakasi]

However, you can make money right in your own home! Just get a piece of paper and write "IOU $5" and give it to a friend. Congratulations. You have just increased the total amount of money in the world by $5.

No, brother, that's not quite right. See this Wikipedia article on the creation of money by bank lending: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_ba nking_system#Money_Creation

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Oh really? All sorts of things change meaning over time. Ever hear that the 2nd ammendment's "well regulated militia" means well-trained? I don't really agree with gun nuts, but it's true... "regulated" means something different in that context. Of course it meant copying hundreds of years ago... the only way to publish something *was* to copy it. As they understood "copying" to mean, anyway.

You copy things into your brain all the time. It's call neurological memory. Wasn't understood to be copying at the time, of course.

But if you want to act like a fool, be my guest.

"Exclusive rights" is at best a euphemism. It can't be a "right", if it's wrong. Not to mention that carefully bribed politicians eliminated every single restriction put into place on those rights... american copyright law is morally void. I neither obey morally void law, nor do I clumsily disobey it.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Fred_A]

Presumably the real problem is that some cretin has decreed that they have to grow their income by the standard 15% (for the sake of the shareholders you see) or face some kind of massive [layoffs,takeover,whatever random corporate catastrophe] so they're trying desperate things to meet the deadline.

It's likely that they know it's a good thing that their content is indexed online.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Pofy]

>Oh really? All sorts of things change meaning over time.

Copying is and still is part of copyright. Here is a copy of the US copyright law for example, the same exists in all copyright laws really:

in 106:
"Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; "

If you know of a country were copying is NOT a right of the copyright holder, please feel free to say so and point if out, there should be virtually none in the world although there probably exist some country that has for example not yet joined the Bern convention and such.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[bentcd]

As I understand it, it's the publishers that are complaining rather than the authors. What the publishers are seeing, I suppose, is that in the future, Google will do their job for them. As electronic distribution increases in popularity among your readers, traditional paper publishers will fade into obscurity and modern electronic publishers (e.g., Google) will take over the market.
Of course, it's probably all the same for the /authors/ who is publishing their material, so long as they're doing a good job about it. This conflict isn't really about authors at all (except to use their right to profit etc. as ammunition in the debate). It's about protecting an entrenched market position.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Oligonicella]

Apparently, you have missed the numerous posts linking to the Author's Guild suit.

Calling Google a publisher is a stretch.

This conflict (to iterate) is about Google presuming they have the right to abrigate the copyright holder's (typicall the author) right to determine just how their work will be disseminated. Not some for profit corporation like Google.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you explain why government should hold a coercive monopoly on currency? I'm asking because you seem to have implied that central banking is not only the best way, but the only possible way, to provide a medium of exchange (currency).

Consider that while government routinely prints money out of thin air, any private firm which engaged in that kind of fraud would be sued right out of business. Food for thought...

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Oligonicella]

Your comment applies to the wholesale copying of printed materials how exactly?

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[jgerman]

This conflict (to iterate) is about Google presuming they have the right to abrigate the copyright holder's (typicall the author) right to determine just how their work will be disseminated. Not some for profit corporation like Google.

Horseshit. The copyright holder made a choice to allow their work on the Internet. It's up to them, or their publisher, or whomever, to place the restrictions on that content in some form or another. If they leave it open to public perusal then Google has every right in the world to make it searchable.

If the publishers and copyright holders don't understand how the Internet works they shouldn't be playing in that sandbox to begin with. They have no one to blame but themselves if they don't understand how this particular media works.

By publically posting content on the web copyright holders have implicitly given permission for sites like Google to do what they're doing. It's how things work, don't like it, don't post it, or find a way to restrict access. Case closed.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Kadin2048]

Actually, you can be quite the diehard capitalist and still believe in some regulation of extreme anticompetitive behavior. You can argue about how much regulation is good or the best ways to apply it all day, but there are certain situations (monopolies, cartels) which the market will not self-correct if they have gone past a certain point and good arguments can be made for government interference to fix them. I think very few people would make the argument that there is not any place for regulation at all.

The "cap" on how big you can get doesn't really exist per se; the limit is on your actions. Regulators in the U.S. generally take a dim view of firms that obviously distort the market away from a competitive model, if that distortion hurts consumers. The limits on dumping and market distortion that help consumers (in the short term anyway) are significantly less strict IMO than in Europe.

Also, while America is one of probably the 'most capitalist' major countries in the world, it doesn't mean that there is no demand for regulation to reign in corporations who do things that the citizens don't like. It is a representative democracy -- if you piss off enough voters, eventually you're going to be the subject of a Congressional inquiry, no matter how closely you follow economic theory. (Witness the oil companies.)

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Kadin2048]

The copyright holder made a choice to allow their work on the Internet. It's up to them, or their publisher, or whomever, to place the restrictions on that content in some form or another. If they leave it open to public perusal then Google has every right in the world to make it searchable.

FYI, I think the lawsuit in the U.S. is not over Google's internet indexing and searching, but about the "search inside the book"-type scheme, where they were scanning and OCRing large numbers of still-copyrighted books and placing them in a searchable index. The caveat was that an end user could not see more than a small amount of content from books where the author/publisher hadn't given permission.

The question is whether scanning books and placing them into an information storage and retrieval system with limitations on its access falls under 'fair use' or not.

At any rate, I'm with Google on this one. The book publishers are sounding more and more like the music companies every day. They just realized that the future doesn't look good for their business model. Rather than accept the fact they've had a good run, accept the inherent risk and try to change, they're going to do everything they can to keep consumers locked into the old way of things for as long as possible. At least the music companies are starting to change -- but they had past experience from smaller format shifts; vinyl to tape, tape to CD, and others. When is the last time the publishing industry really changed on its most basic level?

Like the music companies, book publishers exist mainly as intermediaries that stand between authors and content consumers who evolved into their current role due to technical constraints. Publishing books is expensive, it requires a huge capital investment into printing presses and there is a large amount of financial risk associated with the launch of a new book (printing too many copies, etc.). However we are increasingly seeing that there are other ways of doing business which get the content to the consumer in a simpler fashion: eBooks, print on demand, print at home, digitally delivered audiobooks, etc. The startup cost of becoming a low-volume publisher is very low, and it's now more possible than ever for a niche-market author to self-publish. As this happens, the value added by the big houses starts to diminish. Although there will still probably always be a place for big publishing houses (somebody has to print millions of copies of the next Harry Potter), it's clear that their content monopoly is breaking up, and they're afraid.

In short their lawsuits seem like a knee-jerk response to innovation by dinosaurs who know they're not going to be able to compete in the future, and a sad attempt at trying to preserve the status quo for a few more years.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[4of12]

The trouble here is that Google is reproducing the entire article if you think about it. Imagine if you go to the library every day, and copy a single phrase in a book. If you do this a few thousand times, you've reproduced the whole book, and it's definitely no longer fair use. That's what Google is doing. They have internal copies of everything, and they serve small (but different) pieces to people.

I hate it when the technological tools or providers unfairly become the targets of a crime-prevention program.

Any actual copyright infringment crime is being committed by the pirate that unscrupulously combines Google's snippets into an entire work and re-sells them without permission. Google provides tools that enable this to happen, but others are committing the crime.

Just as with DVD Jon, whose tools can be used legally, or illegally. Rather than go after the actual perpetrators of actual crimes, the *AA associations take the path of least business resistance to outlaw a technical measure or means that is not inherently criminal.

Just like those annoying speed bumps you find in parking lots, it's a technical solution to a social problem.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[endoplasmicMessenger]

Spend all you want, the governments will print more.

What's this BS about the goverment printing up more money? Who do they give it to? How do they account for it? Since when is the government giving away free money?

Oh, and where do I get in line?

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[ceoyoyo]

I assume you're referring to Google's book scanning project? I don't really get what they're up to with that -- it's a worthy project, and SOMEBODY should do it, and since the book publishers don't seem interested, somebody else has to. But why Google? They can scan all the books they want to, that's not illegal (at least not in the free world) but they can't make the result available because that IS copyright infringement (for the books that are still under copyright). Realistically, Google could probably work for the rest of our lives on non-copyrighted books and documents and not finish.

But that's not what the current discussion is about. This complaint is against Google's online news service.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[tbannist]

The person who wrote "to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords" would probably call you "a little slow in the head, if you know what I mean" for the position you are taking. You are falling for a common problem where you fail to understanding the difference between "technically correct" vs "actually correct".

There is an implicit assumption is that the defendent would be making multiple copies for the purpose of giving them to other people or else it would not be a matter of law. 18th century methods of surveillance were not quite as robust as those of the electronics age.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[tbannist]

I'm with ya:

It's like sueing a criminal's parents for making his crimes possible... by breeding.

Or sueing the school he went to, because if they hadn't taught him how to write, he wouldn't have been able to hand the bank teller a note.

Or sueing the manufacturers of the pen and paper he used to write the note.

The legal issue will always be whether there are substantial non-criminal uses, the answer is unequivocally yes in every one of these cases.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Pofy]

>There is an implicit assumption is that the defendent would be making multiple copies for the purpose
>of giving them to other people or else it would not be a matter of law

No there is no such "assumtion" in the law. Even a single copy and with no giving away to other would be an infrrinngment, that is the base. Then there can be various excpetions were such an activity can still not be an infringement although this vary with country, in US for example, it goes under, among other things, fair use, the European countries, since this topi is about Europe, has it coded in more specific cases were you are allowed to make copies. But the basis is still that you cna't make copies, period.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[tbannist]

I didn't say the assumption was written into the law, if it had been, there wouldn't be any debate. It was an assumption on the part of the people who wrote the law. They, optimists that they were, assumed their descendents would be sufficiently intelligent to understand that laws should not be considered absolutes that trump reason and judgement.

It appears that they were fools after all.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

"Copies" in this sense refer to actual published, readable copies. Collections of bits stored as hashes in google's search index do not count, just as my memories don't count after reading the damned news stories. You are missing an essential nuance of the word. Maybe it's because little tiny brains like yours are incapable of a decent vocabulary, or maybe any vocabulary beyond a few million words becomes inconvenient.

Either way, "copy" has several flavors. One means an intentional word-for-word reproduction manufactured in such a way that it can be sold just like the original one. Google does not do this. The other "copy" means a less exact reproduction, or one completed in such a way as to not be useful the same way as the original.

Copying Reuters stories by printing them out and selling them on a streetcorner for a nickel apiece violates copyright because it is the type of copying meant to be prohibited. Using a quote in a term paper is not, because it's the second type of copying. Now, stay with me here, if google indexes all the the words in the story, so people can search for them, but are still directed to Reuters original copy to actually read it... just which type do you call this?

Back when copyright was originally written into law in the US, the second type of copying was less obvious, or maybe seen as so innocent that it wasn't necessary to put in a literal exception. Later, the courts somehow got ahold of wisdom long enough to put a few of the most obvious exceptions into case law. They did not recognize all of them, or put all of the exceptions into case law at that time... these exceptions still exist. More may become obvious later.

Re:Profit Elsewhere

[Pofy]

>"Copies" in this sense refer to actual published, readable copies.

Indeed, what a copy mean (in the us copyright law) is indeed defined in 101. I have never claimed anything else.

>Collections of bits stored as hashes in google's search index do not count,

Uhuh??? Were have I claimed such a thing? What does that have to do with what I have written or replied to? My reply was to a statement claiming that copyright was not about *copying*. I have not even TOUCHED upon what work is protected by copyright. Actually, talking about what copyright gives in rights would assume that I am ONLY talking about things that get copyright to start with. I really have no idea were you got the idea that my text tried to claim a hash is protected by copytight. Try to reread what I wrote.

>Maybe it's because little tiny brains like yours are incapable of a decent
>vocabulary,

At least it is cabable of reading the posts I reply to, something you don't manage.

What Is?

[ackthpt]

'This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.', says Francisco Pinto Balsemao, head of the European Publishers Council.

The panicking and running around with hands in the air, shouting "the sky is falling"?

I can begin to tell how many authors I've ripped off by reading their entire tomes on-line, snippet by snippet in Google search results.

I haven't.

On the contrary, like Langdon alludes, I hear or see something, pop a few words into Google to do a search, next thing you know my bookshelf, real oak(!), is jamb packed with books.

What do they really want, poverty and security through obscurity?

the new zork times book review shall not quote, nor say bad words about my book, in cold oatmeal or i shall sue

Re:What Is?

[pete6677]

It sounds like French publishers are becoming almost as annoying and delusional as American music labels.

Re:What Is?

[rolfwind]

Many small publishers are probably scared that they will lose business and Google will become the prominent "publisher" for many smaller low circulation books.

Especially in hobbyist niches, many authors can't hope to make a profit off their work, instead it's done for prestige or the love of the hobby. They lose money by paying the publisher to print their books and spend years selling it for a little above cost.

Eventually cut these middlemen publishers out when authors recognize they can get away from them (maybe like artists and iTunes one day). Or perhaps not. People love hardcopies.

I wonder how this and the coming e-paper revolution would play out. Google could really become poised to become the biggest book publisher in the world, when after browsing the book online, for a fee with 75% going to the author, it can be downloaded to your 8.5"x11" e-paper you use to read all your stuff (effectively your library.)

Re:What Is?

[masklinn]

Check some previous slashdot news, our music labels (as well as some other stupid lobbys) have decided to become about 42 times worse than the American ones in a single move by trying to ban open-source and free (as in freedom) software.

Re:What Is?

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, how often have you read the cached version? How often has that cached version been scraped? And why should Google profit off of your returned results - Google needs content to have a meaningful service.

As a CTO for a major SEM (search engine marketing firm), it amazes me that we are so accepting of implied-consent in the area of search engine indexing but not in almost any other online arena. We have passed laws to prevent the usage of your phone number or email (often published freely online) for commercial purposes (we call it spam and telemarketing), but consider it completely legit for Google to slurp it up, reprint it (snippet and cache) and toss in some advertisements for good measure.

The ultimate question is of implied-consent. Why is it implied that copyright owners consent to spidering? Why must multiple steps be taken to prevent spidering from ocurring rather than vice-versa. Whether you or I like it, as an author, I own creative rights to that material. In every other venue, I must express my wishes for it to be redistributed, but not on the web. On the web, those rights disappear.

I am all in favor of open standards, open support, free software and free content. My business depends upon it. But I would much rather spend my time writing a robots.txt file that says allow-all on sites I want indexed, than scurrying frantically through support pages trying to remove that file that Google found.

Which do you believe in: an opt-in Google, or an opt-out Google?

Re:What Is?

[sd_diamond]

On the contrary, like Langdon alludes, I hear or see something, pop a few words into Google to do a search, next thing you know my bookshelf, real oak(!), is jamb packed with books.

Wow. I'd like to have that printer. Where'd you get it?

Re:What Is?

[Midnight Thunder]

In many ways a good number of companies still don't "get it", and in France there are a fair number of companies who fall into that category. A few reasons I say this:
  - A good number of sites feel like they were designed with the Minitel in mind
  - A good number of sites just don't work. I tried doing something as simple a trying to buy a product with a Belgian credit card and have the product sent to an address in France. I really wanted to avoid Amazon, and give the other guys a go. In the end I went to Amazon - they really do seem to get it and do their QA.
  - No sense of design. The number of sites that I have seen that are overlaiden with Flash, have poor navigation and look like they were put together in one day.
Yes I am generalising and I generally feel that a wake call is needed.

Re:What Is?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I would much rather spend my time writing a robots.txt file that says allow-all on sites I want indexed, than scurrying frantically through support pages trying to remove that file that Google found.

But writing a robots.txt file that says deny-all is just too much work. It's good to know the standards for CTO brain power are so high these days.

Re:What Is?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not speaking on my behalf, but that of the remainder of internet novices who have no idea what a robots.txt file is.

Re:What Is?

[pete6677]

If you don't want people using your stuff, don't put it on a PUBLICALLY available web server. If you were passing out free handouts of your work on the sidewalk, would you be outraged if I took a copy and then handed it to my friend? Nobody is violating your rights here. As another poster has pointed out, you are more than free to not have your work seen in web searches. The internet by its very nature operates with the assumption that material is being provided for users to actually use. If you dislike this, don't put your material out there (yes, you need to hear this for the second time).

Re:What Is?

[mcubed]

our music labels (as well as some other stupid lobbys) have decided to become about 42 times worse than the American ones

I'm amazed that people on both sides of the pond continue to refer to "American" or "European" music labels, when there are exactly four music companies owned by five multinational corporations that control the production/distribution of more than 80% of the world's commercially available music.

People, there effectively is no national music industry anymore. It's an international business.

Michael

Re:What Is?

[mattspammail]

Or have one of those blurry word confirmation things before anyone can visit a page on your site. That'll keep the creepy crawlers away.

Oh no

[saskboy]

I just made a list of things, and Slashdot will be making ad money from the list of other people's software being here:
http://sf.net/

http://digg.com/

http://grisoft.com/

Someone sue Slashdot! Quickly now!

Re:Oh no

[booch]

It's even worse than I thought!

I own a small store, and a lot of people come in to browse and don't buy anything.

The bus companies are making money off of people who come into my store!

In answer to the question...

[Shadow Wrought]

Any industry tied to a technology lends itself to obsolecence. Why should printing be different?

Re:In answer to the question...

[Belseth]

The issue isn't about printing becoming obsolete but writing as a profession. At first it was just E-Books or digitized material that was at risk but now they are starting to scan in printed books and making them availible. How many professional writers will there be if they can no longer sell their work? The cost of printing and distributing written material in some ways has protected the profession but digitized material can be reproduced at little or no cost so it can spread through the internet like a virus. If traditional publishing ceases to exist it won't be a triumph for the internet it'll be a loss for humanity because many talented writers will have to find other professions. Everyone talks about it being a benefit to writers but so far most methods of distribution through the web have failed or involve giving away the writers work. Big business will always survive what is at risk or the livelihoods of artists and creative people. The more it cuts into corporate profits the more they'll turn the screws on the artists and pay less and less for their. You have to remember for every successful writer there's a thousand starving ones. Few get rich and even now most can't make a decent living at it.

Re:In answer to the question...

[mrchaotica]

Well, sucks to be a writer then!

There's absolutely no reason to be worried about the "loss for humanity" of having no professional writers. You know why? Because either

1. somebody will see value in their work, and compensate them for it so that they can keep writing more, or
2. their work had no value anyway, so it's no loss.

The only issue is how the mechanism of the compensation will work, and, as with so many other things (including software), traditional publishing is merely one possible model. Others include donations from fans, government grants, patronage (rich people like reading too, you know), working for a corporation where the literary work will act as a loss-leader for some tangible related product (e.g. ebook reader), etc.

Re:In answer to the question...

[zootm]

...now they are starting to scan in printed books and making them availible.

They're making them searchable, not "available". One can't just grab whole books off of the system. I believe this news article is about Google News (judging from other comments), not Google Print, though.

I still don't buy the argument of Google Print killing the industry on books though. It just doesn't seem based in logic.

Re:In answer to the question...

[John Nowak]

somebody will see value in their work, and compensate them for it so that they can keep writing more Ah yes, the classic American-Libertarian "charity will take care of everything" argument.

Re:In answer to the question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the classic American-Libertarian "charity will take care of everything" argument.

Ah, yes, the classic ad hom troll that treats "American-Libertarian" as an insult and implies that Libertarian arguments hold no water without even so much as one supporting argument.

The actual argument is along the lines of "If people think it is important, they will support it." Since that is the way the world actually works, I think you will have a hard time arguing against it.

Libertarians just think that using the government and taxes to force people to support things they do not agree with are not the appropriate way to support things. If you disagree, fine. But that's a matter of principle.

Re:In answer to the question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the classic American-Libertarian "charity will take care of everything" argument.

Actually, the grandparent included "government grants" in his list of possible alternatives as well. His point was not that a miracle is required, but simply that the free market is not the only mechanism of funding things which are of value to society. In fact, quite often it is not even the best method of funding things which are of value to society.

When you have to choose between socially supported information production in a form people want, and lawsuit-enforced markets to distribute information in a closed and less useful form, then this is a sign that we need a little less dependence on business as the only means of bringing us information.

Re:In answer to the question...

[innocent_white_lamb]

Musicians and artists had sponsors and patrons long before the words American or Libertarian were thought of.

Ok..

[Anonymous Coward]

You are using my air to make money. It is unsustainable in the long run. Gotta commodify everything so everyone pays every minute of every day...

free online content

[d41d8cd98f00b204e980]

When you get your content, or your applications, online, you are then at the mercy of:

1) He who controls where the content or apps are stored, controls YOU.
2) Your connetion (being up or down, or slow, or high latency)
3) Security issues

Huh?

[MrApples]

It seems to me that a search engine like Google would be much more helpful than detrimental to most all sites. It's hard to see anything worth arguing from the other side in my mind.

Appropriate response

[Todd Knarr]

Google to European publishers: "OK, if you guys don't want your content indexed, we won't index it. And we'll remove it from our database while we're at it."

European publishers, a month later: "Why have visits to our sites dropped by 80% since Google stopped stealing uor content?!"

Re:Appropriate response

[HTH NE1]

They probably think they can gather enough traffic just on their names and from advertising in other media (television, radio, other print media).

But really, they'd rather control what stories their readers see and protect against their opinions being listed against opinions of competing publications. They feel they aggregate stories just fine and Google is undermining their wor and discouraging readers from being brand-aware.

When was the last time you visited a site's article on Google News and wanted to visit the home page of the site? A site's front-page cover story means nothing.

Perhaps they recognize that search engine results are effectively free targeted advertising for them. They just see the loss of control over what is and isn't news, and with that a loss of identity in the on-line news business.

Re:Appropriate response

[HTH NE1]

Google is undermining their wor

For they are the Wizards of Wor, ha, ha, ha, hey, insert coin?

No, that should have been "undermining their work".

Re:Appropriate response

[Anonymous Coward]

"Perhaps they recognize that search engine results are effectively free targeted advertising for them"

The most probably is that those people are regarding the *service* Google does them as their God-given right.

If Google would remove them from their index, they would probably (try to) sue Google because of interfering with their busines, and if Google keeps them in their index they will (probably) sue because of leaching on their interlectual property.

As I see it, they seem to be thinking they are in a win-win situation.

The only thing we can hope for is that Google is & will be, by law, regarded as a private coorporation, and that it can include or exclude in that index whomever they want.

The end-result would effectivily be a non-presence on the Web of the very people who thought they could not loose. :-)

Re:Appropriate response

[ctenet]

I think this is actually easy to do. Just place an appropriate robots.txt in the area you don't want indexed, and Google will respect it. If you want to be really sure, ban all of the IP ranges that Google uses from your web server. The parent obviously has a good point, though. I don't see why a site wouldn't want to be indexed by Google.

Re:Appropriate response

[Duncan3]

If you want visitors/customers you have to pay off Google. If you don't pay Google 99.9% of your profits, someone else will, and you will get no visitors.

Welcome to a search engine driven internet. If it wasn't Google, it would be Microsoft

Good news is, this applies to your competitors too, so the long term end result is, people get sick of Google and just give everything away for free, because all profits would have to goto Google anyway. Middlemen will all cease to exist, and you will just order directly from the people that make the stuff, and pick a shipping method. Only like 3 plants on Earth make CRTs anymore, but you can buy one from at least 100,000 stores - not for long.

Bad news is, most free stuff is crap, and because smart people will all turn their time and attention to making things they can make a living off of, the free stuff will be even more crap-tacular. Leaving us with nothing but the blogs *shivers*

Re:Appropriate response

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Perhaps they recognize that search engine results are effectively free targeted advertising for them. They just see the loss of control over what is and isn't news, and with that a loss of identity in the on-line news business.

Unfortunately, I can't think of a better way to describe it other than the old stupid metaphor: "can't have your cake and eat it too".

It's possible that they want to negotiate with Google over specific terms on how information is presented, but with what? Unless there is an industry-wide embargo against Google, that basically means anyone that declines search engine indexing are off the radar and their competitors benefit. The power here is on the side of search engines, any news agency can take their ball and go home, but they won't. I doubt there would be enough solidarity for all the news agencies to set up an embargo because anyone that breaks gets the traffic.

Get a brain, moran!

[Rude Turnip]

"Publishers from Europe are complaining that Internet search engines are making money off their copyright-protected material. 'This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.', says Francisco Pinto Balsemao, head of the European Publishers Council."

What a whiny little biatch. *Every* news outlet with an online presence has one of two choices:

1. Do not make your content openly accessible through the HTTP protocol and charge a fee.
2. Use robots.txt, which Google honours.

Until one of those two actions are taken, Francisco, you have FREELY VOLUNTEERED to offer your content to news aggregators and anyone with a web browser. This is a choice you can make *right now*, instead of complaining like a baby.

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[pla]

You mean: Get a brain moron or moran?

Fark cliche. He means "moran". And he even used it in an apropos situation (ie, one where those doing the bitching stand to hurt themselves the most by virtue of their glaringly obvious ineptitude).

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[interiot]

Neither. He actually meant!
morans

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[grcumb]

"Fark cliche. He means 'moran'."

That may well be, but Irishmen around the world are still itching to kick the sh*t out of him.

8^)

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[AndroidCat]

If they could provide a list of their domains, I'll be sure to tell my router so that I don't accidently index them (or access them in any way).

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[houghi]

This is the same excuse that spammers use: If you don't want it, you can unsubscribe. In this case with adding a robot.txt

Why not a robot.txt that tells whay you DO want to be indexed. No robot.txt, no addition to any searchengine.

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[gnud]

There is a difference. The spammers steal your time and good mood. The publishers likely won't even notice that the content they made *freely accessible* was visited by google.
But even so, I think perhaps I agree with you.

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[rob_squared]

The difference?

Robots.txt works more often than an "unsubscribe" link. Assuming the spam even has one. Oh, and google is a legitimate company.

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[RodgerDodger]

Because by sticking up an web-site, you've said "Hey, this is publicly available. Do what you want with this". If you don't like that, you need to put in some controls.

Take a musician: if you take your instrument and start playing in the park, you can't stop people stopping and listening. You can't stop them recording or videoing you. You can't even force them to pay money, though some may toss some change into the case. If you want to be able to do anything like that, you need to change the environment in which you play your music (ie, rent a hall and charge admission).

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[PitaBred]

Because spammers notoriously don't respect the "unsubscribe". Google is a highly visible organization that will respect your wishes. You know they exist, and if you want off their radar, it's quite easy to do. Not to mention that more people want to be indexed rather than not, which also tends to be an opposite case to the spammers.

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not a robot.txt that tells whay you DO want to be indexed. No robot.txt, no addition to any searchengine.

The way robots.txt works may not be ideal, but it's not relevant. The fact is that the publishers have a simple remedy they can implement in thirty seconds. The attitude of most judges will be "why are you wasting the court's time with this bullshit when you already have a trivial remedy?"

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[Kjella]

1) The vast number of sites want to be found. If you have a *public* webserver that you want to keep *private* from search engines you should specify that exception.
2) It operates on the honor system anyway, and has no practical signifiance. All web server operators should be aware of this accepted practise.
3) Going to a spammers link will notify him that the mail is active and read by a human, and often expose you to malicious code. Robots.txt or not doesn't matter.

In short, robots.txt could say "Sauerkraut!" or "404 Not Found" to mean no and it'd make no difference at all.

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[AK Marc]

This is the same excuse that spammers use: If you don't want it, you can unsubscribe.

If only that worked for spammers. If you could unsubscribe (one file to block all spammers like robots.txt would be nice) from them, they wouldn't be spammers.

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[susano_otter]

Yeah, but aren't Irishmen around the world always itching to kick the sh*t out of someone?

Truly it is said, "God invented whiskey so the Irish wouldn't rule the world."

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[sco08y]

I guess no one on Fark has ever heard of Jim Moran.

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[martin-boundary]

Who mods this stuff as insightful? That argument isn't just ridiculous, it's completely unrelated to reality.

Google is stealing news stories and photographic resources, not from the original creators, but often from the news sites which obtained syndicated copies of the material.

Take a news snippet from Reuters. Now Reuters have people on the ground all around the world, and they sell current stories to newspapers and magazines. This means that the small bit paper or cable operation in Nowhere, Ohio can still offer international news without sending staff overseas.

But here's the catch: Reuters licenses the material, and the two bit websites don't ensure it's safe from the likes of Google, so Google ends up with copyrighted material it didn't pay for, not by taking it directly from the content creators (e.g. Reuters), but by taking "shared" copies downstream.

Google has no right to offer this copyrighted material in its cache, since Google didn't pay for a syndication contract, unlike the small websites it steals from, which actually did pay for the material.

What Google should do is pay the creators for a license to use these materials, then it would be ok to offer the material in the cache, and to index the contents of the smaller websites.

But to say that Reuters or AFP is actually in the wrong because it doesn't set up a proper robots.txt when most of the data is stolen from downstream websites who license the material for a specific purpose is ridiculous.

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[martinX]

Then when Reuters licences the material, they make it a condition of that licence that the licencee has an appropriate robots.txt file in place.

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[martin-boundary]

Which still doesn't get Google off the hook. The web site which licensed the material has no authority to relicense, even implicitly through the existence or not of robots.txt, the commercial use of the material to third parties.

Re:Get a brain, moran!

[logicpaw]

Why not a robot.txt that tells whay you DO want to be indexed. No robot.txt, no addition to any searchengine.

Done. No web page can be indexed unless you upload it to an web server which responds to the HTTP requests of spiders. You don't want it visible, don't upload the page to an accessable web server. You want it visible to a select subset of viewers? Put it on a private server, password protect it, or use robots.txt, etc.

Google News

[Michalson]

These comments are despite the fact that Google does not place ads on their news service

That's because the news service is "beta" forever. In fact citing Google News is actually a direct prove of the outside assertion - Google has kept it beta for years (and isn't like to ever make it a "real" service) simply because there is no true model they could legally use. They are screen scraping other people's content and the second they let it be legally defined as anything but an academic exercise (by removing the beta mark or sticking ads on it) they will get hit with a million lawsuits and Google won't have a legal leg to stand on.

Google News, along with most other Google "services", are special cases. Unlike companies that are trying to make money from their services, Google's main goal is to use them to mine personal information from millions of visitors. So it doesn't matter if their software is beta forever, as long as they can have a system that reads your personal email and indexes all keywords found against the GUID that tracks you across every Google site, they will be happy because they can sell expensive targeted advertising on the main Google search and anywhere else that won't get them into legal trouble.

Re:Google News

[ACME Septic]

In fact citing Google News is actually a direct prove of the outside assertion - Google has kept it beta for years (and isn't like to ever make it a "real" service) simply because there is no true model they could legally use. They are screen scraping other people's content and the second they let it be legally defined as anything but an academic exercise (by removing the beta mark or sticking ads on it) they will get hit with a million lawsuits and Google won't have a legal leg to stand on.

The AFP are already suing Google over Google News. I guess your "beta theory of legality" didn't work?

Somehow, I really don't think this defense will work: "But, your Honor, our infringing program is in BETA!"

Re:Google News

[geekoid]

so you are claiming that putting the word 'Beta' in front of your service exempts you from laws?

Or are you saying that there is some magic gun being pointed at Google and if they removed the beta tag they must put adverting up?

Please take your paranoid anti-corporate ravings elsewhere.

Re:Google News

[NeutronCowboy]

Whether software is in beta stage or not has no impact whatsoever on its legality. If software is illegal, people can sue. Or do you think Napster, Grokster and various other software providers could have escaped their fate simply by labeling it "Beta"? Of course not.

As a result, the situation is quite simple. Google is providing a (as of now) legal service by spidering publicly available content on websites that just happens to cover current events. If the publishers don't like it, there are a million ways to prevent Google from doing what they're doing (which, by the way, has nothing to do with screen scraping), all of which simple and even encouraged by Google. This is nothing more than some exec looking at a revenue stream that involves his content, but doesn't pay him a red cent. I hope he gets smacked into oblivion by his legal system and his customers.

Re:Google News

[ChaosDiscord]

Strange, strange arguments. So if I slap a big "Beta!" logo on MassiveCopyrightInfringement.com ("Get the latest movies for free!") it will all be cool and no one can sue me? I think not. Beta doesn't mean, "academic exercise" or "research." It means a product well on its way to production, but not finalized.

I'll point out that "screen scraping" typically means reading the output of a program in a way that wasn't intended. Google's super complex screen scraping technique involves calling up the remote web server, making a query, and getting easy to parse HTML back. You know, kinda like your web browser does. It's hardly screen scraping.

Indeed, perhaps more importantly, how is this different from any other web search engine? They download web pages, they index them. Instead of just tossing the results into the main Google engine, they try to be a bit smarter about indexing them, noticing patterns and grouping similar concepts. Google News is just a specially tuned web search engine. Are you suggesting that Google shouldn't be allowed to tune their search engine to return more useful results?

A title and short excerpts from a work are pretty safe, Fair Use wise. Not perfectly safe, but generally so. Google is in zero danger.

Re:Google News

[bill_mcgonigle]

They are screen scraping other people's content and the second they let it be legally defined as anything but an academic exercise (by removing the beta mark or sticking ads on it) they will get hit with a million lawsuits and Google won't have a legal leg to stand on.

So what you're saying is that Google assembles bits of news from many different sources and presents that in a way that people like to read it?

I can see why newspaper publishers think this is so radical...

Robots.txt

[queenb**ch]

If they don't want to be spidered, let them turn on the robots.txt. Sheesh! Since they can control what Google has for them in their search results, I fail to see how Google is responsible for that.

Besides, if you're selling content, don't you want people to know you have it? How are they supposed to know that they can buy it otherwise?

Just how big a DUH! does this get?

2 cents,

Queen B

Re:robots.txt

[tacolicker]

1337z0rz!

Re:Robots.txt

[sijo]

Why spend 30 seconds writing a robots.txt when you can simply sue?

Re:Robots.txt

[Ruprecht the Monkeyb]

Because they want Google to index them so people come to their site. In other words, they not only want to have their cake and eat it too, they want someone else to bring it to their doorstep and pay them for the privilege of delivering it.

Re:Robots.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the default behavior should be to not index a site UNLESS it has a robots.txt file specifically ALLOWING indexing. Doesn't sound like too big a deal.

Re:Robots.txt

[jafac]

I'm currently taking an IT ethics class.

When we discussed this subject (actually, it was based on the ebay/auctions.com case from a few years ago), I read huge dissertations, 10 pages long, that essentially said what you said in two sentences.

It's really very simple. Whoever is trying to make this out to be more complicated than your two sentences, is probably trying to justify something else.

Re:Robots.txt

[evilad]

And maybe people shouldn't publish things on the PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE INTERNET if they want to maintain perfect private control over who reads it and how.

Re:Robots.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a precedent for this, perfect 10 magazine sued Google for copyright infringement because their pr0n was being displayed for free in Google's image search.

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/38415.html

As I recall, perfect 10 went home with their til between their legs when it was pointed out that robots.txt would have prevented this.

Re:Robots.txt

[adrianmonk]

If they don't want to be spidered, let them turn on the robots.txt. Sheesh! Since they can control what Google has for them in their search results, I fail to see how Google is responsible for that.

Besides, if you're selling content, don't you want people to know you have it? How are they supposed to know that they can buy it otherwise?

In other words, they are getting free advertising -- something most companies would love to have -- but they say they are unhappy about it.

They claim the reason they're unhappy about it is that Google gets money as a result of giving them free advertising. But that's not the real reason. If their product were featured in a positive way in a hit Hollywood movie at no cost to them, they wouldn't complain that the movie studio made money off the movie. Nope, they'd be absolutely thrilled.

So the reason they say they don't like it is not the real reason. But what is the real reason? The real reason they don't like it is that their competitors' products are also getting free advertising, and some of their competitors have lower prices. (Some give it away for free.)

Their complaint is just an excuse, possibly meant as a rallying cry to try to put the genie back in the bottle by convincing other news outlets that they're being shafted and they need to withdraw stuff in order to kill Google News. Either that or they realize change is happening and they don't like it, but they're too dumb to understand what's going on, so they are just attacking Google in hopes that that will make things better, even though it's not rational.

Well BOO HOO

[alexborges]

Fuck this crybabies. Its sickening to think of this 80 year old publishing house CEO's thinking... damn, this geeky people are fucking us over.

I mean:
a) put your pants back on and start producing digital content that is not available to google. Safari seams to do this just fine.

b) Put your pants back on and get the hell out of the "content" business you so gleefully claim is yours. If youre so dependant on the medium of transmission, chances are youre just a middle man and the supply chain just got smarter. Your content has no value if the only thing it has going for it is that I can only get it from you.

c) Put your pants back on and start doing your job. I mean, like, editing books so that its content is consumable. Do a good job at it, and people will pay to see it. I pay for safari, id pay for whatever you have to offer if it has any use for me.

Re:Well BOO HOO

[Anonymous Coward]

b) Put your pants back on and get the hell out of the "content" business you so gleefully claim is yours. If youre so dependant on the medium of transmission, chances are youre just a middle man and the supply chain just got smarter. Your content has no value if the only thing it has going for it is that I can only get it from you.

I Couldn't agree more...

Does not reproduce content?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is some content being reproduced. Don't we even use their cache? I sympathize with the publishers and content providers.

Re:Does not reproduce content?

[HTH NE1]

Google News links don't provide cache links.

I've also found that some Google News links can't be found on Google proper. I discovered that when trying to follow a news link where the site pretended to be down when you tried to access that particular story directly (other accesses to the same site went through fine). Later a different version of the story was up that didn't match Google News' blurb.

Re:Does not reproduce content?

[orkysoft]

That news site pretends to be down when you click a link to a page on it from Google? That's pretty stupid, they'll only teach people to not go to that site anymore, because it's down so often...

Re:Does not reproduce content?

[HTH NE1]

That news site pretends to be down when you click a link to a page on it from Google?

I was unclear. It pretends to be down when you tried to access a story that has been pulled and re-edited. No 404, just played dead when that particular page was accessed. Attempts to access without a Referer had the same result. But I could access other stories on the same site.

Chicken

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultimately, the law is largely irrelevant on this matter. Even if things go in the publishers favor it doesn't mean search engines will pay them to index their content.

I'd love to see this game of chicken between publishers and search engines:

Publishers: You have to pay us to list us. It's even the law now.
Search Engines: Fine, we won't list you.

Would the lack of cnn.com as a news source really affect Google News one way or the other? Probably not. But I bet it would affect cnn.com quite a bit.

Unless publishers move en mass they don't pose any threat at all to search engines.

Business model

[superbrainpanic]

Most modern online publishers seek and profit from search engine, RSS agregators, etc exposure. Maybe the old media business is just becoming obsolete? Aren't the capitalists allways telling us we can't argue with the market?

Re:Business model

[grumpyman]

Most modern online publishers seek and profit from search engine, RSS agregators, etc exposure. Maybe the old media business is just becoming obsolete? Aren't the capitalists allways telling us we can't argue with the market?

As long as the captialists have their hands in our pockets lol.

Another incompetent publisher pointing fingers.

[ip_freely_2000]

'This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.'

Search engines have been in common use for almost 15 years now. How much of a 'longer term' do you need?

Besides, Search Engines only point to content. Publishers should enhance their content with proper use f metadata to drive traffic to sites with grrat content people WILL pay for.

In the meantime, it's all just sour grapes.

Re:Another incompetent publisher pointing fingers.

[pla]

Search engines have been in common use for almost 15 years now. How much of a 'longer term' do you need?

Well, considering that printing presses have lasted around 550 years...


Publishers should enhance their content with proper use f metadata

Like, say, a "robots.txt" file saying Google shouldn't play there, which Google honors?


In the meantime, it's all just sour grapes.

Speaking ow which, next thing you know, even vintners will start complaining that their industry needs some sort of protection from upstarts that can do the same thing better in a different part of the world...

Re:Another incompetent publisher pointing fingers.

[houghi]

Besides, Search Engines only point to content.

Are you sure?

Re:Another incompetent publisher pointing fingers.

[jZnat]

I think he's sure...

step-by-step

[TheSHAD0W]

Step 1: Web publishers in Europe sue search engines to stop them from "stealing" their content.

Step 2: Web publishers in Europe sue search engines to force them to reindex their servers after their customers can no longer find them and their competitors, who were happy to be indexed, get all the traffic.

Step 3: Web publishers in Europe sue search engines to recover for "damages" since the engines are using their intellectual property - despite the fact that the search engines are now forced to use that property by court order.

Step 4: Web publishers in Europe are lined up against the wall and shot as the internet collapses from an excess of stupidity.

Re:step-by-step

[mrchaotica]

Step 4: Web publishers in Europe are lined up against the wall and shot as the internet collapses from an excess of stupidity.

No, the Internet would collapse when the courts declared caching illegal. After all, everything from the ISP to the web browser application does caching, and technically it does make a copy of the copyrighted material...

Re:step-by-step

[Pofy]

>No, the Internet would collapse when the courts declared caching illegal.
>After all, everything from the ISP to the web browser application does
>caching, and technically it does make a copy of the copyrighted
>material...

Such, often temporary, copies are in most countries copyright law excepted from infringing ones. However, if you start to use those caches as normal copies, then they of course no longer are.

What's the big deal?

[Spy der Mann]

They only have to put a NOCACHE directive in their server. Don't askme how, IANAWA (I Am Not A Web Admin), but it can be done.

This way their content cannot be reproduced without having to pay a subscription. IMHO, they're only making a scene because they're stupid.

robots.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy fix for the publishers.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Thank me later asshats!

fee for content vs. search engines

[The_Rook]

content providers are in a bit of a catch-22. if they mount their content to the internet for free, then they complain that search engines will make money from it while the content provider gets nothing.

however, the moment content is placed behind some sort of barrier, the search engines no longer find it and it loses much of its value. the ny times' web site is an excellent example. even though the ny times gives most of its content away for free, they still require registration for access. the registration erects a barrier between times' content and the search engines. have you ever seen a new york times article appear in google? user registration has probably resulted in as much or more of a loss of revenue for the new york times web site as they may have gained through their exclusivity.

would any care to speculate about how much the wall street journal could make from their content if it were freely available on-line versus what they make through subscriptions?

Re:fee for content vs. search engines

[HTH NE1]

have you ever seen a new york times article appear in google?

Often. I followed two today. Google as a referrer also gets you past the user registration.

Re:fee for content vs. search engines

[masklinn]

have you ever seen a new york times article appear in google?

Yes, because the Googlebot is a special exception on the NYTime's website (and a handful of other news-related subscription websites) and can go through anytime.

Drop the Googlebot's User Agent String [ Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html) ] into your browser if you're using Opera, or Firefox with Chris Pederick's User Agent Switcher extension, Safari and Konqueror probably provide User Agent faking as well. Then try to reach a "subscription only" NYTimes page, switch your UAS to Googlebot's, boom you're allowed in.

So let them turn away the search 'bots

[crovira]

Its just a root level notation anyway.

Then they can keep their materials nice and safe and away from the prying eyes
of potential customers.

Search is NOT costing THEM a friggin's dime, if fact or in sales.

If they sit on their books, they'll just get their lunch eaten from them by somebody else'; somebody who put his material in searchable form so that people can find it, then buy it.

Nobody'll ever know about THEIR damn books and nobody'll buy 'em either.

How about just this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then don't publish on the fucking web you goddamb dinosaur shitheads.

And any political argument on this is just wasted.

Note to publishers:

[mrchaotica]

.

This is the world's smallest violin, playing the world's saddest song, just for you.

Seriously, the publishers (and anyone else who is too stupid to adapt and instead tries to prop up their obsolete business model) can fuck off and die, and it won't matter in the slightest. The world, and the Internet, will carry on without them, and probably be better for it!

Re:Note to publishers:

[joebok]

My first instinct is to agree with this - but then I get thinking longer term... I know there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. For years I've been reading online news rather than buying a newspaper. I depend on the Internet for a lot of things, and the only money I pay directly for it is my monthly DSL/ISP fee. They don't give a kickback to any publishers!

Assuming that all the dumb publishers fuck off and die, how will the reports get paid? Will advertising really magically pay for everything? I think a lot of publishers and other businesses have seen an Internet as a necessity to stay in their primary business, but when the primary business becomes delivering content over the Internet, how do they pay the bills? Will the free ride be over? Will be have to start paying for things!?!

Re:Note to publishers:

[Haeleth]

Assuming that all the dumb publishers fuck off and die, how will the reports get paid? Will advertising really magically pay for everything?

How do you think the reporters get paid today? Does that 30p for your paper really magically pay for everything, or could it just possibly be the case that the adverts that cover up to 50% of every page inside a printed paper are actually the only thing making it profitable?

When print newspapers die, all that advertising money will start going to the online services that replace them instead. Might just pay for a reporter or two, don't you think?

Re:Note to publishers:

[mrchaotica]

It doesn't matter. If a thing has value, somebody will produce it. The method of production is irrelevant, except that the most efficient one is best. If traditional publishers can't survive, well, then it's just an indication that they're no longer the most efficient method of production!

Re:Note to publishers:

[Pharmboy]

I'm not like you. I didn't read much news at all I started on the net in 95. (I'm 40) Now I still don't buy the paper (wife gets Sundays for ads) but I see a lot of ads with the online news that I use Google to find, then I go to the individual sites. They get to show me ads, get a few cents each time.

As for books, I have lots of ebooks, and I seldom read them. They are great for greping to find specific stuff, mainly tech manuals but little else for my purposes. But I am just like most serious readers, I prefer dead trees for real reading. My hardbook purchasing has increase, many fold, since the internet came out. So I don't buy the old "we can't make a living!" cry. Either a person loves to read or they don't, and the net introduces reading.

Here is what the internet *REALLY* does for book authors: If you are a big famous author, nothing much. If you are new, or write obscure works, it gives you higher exposure cheap, and more people will buy your book simply because more people have heard about it. Now, this MIGHT result in lower sales for famous writers, because they have some competition.

Similar (but admittedly different) to the RIAA. Its about CONTROL, not protection. Publishers want to protect their old way of doing things, and keeping the independents out is a great way. Regardless, I will still go shop at Borders, shop online with Amazon and BN. I will still shop Goodwill, Salvation Army and used book stores.

Google might get me to buy more books, but they damn sure won't get me to buy less.

Easy Solution For Google

[rolfwind]

Cut them off. If they don't want exposure, stop indexing them.

They'll come crawling back a month later anyway.

Group: Online content cannot remain free

It's not free, in exchange for my attention, you get to put up banner ads.

I believe many non-pron sites that started out as pay-for ended up offering a free way to view their sites - like Salon.com where you have to view a specific amount of ads before you get to the article. Or you can sign up and not deal with any of it - it's a great solution - choice to the consumer and win/win both ways.

Re:Easy Solution For Google

[lightspawn]

Cut them off. If they don't want exposure, stop indexing them.

And how should Google tell who should be cut off?

Suppose they get a letter from somebody claiming to own a certain domain. Obviously they shouldn't remove it without verifying he controls the domain.

One of the easiest solutions is for the owner to place some file on his web site that confirms he does not want the site indexed...

But if you do that why bother with manually informing Google?

And hey, that kind of sounds like a mechanism that is in place already!

Heaven forbid...

[kubevubin]

Heaven forbid we actually be able to find what we're looking for. Honestly, I could care less about Google making money off of anything, so long as I can find it when I need it.

It's the consumers' fault!

[grimJester]

Balsemao said consumers were drawn online by free content but this needed to change, he said.

"The value of content must be understood by consumers so that new business models can evolve.

Yeah. Not only must those who provide free content realize that those who provide equal or worse content must get to charge for their equal or inferior product; those who read free content must understand that it's better for everyone if they choose to pay for an alternative, without getting any more than they would get for free.

Balsemao, if you're reading this, pay me or my new business model will never evolve!

Exposure

[sugarmotor]

I would be happy for the extra exposure if Google put my writing on their news page.

If they complained about Google _not_ including their story but the next door newspaper's, then there might be a basis for an argument.

Plus don't they get to show their ads when Google visitor comes to their website?

Conglomerate Multi Media Mogules Messages

Oh My

[joel8x]

I can't believe these entitled morons. If it weren't for Google, nobody would find your site, read your story, and click on the ads in your site. Maybe if you were more tasteful with your ads and they were relevant to the story, you would be making money like Google does. The fact is is that they have what amounts to as an RSS-like driven portal-style page much like thousands of news style sites (cough..slashdot..cough) and millions of blogs. Why sue them and not everyone else? Its these greedy companies that google is standing in defiance of by their "don't be evil" business model.

Corportations want EVERYTHING!!!

[ElectroBot]

It seems that corportations are more and more willing to risk alienating their customers (thru lawsuits and stupid moves like Sony rootkit) and yet they want those customers to buy their stuff.

In almost all situations you CAN NOT have your cake and eat it too.

You can't complain about search engines using your content (while providing a link to your site) while at the same time demanding that the search engines list your company (and above your competitors).

Re:Corportations want EVERYTHING!!!

[PitaBred]

I can too complain. I can complain that I wasn't born into a wealthy family, that I deserve a billion dollars, and some stupid liberal is going to be convinced that because I feel bad, I should be compensated.
Welcome to the new economy.

Re:Corportations want EVERYTHING!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Said liberals deserve to be killed. Since killing any of them would likely result in one's arrest and defeat one's goal of killing all of them, they are safe for now: better to be free to plot mass death than to be jailed for having tried and failed.
</toungue-in-cheek>

Of course, subjecting them to dinner with Ann Coulter would probably be equally rewarding punishment for their stupidity.

What about caching?

[majikfox]

This article says:

"Search engines do not reproduce content. They help users find content by pointing to where it exists on the Web."

When I search for something on Google, then click on the "cached" link I get:

"This is Google's cache of http://www.foo.bar/ as retrieved on [date] [time]. Google's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web."

Which of these is true and which of these is a lie?

Its just another Media outlet that wont grow up...

[BrookHarty]

Same as the RIAA/MPAA wants to swat all technology, the print companies need to learn they produce content not paper products.

As with content (On all mediums) should be dealt with in a captialist society, if you dont want your content to be used, fine, another content provider will fill the spot. Thats what copyrights exist.

Not use laws to make it that *ONLY* content will be used. But then, the distribution channels are also owned by the content channels, so we get stuck with them trying to pass self serving laws. Its a *opoly that hurts everyone.

Remember how hard it was to get SciFi on some cable networks or dish.

Cut them

[femto]

Perhaps Google should just remove those who complain about copyright violations from their index? Site visitations would plummet and the complainer, and their copyright, would soon be consigned to irrelevance.

The same would work with the RIAA. Don't want your stuff on the Internet? Fine just remove it and let people find other content to replace it. I'm sure lots of up and coming bands would welcome the lack of competition from the RIAA.

Re:Cut them

[geekoid]

Tghan I could create a seach engine that ONLY retrieves people who google doesn't retrieve.
Yes, I like it.

Re:Cut them

[Anonymous Coward]

While those people sue your butt into oblivion? Good luck with your venture.

Not publishers, Book printers

[NigelJohnstone]

"The new models of Google and others reverse the traditional permission-based copyright model of content trading that we have built up over the years," said Francisco Pinto Balsemao, the head of the European Publishers Council, in prepared remarks for a speech at a Brussels conference."

Just book printers wanting protection. This is a big chance for writers, authors, even news agencies etc. They can all bypass the publishers and publish themselves. Before without a publisher they could print the book at a vanity printers, but couldn't get the distribution and so couldn't get into shops.

What use are book printers in a world without printed books? None at all.

Google News - Advertising

[markpapadakis]

According to Eric Schmidt, advertising on Google News is a simple matter of priority and importance related to other things in their TODO list. To them, adding more news sources is more important than placing the ads - but he makes a point that ads will come sooner or later. Interesting presentation by the way.

Really?

[dslauson]

If you're so concerned about your intellectual property, then don't put it on the web. If you do put it on the web, search engines will find it.

Plus, isn't there a tag you can put in an HTML file that will keep Google's spiders from indexing your site? Why not just use that?

These are people looking for a free meal ticket, from what I can see.

So it breaks their outdated system

[thogard]

Publishers have the same problem that the record companies have. They could produce far more content than the shops can deal with. The RIAA isn't about music, its about getting little bits of plastic moved through the checkouts at shops. Book publishers aren't about literature, its about moving dead trees through the checkouts at shops. There are now millions of people who have better facilities to make music than the Beetles had so there is a potential for a million times more records to be produced. The RIAA's (and the shops) business model can't cope with that and neither can the book publishers.

I listened to Stephen King talk about the modern publishing business. He is convinced it has been messed up so bad for so long that no decent new author is ever likely to get published. He uses his wife's work as an example. He thinks she is a better author than he is yet the only ones that want to publish her work are using his name to sell the book. He also mentioned that the big book stores (B&N, Boarders) who stack narrow and deep are killing the hope of many authors where the smaller book shops would stock wide but shallow and would order a copy of a book or two and if they sold, would report it to the NYT top 100. Then Wal-mart would look at the things in the top 20 that they hadn't sold and buy a million copies of each which would then mess up the top 10 stats. A decade ago the data being reported for the NYT best seller list was already not very useful and he fears that it will soon be meaningless.
If you ever get a chance to hear Stephen King speak, go listen to him. He's a very good presenter even if your not into his books.

Re:So it breaks their outdated system

[patio11]

This makes me glad for things like Amazon, which stacks both wide and deep. I've always kicked around the idea of writing a book (doesn't everybody?). My sister will actually be published within a couple of years. She's certainly good at it but I don't have any illusions that she's the second coming of JK Rowling (no mega-million-multimedia-marketing campaign getting launched for her book, either). With Amazon, people who would enjoy her book (and every book has an audience, Long Tail anyone?) can find it through their search, through "customers who liked this book also liked", through reader recommendations, etc. One thing I find particularly interesting about Amazon is that it has an amazing synergy with blogs. I've bought, oh, five books or so because one of the blogs on my daily list said "I'm currently reading X. Its great. Here's my mini-review" and, given that my bloggers share my interests or I wouldn't read them, thats generally a fairly good indication that I'll like the book (wouldn't you rather have a review from someone who shares your tastes than from some person whose only qualification is they're in an editor's Rolodex at the New York Times Review of Books?). There are now a bunch of authors blogging, which makes excellent sense as a promotional tool both for your current book and for establishing a fan community for your next one (if you're in a genre where that makes sense).

Re:So it breaks their outdated system

[slapout]

And now with things like lulu.com (and i'm sure there are others) anyone can self-publish a book.

ObSouthPark

[sconeu]

Step 5: ???

Step 6: PROFIT!

note: self-modded down with no karma bonus

he's absolutely right

[circletimessquare]

'This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.', says Francisco Pinto Balsemao

yes, you are 100% correct

so you better refresh your resume there dear francisco

Off with your head!!

[YaroKutai]

and le Pew le Pew!!!!

I call bullshit

[Howzer]

Assertion 1: "They are screen scraping other people's content"
Assertion 2: "the second they let it be legally defined...a million lawsuits...Google won't have a legal leg to stand on"

Both assertions are, IMO, completely untrue. It is not illegal, and I don't think it's ever been illegal in any jurisdiction, to stand on a street corner and say "Hey! There's a guy selling icecream over there!" Unless you cause a riot, or yell too loud, or block the footpath.

Google News doesn't "screen scrape" any content. They list headlines from news sites. "Hey! There's a guy telling a story over there!" Not illegal. Never will be illegal.

To your second point. There are companies out there, right now, even as we type, called clipping services. They literally cut whole articles out of newspapers, magazines, journals, and compile folders of them according to criteria set by the people who pay them money.

According to you, they "don't have a legal leg to stand on" and yet they are amazingly unsued, making revenue from other people's content. If Google removed the "beta" sign tomorrow, they would still be doing far less than a standard, real-world clipping service.

It's also not illegal to watch someone buy a sports magazine at a newsstand and say "Excuse me sir. Do you mind if I ask you a question? I notice you are into sports. Would you like to buy this fine *related product here*?" Again, if you do this wrong you could be arrested for bugging people, but the act of making a recommendation based on observed public behaviour is not illegal.

"You want the Model A? Well, ma'am, I couldn't help noticing you have two kids in the store with you today. The Model B is specifically designed for families with young children." Not illegal. Never will be illegal.

But, of course, IANAL, and I am simply operating in the plain old world of "logic", not the rarified atmosphere of "the law". Now, those two environments usually intersect, but of course we all know of times when they haven't.

Re:I call bullshit

[ChrisGilliard]

Good post. The real issue is that these news outlets could very easily say in their robots.txt that they don't want Google to look at their site. They don't do that because most people click the link anyways and they would loose many of their visitors if they did. So, basically they have the ability to tell Google not to do this so they can't complain.

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, if you do this wrong you could be arrested for bugging people

JSYK, better words would be "accosting" or "harrassing".

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

They would be better words, but I couldn't remember how to spell harrass! :P

Lucky I didn't misspell "buggering"...

Re:I call bullshit

[martin-boundary]

Bullshit right back to you.

What do you call the Google cache? If you answer anything other than substantial screen scraping, then ding! play again.

The only leg Google have to stand on is the DMCA, which allows them to infringe copyright so long as they play common carrier. One of the requirements for immunity is that when asked, they promptly remove copyrighted material.

Now, Google literally steals the contents of millions of web pages, which most people have no problem with. However, a small number of news publishers and media sources (like those publishers and AFP) do pipe up and say no. Google has to comply, or likely lose in court. That's what they did when the scientologists piped up.

So far, so good. Trouble is, most news snippets and pictures on the net are syndicated, which means that all that stuff that gets archived by Google isn't owned by the small web operators who might not have a problem with seeing it in the cache, but it's owned by the media creators, who actually do object. So Google should remove it by the DMCA, but it's a technical nightmare. That's why they prefer to make a big fuss and go to court: if they followed the DMCA, there would be very little actual free news content left on the web, except blogs.

The other way out for Google is to actually legally license the use of the copyrighted material, exactly like all the other websites which sign up for syndication. But my guess is that they're afraid it would cost them an arm and a leg, so they'd rather fight in court.

The rest of your rant has nothing to do with copyright issues. If Google wants to offer critical opinions on consumer products, why not?

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said. I applaud your argument.

Re:I call bullshit

[orkysoft]

Now, Google literally steals the contents of millions of web pages, which most people have no problem with.

I have a problem with that! I used to have a really nice website, but then those Google goons came and stole it from me, and now I have no website anymore!

Re:I call bullshit

[martin-boundary]

heh, I hope you find your website again before the ISP hosting fee runs out.

You'll note I didn't say steal the website, but steal the contents. With a bit of luck, the website should still there.

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't like it? robots.txt. But you still want your site indexed? Introducing: remove snippets and cache.

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOSNIPPET">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">

Now, stfu (and welcome to 1998!)

Re:I call bullshit

[martin-boundary]

Now, stfu (and welcome to 1998!)

Obviously you need to widen your world view. The copyrighted material is not in HTML to begin with.

Re:I call bullshit

[ipfwadm]

how to spell harrass

Not like that.

Re:I call bullshit

[shimavak]

Sadly, I call bullshit on your argument.

Carrying it to the end, google cache is a fully cited quotation. That the quotation encapsulates large portions of the original document does not make it illegal, AFAIK. I may be wrong, and if so, I would like anyone to point to a law (short of National Security, or contract laws (NDA)) which make it illegal to quote someone. I can see it being a bit touchy with reproductions of entire works, so perhaps your google cache comment is not without merit; however...

As the original article is about google news (which does not post the entire article in the first place), and a good many news outlets tend to take quotes without even properly citing the source, google can hardly be faulted for what it does.

Re:I call bullshit

[martin-boundary]

Well I'm happy to oblige:

Carrying it to the end, google cache is a fully cited quotation. That the quotation encapsulates large portions of the original document does not make it illegal, AFAIK. I may be wrong, [...]

You are wrong. A quote is covered under fair use, and fair use is normally very limited, eg a chapter in a book, a single article, a picture, a small poem, and it must be for noncommercial uses. See here for details.

On top of this, there is the exemption in the DMCA, which gives immunity to Google as long as they follow specific rules (which they normally do). One rule is: if the copyright holder says so, Google can't show their work to the public.

Google is for-profit, and they use much more than a limited amount when you add it all up. So if they lose the DMCA safe harbor protection, then they are clearly infringing.

As the original article is about google news (which does not post the entire article in the first place), and a good many news outlets tend to take quotes without even properly citing the source, google can hardly be faulted for what it does.

Google News is still Google. You can't sue Google News, you can only sue Google. The news outlets you are talking about have bought licenses which let them show the quotes, whereas the fact that Google was sued suggests strongly that they don't have a license.

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not illegal, and I don't think it's ever been illegal in any jurisdiction, to stand on a street corner and say "Hey! There's a guy selling icecream over there!"

Yes it is... remember the old Napster?

Re:I call bullshit

[swillden]

It is not illegal, and I don't think it's ever been illegal in any jurisdiction, to stand on a street corner and say "Hey! There's a guy selling icecream over there!"

Yes it is... remember the old Napster?

Not the same thing at all. Napster told you where you could get content from people who didn't have any right to give it to you. In this case Google is referring you to legitimate distributors.

I guess the analogy would be: Napster yells "Hey! There's a guy selling ice cream over there!" with the knowledge that the ice cream is stolen, or poisoned or something.

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Google News != Google cache. End of argument.

Re:I call bullshit

[brontus3927]

It's also not illegal to watch someone buy a sports magazine at a newsstand and say "Excuse me sir. Do you mind if I ask you a question? I notice you are into sports. Would you like to buy this fine *related product here*?" Again, if you do this wrong you could be arrested for bugging people, but the act of making a recommendation based on observed public behaviour is not illegal.

Actually, if we're assuming that the person making the suggestions is not employed by the owner of the store (which I believe is the point you are making, and is the best analogy to the Google issue), then the store has the right to bar you from soliciting on their property.

REDICULOUS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Use robots.txt, turn off your RSS feeds, a voila! no more google... Are they going to sue Microsoft when they provide an ad supported version of their OS when users see M$ ads alongside of their own?

Big business has a strange outlook on "loss"

[erroneus]

It seems to me that big business perceives any situation where someone makes money utilizing their content as a loss since they are not directly benefiting from or being compensated for that utilization.

Stupid short-sighted-bastards. They pay GOBS of money so they can have higher ranking in these very same search engines and yet they feel like they are losing somehow? What do they propose? Getting rid of search engines? Are they wanting to be compensated for being searched? *THAT* isn't going to happen... their competitors will not worry about it when they start getting the higher rankings.

Online content CAN and WILL remain as free as television and the US mail.

ok, opt-out

[eyeball]

I wish there was a way for these companies to opt-out. Sure they'll fracture the internet. Eventually they'll realize that search engines will bring users to their competitors, but by then it will probably be too late. Maybe that's why they want to change the way the net works for them en-mass. In any case, I would love to see the publishers make a single dollar of what Google gets in ad revenues in Google's absence.

There are plenty of examples of industries that make money off the demands generated by others, without paying tribute to the industry creating the demand. Computer manufacturers make money off the demand generated by internet. Radio manufacturers make money off of radio programming. Sure it gets sticky when you're talking about copyright, but even then there's precedence. TV Guide makes money indexing TV programming. Book review magazines make moneys off the books they review.

Re:ok, opt-out

[kidgenius]

They can opt-out. They need to just create a robots.txt file and they will be opt'd out till the cows come home....or they realize they no longer are getting any web hits.

Re:ok, opt-out

[eyeball]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that :)

Publishers are free not to use the web

[presidenteloco]

There's nothing stopping a group of publishers from establishing their
own "darknet" on which to "publish" their copyrighted material, and then
try to sell tickets for admission to the darknet, kind of like to
a peepshow.

If you don't like how the regular, open, web works, then sod off somewhere
else with your precious material.

Legal interpretation, and why do we care anyway?

[Ruff_ilb]

"European publishers warned Tuesday that they cannot keep allowing Internet search engines such as Google Inc. to make money from their content." Ok, what do they plan to do about it... I don't quite understand the legal implications of this, but it doesn't exactly seem like a standard case of copyright infringement to me. Even assuming that they could get anything on Google for this, that just means Google will drop them from everything in the future. Speaking as someone who gets a lot of their news off of the internet, I know that publishers demanding for their content to be hidden from search engines probably won't help them. If they just want it removed from the ads, I bet google can just say that the truely practicable way to have their content have nothing to do with the ads is to tell them that their content can have nothing to do with anything from the standard search engine to gmail to adsense. I think that the publishers who don't embrace the internet as a new medium for communication and find ways to work against it, not with it (for working against google isn't a very productive way to facilitate communication over the internet) are doomed to failure as we use the internet for more and more tasks. Heck, these companies measure things in terms of readers, you'd think they'd want as much coverage as they can get. The more I look like this it looks like a few whiny companies looking to make a few bucks.

Help the price of information has fallen ...

[Richard W.M. Jones]

http://www.shirky.com/writings/information_price.h tml

"'Search engines do not reproduce content.."

[mumblestheclown]

Search engines do not reproduce content...

O RLY?

I have several times found content through google cache that the original publisher has taken down. If you make the argument that google is simply only pointing to a live site, then I think google has a responsibility to absolutely not publish out of date material or material that the original author has "unpublished." Otherwise, google are, in my opinion, very clearly engaging in copyright violation. I think the right to unpublish is an important one. Yes, "information wants to be free" is a good shibboleth, but if that's your rebuttal, then at least admit that google does, in fact reproduce content.

Re:"'Search engines do not reproduce content.."

[AvantLegion]

>> Otherwise, google are, in my opinion, very clearly engaging in copyright violation.

By your logic, so would every person with a web browser that caches.

You're probably breaking the law right now!

Re:"'Search engines do not reproduce content.."

[Pofy]

>By your logic, so would every person with a web browser that caches.

Such temporary copies or copies needed for technical reasons are tpyically excempted from being infringing by most countries copyright laws as long as they are not used for anything else. The moment you start to use it as "real" copies, for example making it available over the net to others, they are no longer under such an exception and are infriging copies. Try to read some copyright laws before you answer, more specifically, in this case, perhaps some European ones.

Re:"'Search engines do not reproduce content.."

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, ISPs do send cached copies over the net all the time, and most people feel they are entitled to do this under the technical reasons exception. In the case of google, the fact that a cached copy is being sent is made much more obvious, but what exactly is the legal distinction?

Re:"'Search engines do not reproduce content.."

[Pofy]

First, just because someone else do something, it is not automatically ok or evenlegal. There is quite a difference though I would say. The ISP cach is typically used as such temporary copies, used only when someone requests the original, you can't search or aquire those cach copies independantly from the original nor can you get them far later when the original does no longer exists, quite a huge differnce.

European web publishers? Who cares?

[WarwickRyan]

The best isn't even a commercial venture..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

The perfect attitude...

[Chaffar]

Balsemao said consumers were drawn online by free content but this needed to change, he said.

Of course it does... Why should people get things for free? I mean you are depriving their site of valuable advertisement income.

I can get news info for free on television. At any point in time, CNN, BBC, Euronews, Fox News, and tens of other channels are running news content for FREE, 24/7. We consumers are giving the online people the privilege of our attention for a short moment when we visit their sites.

Next up: people shouldn't be allowed to breathe for free... I mean everytime you breathe you're depriving someone else of the oxygen you just inhaled. And that somebody might've been dumb enough to PAY for it.

I have come to a realization

[jandrese]

I now realize one basic truth of the World Wide Web, if you create something useful and popular, eventually someone is going to sue you for it. No matter what you do, the fact that you've found something useful is going to be threatening to someone and they're going to sue you (usually for millions of dollars) for it.

Every new web business should be prepared for a lawsuit at some point, no matter what they do. How many retarded suits have people brought against Google now? Even Slashdot gets lawsuit threats every now and then. Another thing you have to do is get a good idea of your rights and make sure you call people's bluff when they send harassment lawsuits at you (happens ALL of the time on the web).

Re:I have come to a realization

[niiler]

Simple solution: robots.txt file in their sacred directories. Then Google shouldn't index their content. Of course, most companies' internal seach engines *suck* in comparison, but since it's really about making a buck and not actually letting people get to content, that shouldn't matter.

To the publishers...

[laughingcoyote]

To: M. Amoron, owner, Jackass Publishing.

From: I. Cheatem, attorney-at-law.

Dear Sir,

Attached to my email, you will find a two-line file entitled "robots.txt". The 4-year-old who designed your website should copy it into your top-level web directory. This file is essentially an instruction to Google's web spider to direct people to your competitors rather then you.

My client Google believes in respecting these wishes. We have happily de-listed your site.

On a related note, I know some excellent bankruptcy attorneys in your country. In a couple months' time when you come to need one, I will be happy to make a recommendation.

(Up) Yours,

I. Cheatem, attorney-at-law.

Re:To the publishers...

[nittacci]

I am sick to death of this outmoted model of "intellectual property".
Patents and copyrights have been so badly abused as to make them practically worthless as a structure for the exchange of ideas.
I don't really care if another big budget special effects movie ever gets made, and I won't skip a beat if every movie studio, record label and 90 percent of the publishing industry shuts down tomorrow.
The innovators, the artists, the authors, the journalists, the thinkers, the programmers and originators will find other ways to get their product out, and to make a living from it. They're not the ones getting rich from the product of their labors anyway.
Honestly, Time Warner, Sony, etc etc etc and the army of lawyers that keep the system running and keep it corrupt, can all go to hell.
Thank you.

It's the French...

[Anonymous Coward]

All Google has to do is :

1. declare war
2. invade
3. ?
4. *Profit!* then France will surrender. ;-)

Before Google, websearching was inefficient

[digitaldc]

To block searches is to kill the idea of the search engine itself.

or just contact google directly at http://www.google.com/privacy.html ?

F the F

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the French. Whiners. Next, you'll tell me that the UN wants to take control of the DNS root servers.

oh shi

gg next map

"Not sustainable"? Sounds familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

> 'This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.'

In other news, the RIAA says that P2P file sharing is "unlikely to be sustainable for music publishers in the longer term".

Yawn.

The Web is all about the links, baby. If the existence of Web links is "not sustainable" to a particular company's business model, then that simply means the company has not yet learned to deal with the reality of the Web.

Adapt or die.

What's the baseline rule?

[cfulmer]

There are two generic possible default rules of copyright: (1) you have to ask permission before copying (or other uses), and (2) The copyright owner has to tell you if he denies permission.

Rule (2) used to be the default rule, at least in the U.S. -- if you didn't mark your content with the (C) logo or otherwise indicate that it is under copyright, you lost your right to sue. (That's not quite how it worked, but close enough...)

Rule (1) is now the current rule -- everything is presumed to be under copyright and does not need to be marked in order to be protected. The change isn't huge, at least from a practical standpoint, because most people marked their work before the change (doing so wasn't costly) and anybody who wants to copy would go back to the publisher in either case. And,the penalty for not marking was pretty severe. There was also not much demand for widespread copying.

It seems to me that rule (2) makes the most sense for search engines and other content aggregators, and happens to be the one that's built into the 'net. After all, most websites want to be searched -- the entire reason you put things on the web is so people will come find it and look at your website. Search engines help that. In addition, it's hugely more efficient for websites to say whether they want to be indexed or not than for the search engines to ask permission from each website. In fact, having to ask permission would make search engines impossible. And, besides, robots.txt files have been around almost since the first webserver. It's easy.

In the US, I suspect that what a search engine does would have to be considered fair use. Probably the most important of the 4 "Fair Use" factors is "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyright material" -- providing a search capability, even if it also provides links to competitors, has to be a net positive good for a website. Two other of the 4 factors seem to lean in favor of fair use also: (1) "the purpose and character of the use" (basically, a search engine helps people find your content), and (2) "the nature of the copyrighted work" (a web page, which, by nature is intended to be searched.)

(IANAL yet.)

there is a very simple solution

[Pr0xY]

The solution to this problem is simple, if you don't want people to have access to your material, don't put it on the internet. Sure there will be a certain degree of piracy regarding these materials, but that would be far less widespread. Realistically, if you publish something on a website, well it's kinda just "out there" and if you expect people not to find it, or better yet, expect people not to still have it after you take it down, well you live in a fantasy world. IMHO everything on a legitimate website is fairgame for copying so long as the original authors are properly credited.

I suppose the issue really is with sites like the New York Times where they ask for a free membership to view their content and expect a certain amount of ad revenue from the viewers. And I am sure they will get annoyed when someone uses the NYT link generator (http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink) to access the site without logging in, or worse yet, mirrors the story on there own site (while crediting the original source of course). But I mean common, what did they expect to happen?

It's not that I don't think people have a right to control their content, but more that I think trying to enforce those rights is impossible. Get with the times people.

proxy

What google is doing is akin to theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch their stock fall to 40/share when the masses of news outlets sue them out of existence. Google steals the bread and butter of these businesses and insists they are doing them a favor - not so.

I AM a European publisher (even if a small one)

[lowieken]

"It is fascinating to see how these companies 'help themselves' to copyright-protected material, build up their own business models around what they have collected, and parasitically, earn advertising revenue off the back of other people's content,"

Parasitically? Symbiotically! User profiling for Google, traffic and sales for publishers. I'm happy to have Google index my publications!

Have a look at my publications of classical guitar sheet music. Yes, small scale and non-profit publishing are also publishing!

The divide is widening between consumer friendly content and consumer hostile content. Commons oriented versus fenced-off content. Without the big content guys molding copyright rules to their will, the result would be obvious. Count in rule bending, and we're in for an exciting match!

Fuck mass media

[Anonymous Coward]

Since mass media reporting and content has gone down the shit tubes, I could give a shit about their content. Geez, what the fuck are they thinking. If the content is good and compelling, I'll gladly fork over money for it. If not, they fuck off. These dinosaurs need to go extinct.

Eurotards

[the eric conspiracy]

THIS is why you want the root zone file to stay where it is.

The principle of Arbitrage. Google is a broker

[goombah99]

No it's not a matter free versus not free though that matters. It's the principle of arbitrage. If I want to sell my 2000 year old gold ring for its true value and you want to buy a 2000 year old ring the chances we meet are close to nil. Instead I will have to sell my ring in a more liquid market that only values the gold not the age.
  Faced with this, Therefore I'm willing to pay a antiquties broker a commission for you to find me. Arbitraging in the stock market are people who look for things that are priced lower than they should be due to inadequate liquidity and buy them then find markets to sell them in. ( Often they do this with options so they don't even actually own the properties. )

In either case arbitraging creates market liqudity which increases the sales value of an item closer to it's optimal value. The seller gets more and should be glad. The reverse can also be true when the arbitrager works for the buyer.

Google is effectively creating a liquid market where none exists. It helps the seller because it connects them to the buyer (reader) of the news (and ads). And it helps the buyer avoid easily found but overpriced news. But in both cases google is adding value and extracting a commision (google ads).

So yes they are adding value and thus entitled to make money. But the seller is not worse off unless they are in the class of sellers who make their money by being easily found but cost a bundle. (e.g. payday loan shop on the corner or the bank loan officer down town.)

But it does seem like the news companies should be able to opt out if they want. Maybe someone should tell them about robots.txt
but instead they are greedy and want a cut of the broker's slice. It's not unheard of: it's Not unlike asking your real estate to give you a cut of the commission on a house that is particularly desirable for an agent to list.

Re:The principle of Arbitrage. Google is a broker

[tmortn]

"maybe someone should tell them about robots.txt"

Ahh thats the rub isn't it. If they opt out of being indexed by the major search engines then they are no longer esay to find. No, I think everyone has been arguing this whole mess from the wrong angle. They are not upset google is making money off of indexing them. They are upset cause they can't take a slice of it.

This whole silly mess reminds me of Blazing Saddles when the guys are riding across the plains and go through a toll booth. The content providers are trying to do the same thing for real and hopefully it is laughed out of court the way it people laughed at it in the movie.

Re:The principle of Arbitrage. Google is a broker

[DocLandolt]

Not unlike asking your real estate to give you a cut of the commission on a house that is particularly desirable for an agent to list.

Well, sort of...if you're the lister, you can avoid this 'kickback' problem by negotiating down the commission rate. If you're the buyer, it is illegal in most states for you to get any piece of this commission if you're not a licensed real estate agent, and since the seller is paying it, you can't negotiate it's rate.

Of course, like with anything else...with a little creativity there are ways around this -- especially if it's an especially expensive piece of property. But the bottom line is people can choose to use a broker (Google), or opt go it alone, FSBO style -- just robot.txt the damn site and quit whining.

Greedy

[catwh0re]

Here is the thing, Google (like other websites) don't use any complicated or underhanded methods to obtain the website that they are sourcing the information from.

If a news site doesn't want google obtaining it's images/stories, it is a trivial process to block content to google's web crawler (or any other website's crawlers/spiders.)

This is just the companies wanting both the free advertising which google provides them and wanting some money for having their content seen in other web spaces.

The Internet is not a print publication, and linking to other websites or showing the content of other websites has been a core strength of the Internet as a whole. If a website begins asking for fees, then they will merely isolate themselves. Similar to how google doesn't index pay-for-services.

*Public* Internet

[HermanAB]

Well damn - if they don't want their copyrighted material on the public internet, then they should not publish it on the public internet...

To learn more about arbitrage

[mgkimsal2]

and the power/money that can come from it, read "When Genius Failed" (or listen to the audiobook like I did). It's a bit long, but there's quite a lot of "holy cow!" moments when reading/listening, when you realize just how much power a few people can hold over the market with arbitrage/options. :)

ObTroll: Europeans are shot

[renehollan]

Why try to single out the web publishers?

Valid point

[ikejam]

I think there is a point to be conceded here mainly that people are finding lesser incentive to publish information on the net. The revenue is probably inadequate for a large number of publishers (by which i include anyone who publsihes any kind of webcontent) and thus it is conceivable that a lot of this might go down over the years. i think a decline in the sheer number of free hosting services can be a a kind of indirect empirical proof of this.

Life without search engines

[ThurstonMoore]

Would these companies prefer there not be search engines to "make money off there copywritten material"? I seems to me like it's a symbiotic relationship, because without the search engines no one would be able to find anything, and without sell ads with the search results the search engine companies would not be able to stay in business. On an unrelated note does anyone else think the new version of Firefox sucks?

Re:Profit Elsewhere [OT]

[Julian Morrison]

I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy, if Google is making a huge profit, someone else is getting less.

That's an economic mistake and an important one, because it leads to bad policy. I'll explain how it's mistaken.

Value is the value of a thing to a person. Profit is the increase in value after a trade, versus before. So the seller profits by gaining money (wanted more) and losing product (wanted less). The buyer profits by losing money (wanted less) and gaining product (wanted more).

Wealth is the ability to achive personal goals. If you have more money, that's useful to you, so it's wealth. If you get something you need more, lose something you need less, then you have more wealth. Therefore profit produces personal wealth for both parties.

Some of the things you trade for, increase your efficiency. They let you achieve things you couldn't before. When other people's goals depend on your efficiency, your gain in wealth translates into a gain in societal wealth: everybody can achieve their goals a little easier. Therefore profit produces (on average) societal wealth for everyone.

Inflation and deflation reflect the usefulness of money. The limit of inflation is useless money. Infinite paper, nothing to buy, therefore infinite prices. The limit of deflation is getting everything for free. They relate to societal wealth. Wealth drops, money stays the same: inflation. Wealth rises, money stays the same: deflation. Therefore, profit is deflationary.

Given deflation, the same amount of money buys more. Therefore if anyone makes a profit, everyone makes a profit. This is the true virtue of the capitalist system, and it's the reason why Google's profits don't mean "someone else is getting less".

In related news...

[JeremyALogan]

In related news a local gas (petrol) station attendant was sued for providing directions. "All the time people would come by and ask me how to get to the local motel. Now I have to tell them that there is no local motel. How' was I to expect the motel would sue me for telling them how to get there?"

Reality chek

[SilentOne]

Looks like they'll have to face what the Internet has developed into.

wrong

[Cadallin]

Economics NEED NOT BE zero sum, but it is generally forced to approximate that. While new value gets created, new money is usually created much more slowly, and that money tends to acrete to the large pools already in existence. As such, relative levels of deprivation tend to grow over time, rather than shrink. This has the effect of making the system zero sum, or indeed worse, negative sum.

Re:wrong

[shobadobs]

Bullshit. Here is a simple counter-example: history.

Re:wrong

[cyberformer]

Economies grow by a few percent a year on average, so it isn't a zero sum game in the long term. But the shorter your time frame, the closer to a zero sum game it gets. In this particular case, Google is growing much faster than the econonomy as a whole, so someone else has to lose out.

Of course, it's more complicated than that: Google is actually helping certain segments of the economy to grow at the expense of others, not simply taking market share from competitors. For example, online retailers and small publishers do well, print advertising does badly.

Re:wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Economies grow by a few percent a year on average, so it isn't a zero sum game in the long term. But the shorter your time frame, the closer to a zero sum game it gets. In this particular case, Google is growing much faster than the econonomy as a whole, so someone else has to lose out.

Wrong.

When google grows much faster, the average increases. But even though Google is big, it's still only a tiny part of the total, and thus the average will grow much slower than Google, even when everything else remains unchanged.

Hey, Francisco

[Perky_Goth]

I never buy your newspaper anyway, i go to the coffee shop and read it while i'm there (or whatever they have there). still works, right?
what you should be worried is that standard news media in Portugal is crap, which puts uninteresting crap that is unqualifiable as journalism for weeks on the front page/prime time. but hey, then they would have to cover how you actually make all your money, wouldn't they?
screw you, want readers, make a news that people actually care about, stop complaining that people don't want to see the same drivel over and over.

Merely looking for a handout.

[guidryp]

Of course they could stop offering content without a paid login account. Or they could get de-indexed from google.

But no they don't want either of those. They realize google drives traffic (revenues) to their sites. All this is really about is asking for a handout. Google provides a free service that makes website owners money, but hey google makes money in the process, so whine and cry and maybe get a piece of that action as well.

Let us know when you are serious and want to opt out, until then quit the whining.

Meanwhile the rest of the world gets back to fighting to drive up their google rankings.

Its all publicly available anyway

[timbo234]

So let me get this straight- these publishers put their information on the internet, make it publicly available to anyone in the world for free and then complain when some other organisation creates an index of links to that publicly available information. How dumb are they? If they don't want it available then take it off the web or put it behind an authentication gateway, if they do want it publicly available then be happy that google is indexing it - it'll bring more visitors to that information and generate more sales for them.

Wrong-o

[NineNine]

You're right. Why do we need "professional writers"? We've got bloggers! They're just as good, right? And while we're at it, we don't need "professional programmers" because anybody can make a web page. And, I don't need a "professional car mechanic" because I can change my own oil. Just because YOU don't understand that writers actually have real talent and/or real education doesn't mean that they add no value to society as a whole.

The only issue is how the mechanism of the compensation will work, and, as with so many other things (including software), traditional publishing is merely one possible model.

Oh yeah, the whole Free Software thing is doing wonders for raising the value of programmers, isn't it? Let's see, I can count exactly (1) OSS company that is even turning a profit. That's not exactly what I'd call success.

Re:Wrong-o

[handslikesnakes]

If nobody's willing to pay them, then they have no value. By definition. And yeah, there will (probably) be a decrease in the quality of the work done, but I at least think that a little bit of quality for a lot of freedom is a fair trade - especially when you consider a lot of the baggage that comes with that quality.

As for your open source example, what the programmers get out of it is entirely tangent to the issue. Without Apache (eg.) the WWW wouldn't be anything like it is today. Chances are it'd be limited to much larger players and be much less flexible. There would be benefits, but I'm not sure they're worth it.

90% of everything is crap; WorldNet Daily or the Edmonton Sun or a thousand other tabloids aren't any better for having paid staff.

PS. profit is only one measure of success.

Re:Wrong-o

[mrchaotica]

Huh? Nothing I said precludes professional writers -- or professional programmers, for that matter -- from existing. It's just that their employers will (and I do mean will, because like it or not, traditional publishing is going to die) have to find other business models.

Let's see, I can count exactly (1) OSS company that is even turning a profit. That's not exactly what I'd call success.

Wow, you can only count to one? Poor guy. You'd best be off to kindergarden, then!

Just off the top of my head, I can think of several OSS companies that make a profit: IBM (9.03%), Apple (9.58%), Red Hat (22.08%), and Novell (33.53%) (all statistics from "profit margin" field of Yahoo's key statistics pages). Also, MySQL and Trolltech are reportedly doing quite well, although Yahoo doesn't have statistics on them since they're apparently not publically-traded.

Read between the lines

[carpevita]

What really threatens publishers is not the fact that Google is making money off their content. What they are sweating is their declining ability to claim subscribers. In the periodical market, subscriber numbers determine the value of the publication. The more subscribers they can claim, the more they can charge for ads.

The publishers don't want you skimming an article here, article there. They want you on their home page. Like every other company where the word "content" flogged to death, they want their sites to be "portals", because calling yourself a "portal" is the online equivalent to claiming a subscriber base.

Google News breaks their model. But I don't think they're simply clinging blindly to archaic business models-- that's too easy. They all have websites, they all make money off of banner ads. What they are angling for is another piece of the action:

Yahoo Inc. has a similar service, though it uses human editors and pays some news sources, including AFP and The Associated Press, for rights.

Or, if Google won't pony up, a nice chunk of settlement will do nicely...

Pointing to robots.txt or their opt-out policy isn't going to spare Google any trouble, either. Just because I don't post a sign on my front door that says "Keep Out" doesn't give you permission to wander in and help yourself to a snack.

Re:Read between the lines

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Just because I don't post a sign on my front door that says "Keep Out" doesn't give you permission to wander in and help yourself to a snack.

No, but listening on port 80 constitutes permission for me to make requests of your server.

Re:Read between the lines

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because I don't post a sign on my front door that says "Keep Out" doesn't give you permission to wander in and help yourself to a snack.

No, but if I knock on the door, ask for the snack, and you give me one that is fine. Just like if I contact your webserver, request a webpage and it sends it to me.

Re:Read between the lines

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because I don't post a sign on my front door that says "Keep Out" doesn't give you permission to wander in and help yourself to a snack.

A more accurate analogy would be suing a customer because they regularly walked into you store, past the open door with the welcome/open sign and tried one of each variety of the free samples of your wares that you had out front to help demonstrate the quality of your products and attract more purchases.

But were not dealing with physical commodities, just ethereal IP (whatever that is), so there aren't any real analogies that can accurately portray the situation in more familiar terms.

Re:Read between the lines

[pregister]

Just because I don't post a sign on my front door that says "Keep Out" doesn't give you permission to wander in and help yourself to a snack.

You're absolutely right. I can't just wander in. Bad analogy, though. A better one would be...I ring your doorbell. The door automatically opens. Your butler...better yet...your robotic butler greets me at the door, wearing nothing but a smile, hands me a list of everything in your house that it is allowed to grab, and offers to go fetch anything on that list that interests me.

I'm not breaking in your window. I'm not kicking down your door. I'm ringing the doorbell.

-p

Total cash grab

[Guysmiley777]

If a site wants traffic, search engines are great. If it doesn't want random traffic, it is very easy to prevent search engines from indexing a page. This is a total cash grab by greedy ass-hats.

the wording is telling

[belmolis]

I think that the wording of the European publishers' complaint is telling. They don't complain about Google or others publishing their copyrighted material without their permission, which, if true, would be a valid complaint (and perhaps is true of Google cache, however convenient we may find it). What they actually complain about is the fact that other people are making money from their publications. That is not necessarily a violation of copyright and, in the general case, is not a complaint that should be acted upon.

Suppose that publisher X publishes a book on a controversial topic of wide interest. I write a response to this book which sells well and makes a lot of money. Since my book is a response to publisher X's book, the money (and fame, women, etc. :)) that I received is indeed dependent on the work of Publisher X, but Publisher X has no legal or moral claim on me. The same is true if I compile and publish a bibliography, or make money as a consultant to people who want to know what they ought to read in a certain area. My profit ultimately depends on the work of the publishers, but I don't need their permission and don't owe them a dime.

Chefs and authors of cookbooks do not require the permission of the farmers, ranchers, hunters, and fishermen without whom there would be nothing to cook or to write about, nor do they owe them compensation. These are some of the many ways in which not only culture and science but business develops on the foundation of work done by other people, yet where we do not consider that the permission of those others is required or that any compensation is owed to them.

When the publishers complain that other people are making money from their content, our response should be "so what?". In and of itself that isn't a valid basis for complaint. It just means that they haven't been the ones to seize new opportunities. Copyright holders are granted certain limited privileges pertaining to publication and that is it. Beyond that, other people are perfectly free to do whatever they want.

Fuck 'Em

[Master of Transhuman]

Publishers are obsolete. In due time, people will get their news directly from bloggers with video cameras right on the scene, bypassing the so-called "reporters" and airhead bleached-blonde newsreaders and swelled-head "anchors."

Fuck 'em all. Can't get rid of Murdoch and the scum at Fox News, not to mention Sulzberger and his administration mouthpieces at the New York Times, soon enough to suit me.

Precious gold ring

[uberdave]

About this ring of yours... anything, um, special about it? Was it part of a collection, one of a set of nine perhaps, or is it one ring. It's my birthday, and I wants something... precious.

Re:Precious gold ring

[c4ffeine]

Well, there is that one odd feature of appearing to turn the wearer invisible, but for some reason it doesn't work on my friend Tom. Oh, and it seems to attract heroes and endless hordes of villains. Any takers?

Oh well, at least I finally got those damn trespassing theiving hobbits.

Re:Profit Elsewhere [OT]

[NixLuver]

Looks wonderful on paper, doesn't it?

The problem is that the philosophy you have expressed only inheres in a capitalism inhabited solely by those who act in rational self-interest. Rational means considering the ramifications of one's actions. Unfortunately, both producers and consumers in their various guises have proven to be terrible at this game. We live in a society where consumers are unreasonably swayed by marketing and the oft-championed 'excellence of product' that capitalism encourages is virtually unrecognizable. Frequently - and by frequently, I mean, say, 50% of the time or more, consumers purchase things, and feel that they have been taken advantage of. In many cases, they are right.

I am constantly amazed at the fact that those who deplore social anarchy the most are often the biggest champions of financial anarchy - Capitalism. And just like social anarchy, it only lasts as long as it takes for one player to accumulate enough 'stuff' to influence others, and then we have a de facto government, or a de facto monopoly.

But Oh...

[Greyfox]

The whining that would ensue if the search engines delisted them. They'd complain that no one could find them on the Internet and accuse the search engines of anti-competitive behavior! And how many hundreds of thousands of dollars would any site have to spend in advertising to get their name out there if not for Google?

As for the "Free Internet" going away, they've been predicting that for as long as they've been predicting the death of usenet, the fragementation of the Internet and the death of TCP/IP due to lack of addresses. All those predictions have been equally accurate thus far.

Almost....

[abb3w]

I wonder how this and the coming e-paper revolution would play out. Google could really become poised to become the biggest book publisher in the world, when after browsing the book online, for a fee with 75% going to the author, it can be downloaded to your 8.5"x11" e-paper you use to read all your stuff (effectively your library.)

Almost.

You would still want to allow for a cut for editors, for authors willing to accept the help. Many slush pile authors REALLY need to keep their day jobs, and even tentacled horrors that crawl from the deep sea of slush are much more paletable after baking under the harsh glare of a disciplined editor's gimlet eye. I have no doubt that many authors would find themselves with a larger piece of a much smaller pie without editorial assistance.

Also, Print-on-demand grows ever more economical, approaching basic mass market publishing price. Imagine Google contracts with a POD publisher, and maybe also offers salaried positions to a couple talented-and-open-minded editors. Google Press makes the books on-line browsable. Editions are available as your suggested downloadable e-paper, but also paperback, trade (oversize) paperback, hardbound, or acid free leather. More costly materials, of course, mean higher cover (?) price, with a smaller percentage of sale price (but larger absolute amount) going to the author.

Of course, editorial talent is almost as hard to find as authorial talent. Still, it has possibilities....

Re:Almost....

[rolfwind]

I could imagine (if google succeeds and cuts out the middleman) that authors will eventually recognize that edited material sells better than unedited, and get it done on their own accord. Financing would be easier on the established author and for the non-established, perhaps the editor will seek out promising authors and help cultivate them in exchange for a commission on some books.

I'm sure great editors will be high demand.

And People will adapt to the business model as usual.

I dream of viable e-books to replace that f-ing 5 shelve of programming books in front of me every time I move. Or the 50 pounds of "bricks" I used to carry in my bookbag, daily to class........ And also when reading PDFed versions of books, squinting at a computer screen of my notebook balance on my knee, the bottom getting hot and it being too bright and too difficult to flip the pages.

The market is there. The hardware is almost there. Then it just has to be exploited.

Re:Profit Elsewhere [OT]

[jp10558]

Yet, for much of history and certainly the 20th century, overall wealth has been shown to be going up for (the west certainly, most of the world really) yet we have consistently had inflation...

Most everyone has been making a profit by your definitions - why isn't it deflation that has been big rather than inflation in the 20th century?

All this is good for copyright!

[aitio]

As Lawrence Lessig has pointed out many times, the European Union Copyright laws are all screwed up.

At the moment they have no fare use, or right to make a copy in any way. That's why Google Book Search had to withdraw from France. More outrageous claims like this are needed to turn peoples attention to the flawed system. That is the only way to get momentum to change the directives.

As of Jan 1. I will be a criminal in Finland for making a copy of a DVD I own because I'm braking the strong encryption it has.

Re:All this is good for copyright!

[Pofy]

>As Lawrence Lessig has pointed out many times, the European Union Copyright
>laws are all screwed up.

To be more precise, the Union doesn't have any laws. Individual countries has their own copyright laws, and although they are in part very similar due to various directives they do differ in quite a few ways.

>At the moment they have no fare use, or right to make a copy in any way.

Thus, this statement may or may not be true depening on what country you refer to. Although there might not be something similar to the way the US "fair use" works, there are other variants that in much give the same and sometimes even more, ability to use copyright works. It can include for example making copies for private use, which would include even giving away a copy to a friend for example. There are many other examples, so your statement that there is no right at all to make copies is simply not true.

no argument...

[alizard]

I'm a published author myself... Linux how-to articles at this point... try searching on:
alizard Linux

If I write a book, I very definitely want my stuff online and searchable.

If my book is any good, the more people who see it, the more are going to buy it. Making the book good is my problem, and to a smaller extent, that of my editors. Make the book invisible and nobody will buy it.

Isn't making money off IP content what publishing is supposed to be about? Not making content invisible or putting it on sale after locking it into a digital toilet.

BTW, the only real success I know with respect to digital-age publishing is Baen Books.

They make their backlist free and downloadable with no DRM and no brain-dead e-reader software, open in your word processsor or browser. They do the same with their current books, only you have to pay for those.

The first hit is always free is a time honored and sound marketing principle. Once you're read the first several books in a series, the buying decision on the next few is a very easy one to make, especially since the content doesn't have DRM-crapware on it that makes it harder to read where I feel like reading it. They're also cheaper since they don't have to pay print costs, just bandwidth. This isn't hypothetical, I've already bought several of their books and plan on buying 2 or 3 more as soon as I get my next article check.

The French publishers simply want government protection for an industrial-age business model, just like the crapheads at the *AA member labels and studios do... fuck 'em.

Re:no argument...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear! I bought a book from Baen books ("When the Devil Dances" from memory) that contained several series of books in unencumbered formats.
 
As a result I back ordered several series and we're both richer as a result.
 
(As in I have them in my library now and they have my money.)
 
I've since tried to convince Australian publishers that they need to embrace this model of market expansion but no luck so far...

Re:no argument...

[16K Ram Pack]

Indeed.

A lot of publishers should take a look around. When someone launches a new snack bar, there's a reason why there are people standing outside shops giving away samples. Or when a bar opens, it gives out flyers with free drinks.

The content market is completely saturated. Pick something obscure and check out its sales rank on Amazon to see just how much stuff is out there. Getting something noticed is far more important. Record and book companies spend ludicrous amounts on getting something noticed.

A band in the UK called The Arctic Monkeys recently had a number 1 which was mostly the result of giving some of their music away on their site (like session recordings) and building up a following.

Re:no argument...

[Oligonicella]

Please tell us how you would feel to find that someone had gotten the entire text from someone like Google, assembled it, and posted it on the web so no one would have to pay you for it?

Re:no argument...

[Decker-Mage]

If you want the entire text of something you don't need to hit Google and do a cut and paste job piecemeal. Simply sign up with a service that has the right newsgroups and then hit those newsgroups that trade books that have been scanned and collect away. Apparently they even have their own editors to correct the scans from what I can see. I don't do that myself (download from those groups) but I've checked out the various groups and they have pretty much anything you could ask for and a lot of people do ask away. I've seen the latest Harry Potter hit within a few days after release.

However, this is not what Google is doing and unless you can figure out a way to search for the entire text piece by piece and reassemble it in the proper order, you aren't going to get the complete text. I can think of some algorithmic techniques that might work but it would be very hit and miss even with the best techniques I can think of and I'm damned good in the non-linear search department.

Re:no argument...

[Decker-Mage]

Baen books has always made a lot of money off of me and this feature is simply one more reason why they will continue to make money from my limited (disability) income. That's aside from the fact, as was cited in one of their end-page advertisements, that "Baen Books simply taste good." And neither I nor the author of that quote were talking about them as food!

It isn't unusual for me to have an electronic copy and the hard/paperback copy here and that's almost always the case. It's damned convenient to have the electronic copy while I'm working on the computer and I can pop off a chapter or three while something is happening just as it's damned inconvenient to try to figure out a way to carry my whole computer system and use it on the bus :-). Each medium has its uses.

You nailed it on the head about the first hit is always free. I dare anyone that is a serious history or science fiction buff to read the first of the Belisarius series ("Into the Heart of Darkness" - David Drake, Eric Flint) and not get the rest of the series! Yum! I've already almost killed (destroyed) my second set of these novels and about to buy a third.

Re:no argument...

[Cerv]

However, this is not what Google is doing and unless you can figure out a way to search for the entire text piece by piece and reassemble it in the proper order, you aren't going to get the complete text. I can think of some algorithmic techniques that might work but it would be very hit and miss even with the best techniques I can think of and I'm damned good in the non-linear search department.

Page numbers?

Re:no argument...

[Decker-Mage]

Yeah, right {dripping sarcasm}.

Re:no argument...

[Kadin2048]

One assumes, given that the people at Google do not appear to be entirely retarded, that they have probably thought of this.

I doubt that the system allows you to search by page number, and if they wanted to be on the safe side they could have it just not report page numbers with the search result either -- although this might make it less attractive to scholars who have to cite the dead-tree-equivalent's page number.

I'm betting given the expertise over at Google in the information search and retrieval fields that they can probably put together a system that makes it difficult to reassemble an entire book from their search results.

Remember, they don't need to make it impossible: just harder than going out and buying or downloading the book elsewhere if you're that desperate to get at the content.

Re:no argument...

[bcrowell]

BTW, the only real success I know with respect to digital-age publishing is Baen Books.
There are a lot more --- see my sig.

Re:no argument...

[alizard]

Re:no argument... (Score:2)
by bcrowell (177657) on Wednesday December 07, @04:26PM (#14205278)
(http://www.lightandmatter.com/)
BTW, the only real success I know with respect to digital-age publishing is Baen Books.

There are a lot more --- see my sig.

[ Reply to This ]

WHAT SIG???

Re:no argument...

[bcrowell]

WHAT SIG???
The one that you won't see if you have your prefs set so sigs don't show up:
The Assayer-books for the free-information revolution

Re:no argument...

[alizard]

thanks

AHA! The allusive third step!

[RyoShin]

Step 1: Hand over control of the internet to the UN, allowing the EU to dip their hand in it.
Step 2: European publishers complain about the big bad men running search engines, even when there are simple ways to stop your site from being indexed.
Step 3: European publishers get the EU to get the UN to shut down the internet
Step 4: Profit!!!

SHE'S not a Google lawyer....

[abb3w]

Oh, and you misspelled her name, although it sounds the same. Ms. Ivana Chatham, second senior partner at Dewey, Chatham, Fischer and Howe (aka "The Old Firm"), has been a mainstay in legal circles for years. Last I heard, those legal behemoths were still unable to persuade Google to allow the firm to represent the search giant, due to fundamental differences of corporate philosophy.

Still, they're not headed for the poorhouse (to live, anyway). DCF&H's best publicized client has been Microsoft, who has had them on retainer for years.

Inflation [OT]

[Julian Morrison]

Wealth has gone up, but the money supply has increased faster. Cause: all those various entities given the government privilege to print money.

Real buying power has still increased, because of technologies moving down into lower price brackets, commodification of products that used to be expensive and bespoke, and new inventions adding abilities that didn't previously exist. A dollar will buy less bread, but a whole lot more DVD player.

Re:Inflation [OT]

[bogado]

If only one could make bread DVD players we would have less hunger in the world??

Don't publish online then

[Anonymous Coward]

If dead-tree publishers are worried about people getting articles for free online, then simply don't put them online. If you want Google to stop pointing your site out to people, I'm sure Google will oblige. You will see your page rank go to the 50'th page, at the bottom, with the caption "spoiled sports". Similarly, you can make people pay for content directly (apparently the prOn industry does this all the time --so I am told--). I suspect there will be 'other people' still willing to offer news about the world online without dead-tree publishers.

Profit makes you evil?

[aitio]

"Publishers from Europe are complaining that Internet search engines are making money off their copyright-protected material. 'This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.', says Francisco Pinto Balsemao, head of the European Publishers Council."

I want to reject the notion that Google is somehow accountable to the publishers for making profit, even if they would place adds on Google News.

Example, a bookstore would find it hard sell books if the store was empty. So just by putting books on selves increases the value of the bookstore, helping it make profit. Thus, should the bookstore now pay authors, not only a comission for a sale, but for increasing the value of the store?

This is exactly the same as with Google Book Search. Authors and copyright holders reaching too far.

What sort of permision does a port imply?

[erice]

No, but listening on port 80 constitutes permission for me to make requests of your server.

So, does that mean that listening on port 25 constitutes permission to send you spam?

Re:What sort of permision does a port imply?

[tepples]

So, does that mean that listening on port 25 constitutes permission to send you spam?

Only if you can get past the authorization methods that my mail server uses. Even then, you have no guarantee that the spam you send will be read by a human being, thanks to smarter filtering.

Re:What sort of permision does a port imply?

[meringuoid]

So, does that mean that listening on port 25 constitutes permission to send you spam?

Yes, but:

- it doesn't constitute a promise that the spam will be read by a human. It may very well be read only by spamassassin and forwarded to Dave Null. - it doesn't constitute a promise that the spam will not also be forwarded to abuse@your.isp. You may well have prior agreements with them to the effect that you will not send spam.

Re:What sort of permision does a port imply?

[dkf]

So, does that mean that listening on port 25 constitutes permission to send you spam?

It gives you permission to try. Doesn't mean you'll succeed...

Online content must be free

[Timbotronic]

...or it is ignored. I find it amazing that after a decade on the web, publishers haven't worked out that nobody links to content that you can't get to without a subscription. So if you write something interesting you lose the network effect of all the search engines, news agregators and bloggers who link to the article (and all the advertising around it).

Wholesale copying and republishing of content is a copyright violation and always has been. That's not what Google are doing. How could you possibly be upset with people who drive traffic your way?

Re:Online content must be free

[The Cisco Kid]

Now if only the /. editors would learn that and stop linking to registration-required stories on NYT.

Copynorms

[tepples]

There are copyrights, and then there are copynorms.

You don't opt into anything someone can do with your content, merely by distributing your content.

True, but a copynorm had developed that when a copyright owner publishes a work on the World Wide Web for anonymous access, the copyright owner intends for it to be seen by as many people as possible, and thus automated systems have the right to cache it verbatim until the copyright owner decides otherwise. In October 1998, the United States Congress codified this copynorm as law in 17 USC 512(b), enacted as a rider to the DMCA.

Re:Copynorms

[martin-boundary]

Which is fine but meaningless, because those who publish the content on the web are not the copyright owners, only syndication licensees.

Re:Copynorms

[cyberformer]

AFP and other agencies could just change the terms of their licensing so that their customers can't post to a server that's indexed by Google News. If they already have, then the online publishers are breaking their contracts (and probably copyright law as well).

Re:Copynorms

[martin-boundary]

Of course. But whether the contract is broken or not, Google is still using the material without permission, and in a way that can't (I think) reasonably be seen as fair use.

For one thing, by the time they've downloaded most of the web for their index, they have statistically downloaded 90%+ of Reuters' material. For another, while they might only serve a tiny snippet to a single web surfer at a time, by the time they've served all the people who use their service, they've served 90% of the Reuters material again.

Re:Copynorms

[Anonymous Coward]

"For another, while they might only serve a tiny snippet to a single web surfer at a time, by the time they've served all the people who use their service, they've served 90% of the Reuters material again."

That's an absurd argument. That's almost like Stephen King complaining that I have recited "The Shining" in public (though not all at once) merely because I have used all of its words at different times to different people.

When did Reuters (or anyone else) gain copyright over tiny snippets of their content?

Re:Copynorms

[Kadin2048]

Interesting. I just read through it and I'm not sure if the 'cacheing' that they're talking about would cover a Google-like cache. It specifically defines cache as something that's "intermediate and temporary storage," so I'm guessing what they're aimed at are systems like Squid, not databanks like Google's Cache. Of course, we'll never know until somebody decides to test it and develop some precident.

Here is the relevant part of the law in context:

17 USC 512(b) System caching.

        (1) Limitation on liability. A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the intermediate and temporary storage of material on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider in a case in which--

                (A) the material is made available online by a person other than the service provider;
                (B) the material is transmitted from the person described in subparagraph (A) through the system or network to a person other than the person described in subparagraph (A) at the direction of that other person; and
                (C) the storage is carried out through an automatic technical process for the purpose of making the material available to users of the system or network who, after the material is transmitted as described in subparagraph (B), request access to the material from the person described in subparagraph (A), if the conditions set forth in paragraph (2) are met.

Re:Copynorms

[CreatureComfort]

Which is fine, but meaningless. If the people complaining are not the copyright holders, but the syndicated licensees, then they have no business screaming about copyright violations.

But in fact, this group is complaining about violation of their copyright on their published web pages. Which is complete nonsense. As pointed out in other places, search engines do not reproduce content they index it and send people to the original source. What really has these folk's panties in a wad is that search engines have leveled the information distribution playing field. Before a publisher could target a relatively small and obscure niche market and keep it locked up to themselves because there just wasn't enough volume for more than a very limited number of information sources in that area. Now all of those markets, i.e. "Cat Fancy", "Dog Lovers", "Home & Garden", are being wiped out by all of the free information that people are willing to make available online. Ten years ago my Mom had a subscription to one of those cat magazines. Now she participates in two online forums and her and her cat both have blogs. *boggle**I created a monster*

Then you throw in the other side, mass media. Before, NYT could demand a subscription and earn money from exclusive and well written articles and stories. Now, there are enough licensees of Rueters, UPI, and AP that are willing to give those stories away in return for Ad impressions, and there are enough well written editorial and in depth, on-the-spot stories written by people living through the news event, that the NYT is becoming irrelevent.

Both of these situations are only possible because of search engines. I know that I'll find a story on one of the subscription based services I use that I want to share with friends. When I do, I do a quick google to find a non-subscription site with the same article and send that link so my friends and family, who are not interested in subscribing to new scientist, can still see the neat Saturn moon photos published for free by BBC, with essentially the same story. Or better, a link to the BBC story and the NASA picture site hosting all the latest pictures. I like new scientist because they do the work of scanning all the press releases and new publications and pointing out and summarizing the best/most interesting of them so I can quickly find the information that interests me, and do deeper research on those topics that the summary is insufficient for. Hmmm... sound a lot like what Google does for free on a wider scale. The only difference, and why I still have my subscription, is that Google is horrible at seperating the wheat from the chaff. The signal to noise ratio on Google is way too low. But at the same time, if I want to find information on Himalayan long-hairs, and pointers for dealing with hair-balls, instead of subscribing to an expensive specialty source that may or may not have an article dealing with my problem, a quick google will point me to a dozen or more possible sites that are willing to interact with me in near real-time, to not only solve my problem but point out other things that I should know or problems I can be on alert for.

The group in the story claiming that search engines will destroy the publication industry are the last of the buggy whip makers screaming that automobiles and paved roads will be the end of the leather industry. My advice to them... stop making whips and start making uphostlery and seat covers. Gee, the more I think about that analogy in this context the better I like it.

Re:Copynorms

[tbannist]

And?

If I read the dictionary, I will have read 100% of the Reuters material, are they going to sue Merriam-Webster?

You can't simply aggregate all the snippets served and say it's material infringement. They serve a useful bit of text around the word the user is searching for, that is obviously a "fair use" of the work.

teeny-boppers on drugs

[patiodragon]

"First: the notion that there is "only so much money." It is true that there is are only so many nominal dollars/yen/etc. However, you can make money right in your own home! Just get a piece of paper and write "IOU $5" and give it to a friend. Congratulations. You have just increased the total amount of money in the world by $5."

How in the world is this "insightful"? Can I turn off these moronic rating things? This is a just plain dumb example. When you go and repay your friend, you have to get the $5 bill from somewhere. You get a job, ask your mom, whatever... but you have NOT increased the money supply at all --just moved it around a bit. The government inflates the money supply to its liking pretty much how they want.

OTOH, now that there is nothing of any real value backing up the money the government prints (first gold, then silver, now "in God we trust") it IS a total scam.

Re:teeny-boppers on drugs

[crazyjimmy]

Well if you don't believe in your $, can I have it?

Re:teeny-boppers on drugs

[argoff]

Well if you don't believe in your $, can I have it?

Well, if you believe the $ is better than gold money, can I have the your gold? :)

Re:teeny-boppers on drugs

[Kadin2048]

The "friend" example doesn't hold too far, but the reason why that's considered 'creating more money' is because (assuming the IOU was written correctly and you're trusted by everyone to pay it back) your friend that you've given the IOU to could take that piece of paper and trade it for goods or services with some third party. And then that third party could trade it to someone else, etc., etc. Sure, at some point somebody could take it back to you and cash it in, but if you're trusted by all they might never bother to do this. Thus by issuing a debt you've increased the currency circulating by some small amount.

Replace 'you' with 'Government' and 'IOU' with 'paper currency' and eliminate the ability for a person to go back to the debtor and get anything in exchange for the IOU (since it's not backed by anything anymore), and you've basically got our monetary system.

On another level this is similar to why banks loaning out depositors money actually seems to increase the amount of currency in the market. I have money in my bank account, while at the same time you have money that the bank has given you as a loan. The bank doesn't actually 'make more money,' and the money that I think is in my bank account isn't really "there," but the web of trust between people and banks causes everyone to act as it if did (e.g. when they make purchasing decisions). Of course if that web of trust breaks and there is a run on the bank, then you have a real problem.

So why...

[js92647]

If the content cannot remain free because of copyright infrigement, law suit threats appearing, money being made, etc, I have one question: Why hasn't this been addressed before? Why NOW after all this time?

17 USC 512

[tepples]

The web site which licensed the material has no authority to relicense, even implicitly through the existence or not of robots.txt, the commercial use of the material to third parties.

So? The U.S. government already grants limited copyright exemptions to automated indexing and cache services in 17 USC 512. If AP or Reuters licenses its works to any web site that serves a United States audience, it must take section 512 into account.

Re:17 USC 512

[martin-boundary]

And if you read that section, you find that Google must comply promptly with any request from the copyright holder to remove the material. See sections (b)(2)(D) and (b)(2)(E). Last year's lawsuit against Google was from the copyright holder (AFP) precisely for not removing its copyrighted material obtained from random websites which legally display AFP material.

The syndication contract could require such HTML

[tepples]

The copyrighted material is not in HTML to begin with.

It is turned into HTML only under license from AP or Reuters or another wire service. Such wire services could require specific meta elements in any HTML page containing a syndicated work as part of the syndication contract.

Copy != steal

[tepples]

You'll note I didn't say steal the website, but steal the contents.

You meant "copy", not "steal". If Google "literally steals the contents of millions of web pages" as you claimed, then millions of web pages would disappear the moment they're added to Google's cache and would have to be re-uploaded. Besides, even if you define "stealing" to include any violation of any exclusive right under copyright, then it's still not "stealing". See 17 USC 512(b) and (d), enacted as a rider to the DMCA.

Re:Copy != steal

[martin-boundary]

Allright, s/stel/infringe on copyright/, it's a fair point.

Re:The syndication contract could require such HTM

[martin-boundary]

True, that they could. But legal agreements being what they are, such a specific request is going to be buried in a more general statement about using technical means to ensure that the licensee's usage complies with the requirements.

Re:Profit Elsewhere [OT]

[JesseMcDonald]

The problem with this objection, of course, is that *no* economic system works very well unless its participants are acting in accordance was some approximation of rational self-interest. There are some, such as socialism, which can do without self-interest on the part of the majority, in exchange for placing control over the economy in the hands of a few individuals with no real responsibilities toward their subjects. How, exactly, is such a system in any way an improvement over capitalism?

All forms of democracy require self-interest on the part of the population to prevent a fall into socialism or dictatorship. In fact, there exists no form of government which does *not* have this condition. No government, no matter how well intentioned, can long withstand apathy from its citizenship without straying from its original ideals. Economic systems are subject to the same rule, as all forms of economics, other than capitalism/free-market systems, place control over the economy in the hands of the goverment.

Check next to info.

[Pooldraft]

Another common good(free, widely available information[yes it is privite media but not all]) destroyed by capitalism and the need to maintain/increase price and market.

Maybe they could make money by giving stuff away ?

[Maserati]

It's actually possible for a publisher to make money by giving stuff away. Take a look at a publisher who is giving stuff away and seeing an increase in sales. The basic gimmick is to give away the first couple of books in a series away online. This solves the problem of selling sequels to people who haven't read the first books and in royalty figures listed on the site it also boosts sales in the author's other series. They've gone so far as to put upwards of 20 books on a disk bound into some recent novels. The latest Honor Harrington novel is something like the 14th in the series, and comes with all of the earlier books.

The free ebooks come in a variety of formats; nicely framed html, text, and a couple of popular (and free) ebook readers for mobile devices. But they've found that enough people prefer to read actual books and buy them that they come out ahead on the deal.

Incidentally, Baen publishes mainly military science fiction.

How to express a request

[tepples]

you find that Google must comply promptly with any request from the copyright holder to remove the material.

Google does comply with requests expressed as changes to meta elements or as changes to /robots.txt upon the next visit from Googlebot.

Re:How to express a request

[martin-boundary]

So you're saying that Google have a specific procedure for requests, and requests which aren't following their procedure are legally invalid? I dunno, it sounds a little too simple. I suspect a good old fashioned certified letter to their headquarters would be legally acceptable.

They could come to an agreement

[cyberformer]

Google could get around this problem simply by making Google News truly opt-in. Publishers would have to actively submit their sites, agreeing not to sue Google for including them. Even better, sites could specify exactly what content Google is allowed to reproduce (eg. headlines, deks, thumbnail images), or disallow certain content (eg. syndicated material from AFP).

Sites get so much traffic from Google that the majority probably would choose to be indexed. Even if a few (or a lot) resisted, there'd still be so much content that the service would still be useful to readers (and profitable to Google's advertisers).

Did you support John Seigenthaler?

[tepples]

So you're saying that Google have a specific procedure for requests, and requests which aren't following their procedure are legally invalid?

I'm saying that the procedures recognized by Google (including the WebCrawler Robots Exclusion Standard) have been part of the copynorms for longer than I've been able to vote or use the Web.

I suspect a good old fashioned certified letter to their headquarters would be legally acceptable.

But why send a certified letter to the operator of each conforming search engine when you can more easily remove sensitive pages from all of them at once using well-known robots exclusion methods? Is it because your name is John Seigenthaler, who chose to make a big deal of things instead of just editing an alleged libel out of his own biography?

Re:Did you support John Seigenthaler?

[martin-boundary]

Is it because your name is John Seigenthaler...

No, but I presume that when the AFP began their suit, they sent a certified letter, since they don't offer their full content directly to the public on a website crawled by Googlebot. It's the customers of the content owner who are providing their own packaged versions of the content and that is what is being crawled and copied by Google. Which is fine as it goes, but then Google offer that content also to the public without a license, which is why I think they're running afoul of copyright law.

In Other News ...

[sabat]

European publishers have ordered the internet to be shut down.

So they do not reproduce?

[Pofy]

>Search engines do not reproduce content.

Ohh, so them haveing a cache of pages and scanning all books is just something I dreamt last night then?

Children, children calm down

[16777216]

They (movie co.s, music co.s, m$, and a lot of others) are like 3 year olds "Mine!! Mine!! you can't have it!! you'll get cooties on it!! GROW THE F**CK UP!

Fine

[Lord_Dweomer]

"'This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.'

Ok. Bye bye then. If your business model is no longer working, adapt or die. Although I guess litigation is their attempt at adapting, it won't work in the long run. Bye bye dinosaurs!

User needs

[stellar678]

When looked at from a user standpoint, a good search engine is often one that simply provides a direct answer to a user's questions. Google understands this, and you see it in response to, amongst others, queries like "define [such-and-such]", arithmetic and conversion queries, and queries about movie showtimes. For usability reasons, the trend should be toward fulfilling a user's goals more simply. Providing content in a one step (search only) process rather than a two step (search-navigate) process is definitely simpler.

In light of this, Mr. Langdon's comment about search engines not reproducing content is pretty much untrue. The penultimate search engine would simply give a user exactly what they wanted. If they wanted a link then the content providers can still be happy, but if they just wanted content, the providers better figure out another revenue stream.

Re:better recourse than lawsuits

[Pofy]

>There are so many things that these publishers could do to avoid being
>indexed by Google if they so choose. I guess they haven't heard of using
>robot.txt to tell Google to leave them alone.

Last I checked the copyright laws there was no requirement of using a "robot.txt" file to be granted copyright or its related rights. I guess I should start looking for it next I visit my favorite torrent site. After all, those music, movie and game companies could simply have put such a thing into their files as well so I knew I could not download them, or?

goes back further than that

[alizard]

Metallica got its early following in large part through tape trading.

define: eu directive

[aitio]

a type of legislation issued by the European Union which is binding on Member States in terms of the results to be achieved but which leaves to Member States the choice of methods.

And, at the moment, European Union legislation, meaning directives, regulations, binding decisions and recommendations do not mention such thing as fare use in any way. Thus, the Court of Justice of the European Communities, witch interprets the Union legislation, does not have such thing as fare use to base it's decisions on.

Re:define: eu directive

[Pofy]

>a type of legislation issued by the European Union which is binding on
>Member States in terms of the results to be achieved but which leaves to
>Member States the choice of methods.

It issues directives, not laws. Those directives are NOT laws in the countries. However, the countries has to implement them into their laws though. Many times there is quite a difference (and allowance for difference) in how those implementations are done. The directive can for example be a minimum and the individual countries can go further and so on. Still, it is not until a country changes itw own law, that there is any effect in that country as far as what is legal or not.

>And, at the moment, European Union legislation, meaning directives,
>regulations, binding decisions and recommendations do not mention such thing
>as fare use in any way.

Exactly, it leaves it up to the individual countries. There is no restriction on that you can NOT add such things, which is what you claimed:

>>At the moment they have no fare use, or right to make a copy in any way.

Which is not ture since almost all (probably all) have various varinats on the fair use in their own laws. Actually, some of the dircetives specifically says it is up to individual countries to handle such things (within limits).

Re:Profit Elsewhere [OT]

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you realize that what we have today -- in the US or any country in the world -- is not even close to capitalism? How can you blame capitalism for all these problems when "capitalism", as we know it, is nothing but a state-entangled, top-down, centrally-planned economic system? Real capitalism, which doesn't exist, is the exact opposite of those things.

In the US, the average citizen now pays nearly 50% of his yearly earnings to federal, state, and local governments combined. Under real capitalism, each individual would retain exactly 100% of his earnings, because capitalism is defined by voluntary association, not coercion which is government's tool.

So again, think twice before you blame capitalism -- which hardly even exists -- for corruption, fraud, theft, or any other act of coercion. If government is involved in any way beyond simply keeping the peace, then it's not capitalism.

What Google should do is...

[Aldric]

Delist their servers, don't even give a link to their site for searches. Give a link to the competitor if it's legal to do so. These idiots should be taught a lesson about what happens to companies that start stupid lawsuits.

Adapt or die

[oliderid]

That's an old editorial for European publishers.

They joined the Internet train too late. They can't accept the new world and its rules. There are millions of source of information on the Internet, they aren't that special anymore.

I can get an objective view on an event With a single click. I'm not dependant anymore of the "so called" objectivity of a reporter. I can get millions of point of views and build my own one. If you can't accept that. I prefer you leave it.

they faced huge competitions from "free newspapers" on the street. They lost marketshares after marketshares because they are unable to change their business model.

Instead of complaining all the time why don't they unite and try to make a new innovative service. Why can't they compete with Google instead of crying like a poor baby?

Because they have strictly no imagination. Most of them are 100 years old ladies, with a board of directors mainly composed by 70+ year old guys. Changing their format takes decades, changing their layout takes years. The world is moving too fast for them.

What are they going to do? Ask google to avoid their web site? Suddently a drop of 80% of hits.

Oh wait...They still have a weapon, like all dying industries they will ask politicians to invent a new rule that will dammage the whole European Internet industry...They will survive maybe 5 or 6 years without having to change their business model. But Europe will lose decades in the economic world battle.

As usual all European entrepeneurs will suffer from the desperate actions of dying companies which will try "once again" to change the world instead of adapting their strategy to it.

Olivier

Re:Profit Elsewhere [OT]

[jschrod]

Your excurse is nice, though a bit on the very simplistic (naive) side, and misses one important point: Money is itself a product, traded on markets, created and managed by the central banks of the world. Your explanations of inflation and deflation only hold for constant money in the market. But that's not the case so they contradict the day-to-day experience of layman people.

well...

[alizard]

two words. DMCA takedown. Not effective everywhere, but nothing's perfect. While the DMCA was written with the intent of salvaging an obsolete business model, i.e. as advanced rent-seeking, even a bad law has occasional good uses.

If I choose to make the work freely available, that's my decision. Just as it's my decision not to put DRM on anything like a book I either get published or self-publish for sale on the basis that I'll make less money.

However, the question would be better asked to the SF writers at Baen Books, many of whom have given permission to have their books put up on the Baen Books website "Free Library". And more who have given permission for their current books to be sold without any form of DRM. Their experience as authors (would they do this if this didn't make money for them?) and my experience as customer has persuaded me that DRM-free is the way to go.

I thank you for your concern over my ability to make money off my published work, but judging from your question, you obviously haven't had a hell of a lot of experience with making creative content for profit.

Whether the product is digital tracks from a band, video, or text, the hard part is getting noticed.

Locking up content interferes with the "getting noticed" part.

Admitedly, reading an e-book means I'm chained to my desktop until I get a laptop or something I can move around with. That's one reason at best, an e-book has a bit less value than a paper book. The problem with DRM in this kind of environment is that it adds hassles to that of having to use a computer to read the thing, specialized readers keyed to specific machines are a hassle and if one adds enough hassles the user experieence, the user is too likely to go somewhere else for comparable content to a competitor.

Stephen King tried an e-book serial using a DRM-locked e-book reader program. Even he couldn't make money doing this, people weren't buying. Why have the leaser-known writers at Baen making it? DRM-free is the difference.

Give people content they want that's easy to find in a form that's easy to use, they'll buy it even if it's relatively easy to steal. The traditional content vendors seem to be concentrating so hard on control that they seem to have forgotten that this business is about making money.

Isn't this sorta like sueing the "Yellow Pages"?

[Ruger]

That's how we used to find resouces when none of them were virtual.

no, I haven't missed it...

[alizard]

I deliberately ignored it. If a group of lemmings is determined to march to the sea, I don't feel obligated to join them.

as I said...

[alizard]

Baen got it right and profited. Other content publishers are more interested in control and future (usually imaginary) profit from a work than actually making actual money with it in the real world. As far as I'm concerned, leave 'em to Darwin.

At an old-line *AA record company, 90% is in vinyl or shellac or even wax cylinder masters locked in vaults. No more than a handful of these masters will ever be turned into anything a label can make money on. Why not digitize it all and put it up for sale? They're afraid that somebody might steal a few, so those masters will sit in storage until somebody smarter takes over the company. May not take too long, traditional content providers aren't exactly in great financial shape in most cases.

Nuke France

[bumblefoo]

Why does France suck so much? They've got a lot of cool art, their country is full of rich history, they have a pretty cool language and their food is great. It seems like they'd be well adjust happy reasonable people. Doesn't it? So why do they all suck so much? It just doesn't make sense.

Please explain it to me.

Thanks,
Confused

Citation and Scale

[SeanDuggan]

The trouble here is that Google is reproducing the entire article if you think about it. Imagine if you go to the library every day, and copy a single phrase in a book. If you do this a few thousand times, you've reproduced the whole book, and it's definitely no longer fair use. That's what Google is doing. They have internal copies of everything, and they serve small (but different) pieces to people.
If I'm publishing a paper, I have the right to quote small portions of text under fair use. I'f I'm just publishing one paper, that's maybe 20-30 lines total. If, on the other hand, I'm an extremely prolific author, I might be publishing a hundred papers a year and now that's 200-300 lines. Google is like an extremely prolific authour, publishing hundreds of papers a day. Just like the case of citation in papers, they're never serving up a large chunk of text, but theoretically, by gathering together all of the citations, you could build a whole book out of it. *shrug* And honestly, what are the odds of having a whole book in the end? Few people are likely to cite the dedication page of a book, for instance. Similarly, there's a good chance that Google never fully replicates any given work. Now one might argue that they just get all the good stuff, but isn't what what citation is about, getting sections of the book that compose the meat of it? (Well, unless you're a news source, in which case it's good business to get as many out-of-context quotes as you can so as to misrepresent a source as you wish, but that's another matter entirely.)

Right on about arbitrage

[Kadin2048]

Not unlike asking your real estate to give you a cut of the commission on a house that is particularly desirable for an agent to list.

Where I come from, they have a term for that. It's called a "kickback."

ROBOTS.TXT

[Anonymous Coward]

ROBOTS.TXT
If you don't want your content showing up in google. JUST SAY SO.

ROBOTS.TXT = case closed, court adjourned.

the obvious point here is...

[alizard]

How many sales does anyone think got lost over the Usenet availability of the latest Harry Potter hit? A dozen? If a kid gets promised the latest Harry Potter hit for Xmas, he isn't going to be happy with a giant pile of printout. And the idiot printing it out is going to be even unhappier when he realizes what the ink cost him... hint: buying the book is A LOT cheaper.

Re:the obvious point here is...

[Decker-Mage]

I wouldn't bother to print it out if I went that way. I do download the free books from Baen books all the time and read them on the screen although I do, if I like the book, buy the paper-based version as well to read away from my keyboard. Anything else isn't economic as I can't get prices anything close to what the publishers get for ink or paper.

My basic point was that anyone can get most any book for download from UseNet so why the hu-hu about what Google is doing? Frankly I'd love it if someone did the same with music, i.e. allow searches with sample tracks and links to buy the music from a download site or order the (overpriced) CD.

The basic problem with the media industry today is that they haven't come to terms with the plain fact that all media today is now at the same paradigm shift as occured when Gutenburg fired up that printing press and put a lot of scribes out of business except for those that wanted a hand scribed book. Some day the media industry may figure it out but it will take a while. Unfortunately, all those scribes went to work for officialdom of that time which was the beginning of the reestablishment of bureaucracy which had faded out for a while after the fall of Byzantine Rome.

Re:Profit Elsewhere [OT]

[NixLuver]

You're certainly right there! I wasn't advocating the immediate and absolute abandonment of Captitalism as a concept; I was merely attempting to mitigate the pie-in-the-sky worship of the philosophy that the parent post advocated.

Obviously, like most concepts, a single-vendor (or single-philosophy) solution will be incorrect. The 'ideal' economic philosophy, by definition, I think, will incorporate pieces of all of them where appropriate. It will have facets of Capitalism, Socialism, Communism - you name it.

The ideal governmental form will probably follow suit, sharing many characteristics with multiple 'absolute' philosophies.

Fine

[Weezul]

As more people write for wikinews, fewer people will read these rags anyway.

BTW, Why does anyone still submit stories to slashdot anymore? Its much more effective to submit a story to wikinews, at least it wont just be thrown out carelessly there.