Newspaper Lobbyists Take Aim at Google News

Hitokiri writes "Now that Google News is out of beta the newspaper publishers are starting to take notice. It's important to note that no legal action has taken place yet, but still, there seems to be a battle on the horizon." From the article: "'They're building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content,' Ali Rahnema, managing director of the association, told Reuters in an interview. 'The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article -- it's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not.'"

Comments

Fair Use

[elbenito69]

I'd call it fair use, advertising for the news sources even, but of course I'm probably biased because Google News is just so damn convienent.

Re:Fair Use

[rmoehring]

Quiet down and pay for the rights to see the same AP or Reuters article on 200 different web sites. It's the Capitalist way.

Re:Fair Use

[grogdamighty]

Yeah, I fail to see how this is really any different from a newstand: headlines and teasers are used to lure you to the publisher's website. Why complain about free advertising?

Re:Fair Use

[tomhudson]

I'd tell the newspapers to be careful of what they ask for - they might just end up getting it:

'The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article -- it's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not.'"

Don't be surprised if at least quoting the first few lines ends up being fair use. Besides, how do they expect their own online content to be seen if it isn't indexed - google could charge them instead of doing it for free. Its not like I'm going to go and find all these news items on my own.

Re:Fair Use

[mordors9]

I would think that the newspaper sites are getting more visits because of Google News. Perhaps Google can start extorting money from them if they want hits coming from Google. Let's face it, there are several other news outlets that Google can use and therefor send browsers their way.

Re:Fair Use

[sirnuke]

I wonder if the newspapers have considered that a majority of Google News reader probably won't go to their site unless the user see an interesting article on google news? Why pay for advertising when you can get someone else to do it for you for free?

Re:Fair Use

[rodentia]

The relevant statute -- United States Copyright law of 1976 [17 USC 107]:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A [17 USC sects 106, 106A] the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

There is a real question of law here, but I consider that there is a case against Google. Indexing does not fall into any of the protected classes of use, has obvious commercial value and a clear, negative effect upon the value of the copyrighted work.

Re:Fair Use

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

There is a real question of law here, but I consider that there is a case against Google. Indexing does not fall into any of the protected classes of use, has obvious commercial value and a clear, negative effect upon the value of the copyrighted work.

The courts have already ruled that Google cache qualifies under this, and have ruled a system nearly identical to Google images is fair use. Providing a thumbnail and a few sentences so that people can find something is almost certainly fair use in keeping with existing precedent. That is why no one has bothered to sue them over it.

Re:Fair Use

[Buzz_Litebeer]

What they should do is put a policy that if a site does not like their content to be indexed, then google will remove it. If they want their content re-indexed at a later date, it will cost them a 10000 dollar maintanence fee.

Re:Fair Use

[gid13]

I thought it was in beta so long because it DIDN'T have obvious commercial value. If the commercial value is so obvious, how does Google News make money? Also, wouldn't providing such a service potentially bring more viewers to the news site, thus increasing the value of the copyrighted work?

Lastly, although you're right that indexing is not covered in what you quoted, perhaps they could argue that their purpose is reporting? Shrug.

Re:Fair Use

[theguyfromsaturn]

I agree. All that Google does is redirect us to their content. If Google News stopped doing it, I'd probably not be reading a lot of those newspapers (and their content). I'd get a couple of sources like the BBC and CBC and good luck to the rest. I bet they're just as happy getting the advertising money from when I browse their site and see their sponsors. It's not like Google is lifting the entire content of their articles. They would be legitimately pissed then. Google is merely redirecting traffic towards their site. Of course, it's typical of the news industry today... they want to stirr up things just to stir them up. If it means saying "oops" afterwards... well they'll see how it goes THEN.

Re:Fair Use

[tomhudson]

The newspapers are SCARED. They're caught between a rock and a hard place. Consider:

1. Their product is environmentally destructive, expensive to distribute, and out of date by the time they ship it
2. They're in a highly competitive market, so they have to sell the product for, at best, break-even on the manufacturing costs, and make it up in advertising. Net-based competitors don't have the high startup costs, and the high printing and distribution network costs, and they're competing for the same advertising dollars.
3. Unlike newspaper advertising, where a person might not even SEE section of the newspaper where your ad is, but its factored into the cost of your ad anyway, on the net yo can have EXACT metrics of who say your ad, and who ACTED on it. This is feedback that scares the newspaper chains sh*tless.

Which side would YOU rather be on ...

Re:Fair Use

[Cal Paterson]

Most of these newspapers seems to be only interested because they think they may be able to get money out of sueing Google. If Google offered this as some kind of advertising agreement which they paid for, my guess would be that it would be pretty popular.

Re:Fair Use

[jez9999]

I'd rather be a newspaper. You seem to be forgetting that they too can compete on the net and just drop the physical paper when/if it gets too unprofitable. Not sure why you're thinking internet-only news operations have an advantage there.

Re:Fair Use

[Buran]

Bingo.

Gee, let's see. Would I rather pay 50 cents (or whatever it is) to get a space-wasting dirty tree-killing truck-polluting pile of paper with an erroneous "Miners rescued alive" headline, or view the news, no clutter/pollution/tree-killing required, online, with the CORRECT INFORMATION?

Plus, I can read what I want, be linked to other sources, read in the order I want without having to make piles all over the floor, worry about pages being out of order, and I can even easily e-mail links or text of stories to others.

Gee. I think I'll stay a web reader for a good long time.

Re:Fair Use

[Traiklin]

yes because the Internet doesn't require tons of servers, power, cables or wires to be of any use to anyone right?

Let's see, kill some trees to make papers or kill some trees to make room for a new powerplant that is either coal, gas or nuclear based.

Re:Fair Use

[tomhudson]

You're fogetting the gas and diesel used to get it to your door - a lot more energy used up than reading off the net.

Re:Fair Use

[budgenator]

a thumbnail image and 3 sentences would fall under (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; driving traffic to their site would fall under (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Re:Fair Use

[Buran]

Of course it requires power. But the power plant will be there regardless, but deforestation will continue at varying levels depending on demand for paper. Furthermore, there are clean sources of energy like nuclear, wind, or hydro that don't pollute as much as gas, oil and coal do. These will be used increasingly in the future and are already a signficant part of the power generated in the US (where I live) today.

Plus, the net infrastructure is largely already in place, but the need to cut more trees (whether managed on tree farms or "wild" in forests) will not stop.

Re:Fair Use

[Sen.NullProcPntr]

...if a site does not like their content to be indexed, then google will remove it...

Isn't that already handled by the /robots.txt file?

Google supposedly honers the Disallow statement.
Are things different when they go after a newspaper web site?

Re:Fair Use

[rgriff59]

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

...Indexing ...has ... a clear, negative effect upon the value of the copyrighted work.

So, allowing me to find a work has a clear, negative effect on the value of the work? The dozen or so local news sites I have registered with while following Google news links, and wholly and precisely because the links were available via Google News, didn't get a value from the exposure? I thought they liked that juicy reader demographic data they asked for. I don't remember any of them saying, "You are not welcome here because you used Google to find us."

"clear" it is definitely not, and "negative" is quite doubtful.

Re:Fair Use

[alejandrodelloco]

I seriously doubt there are any mainstream news sites that *don't* want to get hit by the major search engines, aggregation or not.

Re:Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

"Its not like I'm going to go and find all these news items on my own."

Exactly. There's no way I'm going to hit 20 or 30 sites looking for headlines. Google is doing the newspapers a HUGE favor by showing the headlines so people can go to their sites and read the story. It's incredible how short-sighted these idiots are.

Mike
www.QuickTrivia.com

Re:Fair Use

[Chrispy1000000 the 2]

Actually, paper-newspapers have been noticing a substantial drop in subscriptions. So, ergo, the demand, and the price for paper, has gone down.

Look it up.

Re:Fair Use

[zen-theorist]

1. its not like online media cant make the mistake of getting it wrong.
2. viewing it on your monitor (that consumes electricity) using a possibly inefficient communication network (that consumes electricity) does encourage electricity companies to burn coal to generate it. i'm not saying that this is more polluting than snail paper, but you dont have the figures either.

not to mention the possibly harmful effect of high-intensity light beamed onto your eyeballs.

Re:Fair Use

[Buran]

My comment is not intended to be taken as indicating any trends in paper subscriptions. It merely reflects the fact that I value not imposing any additional demands on forest resources when I have alternatives.

Re:Fair Use

[Buran]

1. Sure. But they actually can fix their mistakes instead of letting erroneous headlines that weren't confirmed before being printed above the fold go through. You don't do that. You just end up looking stupid.

2. How do you know I don't know what I'm talking about? I actually do have a degree in environmental science. Speaking of feet in mouth ...

Re:Fair Use

[kponto]

The ironic thing is, if Google had simply "charged for the privelege" of being listed on Google News, as opposed to listing them for free, we probably wouldn't be hearing a peep.

It's all about perception.

Re:Fair Use

[Traiklin]

but what happens if a nuclear plant has a meltdown?

how much of the enviornment is destroyed by that?

Re:Fair Use

[Buran]

The risk is pretty low, although not nonexistent, as training and technologies have advanced a fair bit since the mid 1970s and mid 1980s, when the big disasters happened. The impact that is there (waste storage, mostly) is quite a lot less than what impact is there as a result of dirtier power plants.

Re:Fair Use

[newsdude]

I work for a major metro daily in the online department and I find this story amusing. Google is consistently our top referrer (except, occasionally, on days where something gets Slashdotted or Farked). I can't imagine why we'd ever want Google to stop what they're doing. Besides, we're falling all over ourselves to provide other aggregating tools like RSS. What's the difference? Not much, I'd say.

Re:Fair Use

[laughingcoyote]

A...negative effect? So amazon.com's practice of providing a link to purchase a book, the text of the first few pages of that book, and the ability to purchase it immediately has a -negative- value upon that book's sales? Somehow, I doubt this.

-IF- Google were reproducing the entire story, I could see your (and their) point. But they're not-they're simply giving you a "teaser" that makes it -more- likely you'll visit the site in question (and see their ads, which is the method of "purchase" here.) Further, any publisher who -doesn't- want to be included can make a cute little file called robots.txt, and say goodbye to their google listing.

Of course, they don't -want- just to remove their own google listings, but they also want to remove the advantage it gives to smaller and online-only sources. If they were simply upset about their -own- listings being included, they can even contact Google to delist immediately rather then wait for the next crawl, -and- change robots.txt at the same time. Generally, courts require that you make a "good faith" effort to resolve a matter -before- suing. I believe, in this case, Google could easily argue that they are acting in good faith by honoring removal requests and robots.txt, and that the publishers are not-obviously, they've -not- contacted Google, or their listings would be removed!

As to amount and substantiality, generally short quotes and excerpts have been held by the courts to be fair use. Google's not reprinting the whole thing-and even if they were, Google's caching has already been ruled legal.

So, between the fact that Google provides an easy mechanism -not- to be listed, copies only a small portion of the work, and directs users -to the site in question- to read the rest, I can't imagine they'd have too much of a case. I figured the cache and images ones to be more potentially dangerous by far, and both of those were ruled fair use.

Re:Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! What these media types don't seem to get is that they are getting something out of this. Google is driving people to their sites! Gee, the last time I checked it was a good thing to have traffic on your site, wasn't it?

I think Google's policy should be that they can request to be removed from Google News, but in turn Google will also remove them from the regular Google search. I bet that'll shut them up!

What good is your web site if no one ever sees it?

These guys need to wake up and smell the coffee! This is HELPING them!

Re:Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A [17 USC sects 106, 106A] the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

I'm with you. It's funny people do not see what I have just embolded...

Re:Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that the news itself may be fair use, but not the photos. If Google wants to illustrate the news, they have to pay like everyone else.

Re:Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

*pat pat*

You too can take a general physics and/or chemistry course and better understand the how and the why of nuclear power plants. You might even realize that the smoke detector that you have in your home emits nuclear radiation.

What does Beta have to do with anything

[Tweekster]

Honestly, Just cause google called it beta before and now it doesnt did not change anything legally. They were still open for legal attack just as much then as now (which is yet to be determined) In all likelyhood they have nothing to worry about since they are simply aggregating data and well that is a use under copyright. Newspapers, quite bitching,. most people wouldnt even read your particular site if it werent for google News.

Re:What does Beta have to do with anything

[tomhudson]

Because google traditionally takes drops beta when its time to start making REAL money off of it ... expect to see some changes in Google News in the future. Maybe newspapers will have to PAY to be on Google News ...

Re:What does Beta have to do with anything

[rm69990]

If I were Google, the second a company started bitching, I would blacklist them from Google news, AND tell them about it. Then, let the company come grovelling at their feet when their traffic (and ad clicks along with it) drops dramatically. I think that would be the best way to deal with the situation.

Last I checked, you could opt out of Google News. How many of those companies bitching have done so?

Re:What does Beta have to do with anything

[6*7]

It's funny that when google is concerned opt-out is suddenly a good thing, even for copyrighted works (remember the google library scanning discussions).

Re:What does Beta have to do with anything

[rm69990]

I have no idea what you are talking about to be perfectly honest. If the service was MSN News I would be saying the exact same thing. Opting out of Google News is a hell of a lot easier than sueing someone.

If someone who sued Google failed to take advantage of the option to opt-out of being included in Google News, I think that would be a failure to mitigate your damages.

Re:What does Beta have to do with anything

[Anonymous Coward]

the point he is trying to make is WHY is it opt out rather than opt-in. Companies have to explicitly refuse google stealing there content rather than say yes they can take. This might be fine for one company, what about when there are 10 companies aggregating, or 100 or more. Should a company then have to find every single aggregator and opt out of there service.

Re:What does Beta have to do with anything

[1u3hr]

It's funny that when google is concerned opt-out is suddenly a good thing, even for copyrighted works (remember the google library scanning discussions).

The big difference is that an online news site is necessarily live and contactable; many copyright owners of books can be identified by no more than a decades-old reference in the book that may well be to a dead person with no past or current address or a bankrupt company and to find the current copyright owner would be an expensive and perhaps impossible job.

Re:What does Beta have to do with anything

[CmdrGravy]

"Should a company then have to find every single aggregator and opt out of there service."

Yes, if they are placing content on the internet that's exactly what they should. The internet is publically accessible so if you have content which you do not wish to be accessed by anyone else connecting to the internet then you either shouldn't have it on the internet in the first place or make your own arrangements to ensure only the people you want to read it can read it.

Re:What does Beta have to do with anything

[Haeleth]

Stealing?

You mean Google not only copy an entire article, but they also somehow remove it from the other company's website?

Oh, wait, you meant "stealing" in the "not actually stealing, but really just copying" sense. So Google are copying entire articles and presenting them as their own property, are they?

Oh, wait, what you actually meant was "stealing" in the sense of "linking to". Wow, that's a terrible crime. Hey, look at this - I just stole George Bush! Does that make me a terrorist, do you think?

Copyright violation?

[morgan_greywolf]

Last I checked, citing a few lines from a newspaper article had a term: 'fair use'.

Why wait this long? Google News has been running for YEARS, albeit with the 'beta' moniker.

Re:Copyright violation?

[interiot]

The fair use doctrine has been described as a murky concept in which it is often difficult to separate the lawful from the unlawful.

Also, most fair-use cases fall under comment-and-criticism... eg. it's okay to use one image of Homer Simpson on the Homer Simpson Wikipedia page, because that's one way to identify Homer while commenting about him.

Also, fair use says that companies that profit off of other's copyrighted work, and especially companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders, is unlikely to have a judge rule in their favor.

Re:Copyright violation?

[DrEldarion]

Internet Lobbyists Take Aim at Google Search
Hitokiri writes "Now that Google is popular, website publishers are starting to take notice. It's important to note that no legal action has taken place yet, but still, there seems to be a battle on the horizon." From the article: "'They're building a new site on the backs of our hard work, without paying for any of the content,' Ali Rahnema, managing director of the association, told Reuters in an interview. 'The site crawlers are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of a site -- it's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not.'"

It's amazing how ridiculous it seems if you just change a couple words. The solution is the same, though. If you don't want to be crawled by Google, don't let Google crawl you! There's a very simple technical fix to this if you don't want it happening.

Oh, but then your competitors still get free advertising from Google? Shit, better make it legal action, then.

Re:Copyright violation?

[Otter]

Last I checked, citing a few lines from a newspaper article had a term: 'fair use'.

It depends on the use. Quoting a few lines of a newspaper article in the middle of your own text is clearly protected. Stitching together multiple headlines, photos and first paragraphs to make a freestanding "newspaper" is not, although I don't think Google News rises to that level. At any rate, I'm sure they can afford plenty of attorneys.

The issue is whether the excerpted part loses the overall impact of the whole. The closest ruling that comes to mind is that porn thumbnails were ruled to be sufficiently arousing in their own right that copying them is infringement, not fair use.

Re:Copyright violation?

[guspasho]

Probably because Google News wasn't news until it came out of beta. Knowing how archaic most newspapers are when it comes to new technology, I bet they had to read about it on Google News.

Re:Copyright violation?

[DrEldarion]

Also, fair use says that companies that profit off of other's copyrighted work, and especially companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders, is unlikely to have a judge rule in their favor.

If you look at Google News, though, you'll see that they don't have any ads in that section - they aren't making any revenue off of it.

Re:Copyright violation?

[91degrees]

Yes, but it isn't as simple as that. It's not just about how much is used from a given article, but the nature of the use, and the effect on the market for the original.

3 lines from a newspaper is fair use in most cases. But what about 3 lines from every single article in the newspaper? When you start making a copy of that much of it, it can clearly have an effect on the market. And Google isn't doing this entirely out of the goodness fo their heart. They're a business trying to make money.

Re:Copyright violation?

[Derling Whirvish]

Also, fair use says that companies that profit off of other's copyrighted work, and especially companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders, is unlikely to have a judge rule in their favor.

But Google doesn't profit off of it (yet) and it not only doesn't diminish the profits of the copyright holders, it increases their profits. I certainly go to news sites I never would have in the past because of a link from Google News and eyes on ads is their business model.

Re:Copyright violation?

[R2.0]

"companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders"

And there's the rub.

How is Google News diminishing the profits of these copyright holders? If anything, it increases the traffic to the site, and so increases their profits.

If anything, a ruling that Google News is illegal would be a Pyrrhic(sp?)victory for the copyright holders - they will maintain strict "control" of their content, but lose revenues by Google not sending traffic their way.

My guess is this is a play to force Google to license the content. This will work as long as they all hang together in a cartel. As soon as the first one lets Google index for free, scads of traffic will be diverted to that site, and the rest of the content holders will come begging tyo Googkle to be included.

Re:Copyright violation?

[HairyCanary]

I'd expect Google to freely remove any news site that does not want to be represented on Google News. If they do that, instead of holding out for the news organizations to band together (assuming that would actually occur), then the demonstration will be very quick and to the point. As others have mentioned, I have definitely gone to many news sites via Google News that I would never have bothered going to otherwise.

Re:Copyright violation?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Also, fair use says that companies that profit off of other's copyrighted work, and especially companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders, is unlikely to have a judge rule in their favor.

Check out Kelly V. Arribisoft. Basically it is ok to copy an entire copyrighted work, for the purpose of republishing an excerpt of that work, in an automated fashion, even when providing those excerpts coupled with advertising is done in order to make a profit. Basically, this rules Google images+advertisements is legal.

An excerpt that is a thumbnail and a chunk of text, that is a piece of a larger worker is not qualitatively any different and it is unlikely this sort of precedent (including the the handful of other cases that have all reached this same precedent) is going to overturned. In fact every district court in the US, sans one has filed a supporting brief. (I might mention that was the one where those random publishing houses filed against Google books.) Most lawyers and certainly IP lawyers are very aware that Google will almost certainly win a challenge against them, which is partly why no one with a clue files suits against them on these grounds anymore.

Re:Copyright violation?

[outsider007]

Also, fair use says that companies that profit off of other's copyrighted work, and especially companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders, is unlikely to have a judge rule in their favor.

I don't know about the second part but the first part applies to every search engine on the web and can't possible be accurate.

Re:Copyright violation?

[foszae]

to expand on the above, fair use is applied specifically to things such as academics being able to reference another's work without having to pay copyright, or is used to defend the right to satirise another's work, like making an iPod ad that features characters from a Disney/Pixar movie.

even under a very liberal reading of the fair use laws, it would be hard to legitimately shield news.google under Fair Use

in fact, one of the most obvious objections other media outlets would have is that news.google as it stands is practically a news outlet on its own. there are numerous people who really don't even want to read entire articles -- they're quite content to read the headlines and feel like they have read enough. in my own town, there are three free dailies competing with exactly that same amount of content. whereas with google, you get a few lines from the beginning of the story, with these "papers" you end up getting even less detail (but bigger pictures). hard to believe, even to see them in your hand, but one of those papers that specialise in nothing but glossy headlines also manages to distribute farther than most other print media in town. if i was running one of those papers, i'd be that i'd be thinking that news.google was a competitor.

/postscript
for a solid overview of what Fair Use entails, Stanford University has a very thorough overview

Re:Copyright violation?

[MushMouth]

It would also be a pyrrhic victory for google to put all content creators out of business. It isn't greed to want want enough money to pay your bills and employees.

Re:Copyright violation?

[idlake]

Also, fair use says that companies that profit off of other's copyrighted work, and especially companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders, is unlikely to have a judge rule in their favor.

Well, Google has nothing to fear then: they aren't profiting from Google News, they are increasing the revenues of those other newspapers, and they are indexing and publishing the content with the newspaper's implicit permission (since the newspaper can state whatever policies it likes in its /robots.txt file).

Re:Copyright violation?

[LordVader717]

I certainly go to news sites I never would have in the past because of a link from Google News

Which is exactly what the big news sites don't want. They want you to keep comeing to their sites no matter how bad or expensive their services are, because you don't know where to find a good alternative.

Re:Copyright violation?

[KarmaMB84]

I was under the impression that the copyright holders won in that case and it is specifically not okay to make any sort of profit from "fair use". IIRC, the defendents went into chapter 11 to avoid further proceedings against them.

Re:Copyright violation?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I was under the impression that the copyright holders won in that case and it is specifically not okay to make any sort of profit from "fair use".

Originally the courts ruled completely in favor of Arribisoft stating all their actions were fair use. They later modified that decision to declare that it was illegal to provide a link to the entire work published on Arribisoft's servers (which is why everyone links to the original work not a full copy). The pertinent quote from the ruling summary, "On denial of rehearing, and withdrawing and superseding its prior opinion, 280 F.3d 934, the Court of Appeals, T.G. Nelson, Circuit Judge, held that operator's use of owner's images as "thumbnails" in its search engine was fair use." This was the precedent setting case, but this has been supported by numerous cases since.

Re:Copyright violation?

[mikkom]

What I have been thinking a lot is what would happen if someone (someone like me) would create an algorithm that would combine lots and lots of news from various sources and stitch them into one story that has parts from other stories but would be written 100% by algorithms.

This is what many newspaper reporters do, is it more illegal to do with algorithms than by manual work?

(Yes, I run a news aggregator so I have my own agenda here)

Huh?

[saikatguha266]

I thought the courts did decide: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004344.php

"A district court in Nevada has ruled that the Google Cache is a fair use."

Or does every industry want to file a separate suit asking the court to decide whether caching that industry's content is fair or not?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Cache and Google News are two compltely different things.

Re:Huh?

[grungebox]

This isn't about Google caching newspaper articles, so yes, it's a different issue.

Re:Huh?

[rm69990]

Google Cache makes an entire web page available from Google's servers, Google News only makes a very tiny portion of the webpage (yes, despite being news, we are still talking about web pages here) available. Explain how it is any different?

How is this http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:qF-NV_J-7O8J:w ww.cnn.com/rssclick/2006/US/01/09/survivor.mine/%3 Fsection%3Dcnn_topstories+site:www.cnn.com+Miner&h l=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&lr=lang_en
any better than what Google News does?

(Sorry, too lazy to make a proper link)

Who cares?

[g0bshiTe]

Now if its similar to /. where a few lines from the article is posted in a headline, and a pic I see no reason for a problem should there be a link back to the original story. This generates traffic and possibly new users to your sites. If however said site is trying to plagarize [SIC] a whole story that is very different.

Re:Who cares?

[mikek3332002]

If it was like slashdot then they'd be suing for performing a distributed denial of service attack. The slash dot effect

FIRST POST :^)

[NetRAVEN5000]

No, seriously, though. . .

So Google News is a news portal. So what? Who cares?

Don't they know that that's the whole point of a news portal?

BREAKING HEADLINE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

BREAKING HEADLINE: Newspapers Still Doing Dumb Shit, Continue To Put Selves Out Of Business

Re:BREAKING HEADLINE!!!

[kfg]

And it's all the fault of all that P2P news trading.

We need rights management systems for watercoolers.

KFG

Google does as paper does

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean Google is doing what every media outlet has done?
Built a news medium on the backs of other people lives, without paying for any of the content. When was the last time the news reporter payed you after publishing an article reporting your car accident, or that you were being sued.

Re:Google does as paper does

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely agree. In fact... people should sue the media for reporting on them without paying for the content! Then the media should sue Google News for reporting their articles! Then Google News should sue Slashdot for reporting on them! Wooohoo! Make everything louder than everything else! ;-)

Re:Google does as paper does

[Millenniumman]

The news outlets are writing up their own articles on specific events. Google news is taking those articles' first few sentences and title and putting them on its site. I don't think there is a problem with that, as long as the news outlets can opt-out. But what Google is doing is different from the other news outlets. Nobody owns the knowledge of a public event, but they can own the words used to describe it.

Re:Google does as paper does

[Anonymous Coward]

good point!

Re:Google does as paper does

[Prune]

When was the last time the news reporter payed you

When was the last time you spelled 'paid' correctly?

Re:Google does as paper does

[Software]

Hmm, I don't recall any car accidents I've been in where I've taken pictures, then interviewed policemen, passersby, EMTs, and doctors. Then I didn't aggregate their responses, filter out the unimportant stuff, and write a coherent story of what happened. Since I haven't done any of that, I wouldn't expect to be paid as if I had.

I don't know if whether Google's usage is "fair use" or not. But it's not fair to say that journalists "built a news medium on the backs of other people lives, without paying for any of the content". They maintain their medium by researching the events and describing them for people who weren't there, and that's a service that many people (myself included) find valuable and willing to pay for. Journalists don't just regurgitate whatever they're told*.

* Certain former New York Times reporters (*cough* Judith Miller *cough*) excepted.

Re:Google does as paper does

[hhr]

The difference is that the reporters are adding value-- collecting the facts, writing a story.

IANAL, but Google's use of other stories is in a bit of grey area. On one hand using copyright materials for new and comment is fair use. However there are limits. http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/definiti.sht ml says the courts will consider "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" when determining what is fair use. And well, it's hard to argue that google passes that test.

Re:Google does as paper does

[Prophetic_Truth]

Your post inspired me to make a suggestion to help make up your mind as to wether google falls under 'fair use' or not.

Google maintains their news medium by researching search engine technology and web news sites. Google then describes the sites for people who can't view them all. That's a service that many people (myself included) find valuable.

Google is just reporting news on the news.

Re:Google does as paper does

[Thing 1]

Even though you won't hear this response, thank you for making me smile with your last line. I haven't listened to Meatloaf in years! (Now I'm listening to that song. wasted... youth!)

Re:Google does as paper does

[zotz]

Cool, how about everyone require a signed agreement from reporters that the articles based on the interview be placed under a CC BY-SA license. AND that the copyright be shared between the reporter and the interviewee.

I mean, why should you talk to them unless they pay you? Unless they give you something else in return?

That could be a bit of fun don't you think?

all the best,

drew
------
http://www.ourmedia.org/user/17145

Re:Google does as paper does

[zotz]

I have been around (on the net) since before AltaVista and I would guess that web crawlers have been operating before many news sites got on the web.

Surely they know how these things work. Just put a robots.txt or a password login on their site and put the kabosh on google. What is the problem?

http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tut orial.htm
Just a clue.

Or hey, block google's ip addresses.

all the best,

drew

Re:Google does as paper does

[aeoo]

This also means it should be 100% legal to crawl Google itself, and it maybe is. But Google sure doesn't say so.

Re:Google does as paper does

[Keith McClary]

Journalists don't just regurgitate whatever they're told*.
  * Certain former New York Times reporters (*cough* Judith Miller *cough*) excepted.

In the US it seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

Even tho NYT sort of apologized for being a govt. mouthpiece, they are doing the same wrt Iran, and the continuing corruption and incompetence in Iraq.

The contrast with non-US sites is striking. Maybe that's why they don't like Google News - it makes such comparisons easy.

Re:Google does as paper does

[Achromatic1978]

And I said,

"God damn it, Daddy! You know I love you ... But you've got a hell of a lot to learn about rock and roll!"

Re:Google does as paper does

[idlake]

But it's not fair to say that journalists "built a news medium on the backs of other people lives, without paying for any of the content".

You haven't met a lot of journalists, have you? In fact, that's what a lot of them do. The bad part is that a lot of the effort that goes into their stories is fabrication or close to it.

Re:Google does as paper does

[idlake]

You can crawl Google if you comply with their robots.txt file, same as everybody else and same as they do.

Re:Google does as paper does

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry I thought the NYT was the the mouth piece of the liberal left? Atleast that is what Ann told me the other day on Fox.

Re:Google does as paper does

[orac2]

So how many journalists have you met? One? Two? Three? Four? Five? How many do you think is a lot? How many journalists can you show fabricate stories "or close to it?" ("close to it" being a pure weasel phrase if I ever heard one -- i.e. lets make an outrageous statement, and then when it can't be backed up, expand "close" to whatever definition will make the original statement true.).

Or maybe you're just slurring an entire profession based on the well publicized problems of a few. Intellectual rigour does not spring from generalizing from anecdotal evidence. So put up some numbers, or shut up.

Re:Google does as paper does

[idlake]

Or maybe you're just slurring an entire profession based on the well publicized problems of a few.

I'm not talking about the deliberate deceptions that a number of journalists have been caught at, I'm talking about journalism itself. We have established minimal standards for how to report facts in the sciences, and journalists are not even close to following them.

Journalists are incentivized to sell newspapers, entertain, and make a name for themselves, not present reality objectively and accurately.

Intellectual rigour does not spring from generalizing from anecdotal evidence.

Journalists should take that to heart: "generalizing from anectodal evidence" is one of the more frequent journalistic devices in use.

So put up some numbers, or shut up.

Easy: go to fair.org.

Re:Google does as paper does

[Keith McClary]

Everybody is lib-left relative to her.

Re:Google does as paper does

[orac2]

Easy: go to fair.org

1) A link to the index page of an media watch dog is not putting up some numbers. Is this part of your scientifically rigourous approach to facts? I'm familiar with the FAIR website -- just where does it give numbers that show the proportion of journalists that fabricate stories, let alone indicate that it's "lots" of them? In fact, FAIR clearly doesn't believe that journalists "fabricat[e], or close to it" articles, or that the journalistic profession is endemically corrupt, or they wouldn't (from their "About Us" page) "defend working journalists [and work] with both activists and journalists. We maintain a regular dialogue with reporters at news outlets across the country, providing constructive critiques when called for and applauding exceptional, hard-hitting journalism." And many current and former subscribers to FAIR (including myself) are journalists, and FAIR is regularly quoted by journalists in both the mainstream and alternative press.

2) Pointing to scientfic literature is a non sequitor. Scientific papers, to have any value at all, confine themseleves to science. As the recent court case against intelligent design showed, attempting to broaden science to cover the full spectrum of human experience and thought is antithetical to what science is. Trying to compare scientific literaure with journalism is apples to oranges. Journalists, even when striving to be as accurate, well-researched and fair as humanely possible, don't write articles like scientific papers because it would be wholly inappropriate. Journalism has different objectives, with different audience demands. Scientific reportage of facts is designed to allow other scientists to recreate those the process by which those facts were derived. Journalists don't do that -- for example, because Woodruff and Bernstein didn't tell every reader of the Washington Post exactly how they too could reproduce their reporting, should readers have rejected the evidence of corruption within the Nixon administration?

3) By the way, if you're looking for universal factual purity in scientific comunity, you're on a fools errand: scientists are heavily incentivized to "make a name for themselves" too, with direct inducements in the form of academic and institutional positions and grant monies. Here's a hard statistic: The Journal of Cell Biology recently reported that some 25% of manuscripts submitted to it have had images that were manipulated in some way that violates their guidelines. This isn't to attack cell biology as a crock, just to let you know that science isn't some totem that you can fetishize into a gold standard by which to weigh journalism.

4) "I'm not talking about the deliberate deceptions that a number of journalists have been caught at, I'm talking about journalism itself" Ah, just as predicted, weasling. You originally wrote; "that's what a lot of [journalists] do. The bad part is that a lot of the effort that goes into their stories is fabrication or close to it.". A fabrication is a deliberate deception. Non-deliberate deception is usually covered under the terms 'bias' or 'error'-- the FAIR website can tell you more about this. And you weren't talking about journalism, you were talking about journalists, so you were talking about deliberate deceptions commited by a (still unspecified) number of individuals. You were also dismissing a commenter's opinion on the basis that they hadn't met any journalists. And again, if meeting journalists is your criteria for the worth of an opinion, just how many have you met?

Re:Google does as paper does

[idlake]

Journalism has different objectives, with different audience demands. Scientific reportage of facts is designed to allow other scientists to recreate those the process by which those facts were derived. Journalists don't do that -- for example, because Woodruff and Bernstein didn't tell every reader of the Washington Post exactly how they too could reproduce their reporting, should readers have rejected the evidence of corruption within the Nixon administration?

That is correct--they should have rejected it until and unless there was independent corroboration from multiple sources (as there was).

As the recent court case against intelligent design showed, attempting to broaden science to cover the full spectrum of human experience and thought is antithetical to what science is.

Showed? How?

Science has no problem dealing with the "full spectrum of human experience and thought".

And many current and former subscribers to FAIR (including myself) are journalists, and FAIR is regularly quoted by journalists in both the mainstream and alternative press.

Well, FAIR collects and describes the problems (pervasive bias) but fails to diagnose the underlying dysfunction (journalism itself).

Scientific papers, to have any value at all, confine themseleves to science.

Yes, and that means they include all aspects of human behavior that are related to rational decision making.

This isn't to attack cell biology as a crock, just to let you know that science isn't some totem that you can fetishize into a gold standard by which to weigh journalism.

You're confusing the scientific method and scientists. Scientists are no better on average than journalists. But the scientific method is better than the journalistic method for establishing and communicating objective truth.

A fabrication is a deliberate deception.

Fairy tales and fiction are fabrications but not deceptions. The kinds of fabrications that journalists engage in are accepted practice, that's why they generally aren't deceptions. As I keep saying: the problem is with journalism and journalistic ethics itself, not a few bad apples. The practice of journalism intrinsically fails to communicate an objective and accurate view of reality.

A link to the index page of an media watch dog is not putting up some numbers. Is this part of your scientifically rigourous approach to facts?

No, this is not part of my scientically rigorous approach to facts; I reserve my scientifically rigorous approach to facts to those forums where it is appropriate, and that includes neither Slashdot, nor newspapers.

Furthermore, you have cleverly attempted to shift the debate. I don't have to prove anything, I merely have to say "I don't believe you; I think journalists are fabricating". The burden of proof is on you, and so far, you have failed to produce anything.

Re:Google does as paper does

[orac2]

Showed? How?

By drawing a clear distinction between Religion and Science. Religion is based on faith, and so, whether your believe in God(s) or not, religious experience lies outside the scope of science (and is therefore not appropriate in a science class). QED.

rall aspects of human behavior that are related to rational decision making

Journalism often contends with the irrational, both in the subject matter and in the method of reporting. Scienctific articles are not intended to stir emotion: emtional appeals are out of place in such a venue. But journalists often strive to reach their readers emotionally as well as intellectually. Haven't you ever gotten angry, or sad, or cheered by an article? That didn't happen just by accident, or just because of the nature of the subject matter. Trying to use science as one-size-fits-all approach to humanity is at best blinkered, at worst, leads to horrible injustices.

I don't have to prove anything, I merely have to say "I don't believe you; I think journalists are fabricating". The burden of proof is on you, and so far, you have failed to produce anything.

To quote Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Here though, I'd settle for ordinary evidence. Is is you who are making a claim. The burden of proof is yours.

Re:Google does as paper does

[idlake]

Journalism often contends with the irrational, both in the subject matter and in the method of reporting.

And, in contrast, science often contends with the irrational in subject matter, but not in the method of reporting. And that's the difference: science is an objective reporting of the facts, while journalism is not. You just confirmed it in your own words.

"rall aspects of human behavior that are related to rational decision making"

Religion is based on faith, and so, whether your believe in God(s) or not, religious experience lies outside the scope of science (and is therefore not appropriate in a science class).

First of all, religious belief is not related to rational decision making; quite to the contrary--it is related to irrational decision making. Therefore, the intrinsic logic of religion is unscientific. However, religion itself is a legitimate subject of scientific study and reporting, just like fruit flies or rocks or mass murderers are.

So, for example, in a psychology, sociology, and biology class, we should be able to look legitimately at why people entertain religious beliefs, what effects such beliefs have on society, and we can talk about why they are unscientific and irrational.

And, in fact, ID should be a subject in science class; as a scientific theory, it is unfounded and completely without merit, and science teachers should very much have the ability to expose it as such.

To quote Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Here though, I'd settle for ordinary evidence. Is is you who are making a claim. The burden of proof is yours.

Who made what claim at the beginning of this debate is irrelevant. What is relevant is the claim that you and your profession make: that you provide an objective and accurate reporting of the facts. That is an extraordinary claim in light of the anecdotal evidence we have seen to the contrary, reported by your own profession, and also in the light of scientific studies. So, the question is: where is your proof to back up your claim? Why should we listen to you people?

Fortunately, the problem seems to be taking care of itself: the economic basis of traditional news media is being undermined by the Internet, and that means a great reduction in journalism and journalists. We won't be able to eliminate them completely, but it's progress.

Am I missing something?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I missing something or doesn't Google News only link to new sites that have free content anyway?

Re:Am I missing something?

[pembo13]

No, didn't you know? They have a bot which goes onto password protected new sites, bute forces the password, scrapes all the new articles and media, copies it to their Google clusters, reformats the information into pages which decree that the stories have been investigated, reported, and brought to you by Google.

Re:Am I missing something?

[McGiraf]

"Am I missing something?"

Yes, the ads, you must be using adblocker or something.

Re:Am I missing something?

[Millenniumman]

Free? Well, it doesn't cost money, but there are advertisements which aren't transferred to Google News.

Re:Am I missing something?

[ortcutt]

What idiot would think that the stories were "brought to you by Google"? Looking at the current Google News home page, I see "Reuters", "Forbes", "Washington Post", "MSNBC", "TSN.ca", etc.... It's seems pretty clear to me and everyone else that uses the service that Google is cataloging the news, not bringing you the news.

Re:Am I missing something?

[rm69990]

Not only that, but Google doesn't even claim otherwise. From the about Google News Page:

Google News gathers stories from more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide, and automatically arranges them to present the most relevant news first. Topics are updated every 15 minutes, so you're likely to see new stories each time you check the page. Pick the item that interests you and you'll go directly to the site which published that story.

Re:Am I missing something?

[rm69990]

That's because you are supposed to click the news item in Google News, and then click on the ads at the Newspaper's website. Could you imagine the chaos that would be Google News if every single story on the front page (over 50 at any given time) had its own ads?

Re:Am I missing something?

[Tango42]

What ads? I can usually tell when Adblock has removed something, and it doesn't remove text ads anyway, and that's what google mainly uses, and I see no adds on Google News.

Re:Am I missing something?

[pembo13]

Hahaha . . . was my sarcasm to real? I got modded flaimbait, cool.

I'll remember this statement.

[IAAP]

The Paris-based World Association of Newspapers, whose members include dozens of national newspaper trade bodies, said it is exploring ways to "challenge the exploitation of content by search engines without fair compensation to copyright owners."

I'll rmember that the next time I see an article in their papers that's almost verbatim to the Reuters or AP wire feed.

Fucking hypocrites.

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[welcher]

They pay for the Reuters or AP wire - that's how wire services make their money

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[trollable]

I'll rmember that the next time I see an article in their papers that's almost verbatim to the Reuters or AP wire feed. Fucking hypocrites.

First, AFP more probably. Second, they bought the right to copy it so they are not hypocrites. Google didn't bought that right.

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, you do realize that newspapers pay AP and Reuters for the right to print the story, right? So, in fact, the copyright holder is compensated when a newspaper prints a wire service story.

When google publishes part of the newspaper's web site, the paper only has the chance to get compensated if users follow the story link. Personally, I think that's perfectly reasonable. I often click through on Google News links to get to the originating web site. More often than I would visit their site without Google News. I would think most papers should view this as a boon. If not, then they should work out with Google a way to be left out of the program.

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[grungebox]

Papers pay to have access to Reuters or AP wire feeds. They aren't free. In that way, the papers are compensating the copyright holders. If Google is listing thesea papers' articles for free without their permission then it's not really hypocricy.

Of course, it's easier to jump the gun and yell at the newspapers. I agree that this lawsuit is not in their best interests as an industry, but your specific point is quite ridiculous.

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[undeadly]

First, AFP more probably. Second, they bought the right to copy it so they are not hypocrites. Google didn't bought that right.

In civilized countries the article is clearly marked as comming from a "news" agency lime AP or Reuters. No doubt about it.

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because they don't want to get left out! They want to be included but have Google pay for the ability to advertise them! You just aren't thinking through a filter of greed.

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[RedSteve]

I have mod points, but I can't find the "terminally clueless" rating. Can anyone give a brother a hand?

As others have already pointed out, the papers pay for the Reuters and AP feeds, so it's no wonder their stories looks almost verbatim to the feeds.

That said, I can't believe that the papers want to take on Google when they're doing nothing more than pushing eyeballs to the papers' sites. Of course, in a golden goose scenario, the papers probably think they'll make more by making Google license those snippets of the story instead of capitalizing on the users who are visiting their site that wouldn't have, had it not been for the most ubiquitous search engine.

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[frdmfghtr]

That said, I can't believe that the papers want to take on Google when they're doing nothing more than pushing eyeballs to the papers' sites. Of course, in a golden goose scenario, the papers probably think they'll make more by making Google license those snippets of the story instead of capitalizing on the users who are visiting their site that wouldn't have, had it not been for the most ubiquitous search engine.

I have to agree with you there. I'd never think to to go to the Toronto, Chicago, San Francosico papers to read a story if it weren't for Google News. Yes, the papers are benefiting from having traffic steered towards their sites, and to want Google to pay for helping them is cooking the Golden Goose for dinner.

It has been said elsewhere before and I'll agree here too: if the sites don't want to be indexed/referred to by Google, then if I were Google, I'd say "Fine, we'll stop directing revenue-generating traffic towards your website at no cost to you."

I suppose if they made money off ads on Google News, then the papers would have a case, since Google was in fact profiting off of other organizations' material without compensating the originators. I don't think Google is hurting for cash so I don't see the ad-free Google News page changing anytime soon and hope it stays that way.

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[ortcutt]

Uh. They pay for Reuters and AP wire services. I do think that Google News is fair use, but that's a dumb argument as to why the newspapers are wrong on this.

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[rm69990]

Google didn't copy the article either. Again, how is this any different than Google Search showing a small snippet from an indexed web page, while providing a link to the full webpage?

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[Rahga]

At the moment, I'l working with a small newspaper's website.... We redid our news archive completely, to make it really easy for users and spiders to crawl. After sending it in to Google News, they initially turned it down, saying that we aggregated news from the AP and such. Which we do. So does ABC news, New York Times, Washington Post, and hundreds of other sites on Google News.

I'm okay with getting turned down in that instance, though. We just added the ability to limit our archives to local with a simple addition to the "/archive" url, now it's "archive/local"... We've re-sent that new URL instead, and now we are waiting to see if they'll accept it and only crawl under that URL or not.

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[mike2006]

Not sure if it was intentional but your site does not have an email contact. I was/am curious what site your are trying to get listed?

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[Keith McClary]

they bought the right to copy it so they are not hypocrites. Google didn't bought that right.

Google could easily afford to buy "wire service" feeds. Then Google wouldn't need to link to all those "newspaper" sites - they could could link to the full article on a Google site with ads.

Re:I'll remember this statement.

[trollable]

The length of the citation and the context.
For Google Search, the citation is short and matches the user input.
For Google News, the citation is (too) long, may include a picture, doesn't have any context and is automatic.
So that's completely different cases.

I predict...

[xstonedogx]

...that Google's response will be, "If you don't want to be listed, you don't have to be listed. Bye."

It amazes me how willing people are to shoot themselves in the foot.

Re:I predict...

[OrangeDoor]

Precisely, they could opt out by by saying nobody is allowed to quote their articles. I doubt any paper would choose to opt out of it. This is just a struggling entity flailing around for something to hold onto. It's just them fearing the new technology and therefore fighting against it... (This is my first post on slashdot from a linux machine, it feels like a significant step for me).

Re:I predict...

[LupusUF]

If/When it comes to this it will be interesting to see the responses of the major news sources. Since most news articles seem to be cut/paste jobs of AP and reuters stories, google could easily cut out those that complain and still be getting all the stories. Of course then some of the bigger media outlets could try to pressure the smaller outlets to stop letting google utilize their variants of the AP stories.

My guess is overall they will have a tough time fighting the text excerpts, but with effort could likely prevent google from using images from stories.

Though, there is a real danger for the big newspapers if they go after google in court. If they win, they may shut down google news...but piss off readers who might go to google news clones that are likely to pop up. Online papers are already loosing people to the news blogs.

The even bigger risk is if they go after google and fail. If google news is able to stay in business, they could easily push the people who went after them to the bottom of the results, or take them out all together. Since google news doesn't contain articles, but only links to articles this would be a huge deal. As google news got bigger, more and more traffic would be driven to the sites that didn't piss of google, and away from those who did. People may question the ethics of this, but google could always say that they are simply respecting the wishes of the news sites who don't want to be included in the program.

Re:I predict...

[houghi]

So spammers must have an opt-in, yet Google must have an opt-out?

Re:I predict...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. How is Google News any different than a search engine? It's only different in scope. It specifically covers news.

The information in question is made publicly available by the content providers and is subject to fair use. If the providers want that information to be used only for certain purposes and only by certain individuals, the onus is on them not to make their work publicly available.

Google doesn't even have to offer an opt-out, and there's already a well-known opt-out option called robots.txt which Google honors, and which I presume Google News honors as well.

Comparing Google to spammers is a little odd, since spammers are typically forcing information on you, rather than accepting publicly available information from you.

Re:I predict...

[idlake]

That is Google's policy: Google indexes only sites that actually permit indexing (via robots.txt).

Re:I predict...

[CmdrGravy]

How is this "Interesting" ?

Spammers and Google operate in two entirely different industries, in an entirely different market place, for entirely different customers, using entirely different techniques. You may as well rephrase this as:

So houses must have doors opening inwards, yet car doors must open outwards ?

Re:I predict...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

So spammers must have an opt-in, yet Google must have an opt-out?

Nope. Google does not need to have an opt out at all. Legally, they can just tell the news sites to go to hell. They provide the opt-out to be nice, and "not evil," and to generate goodwill. I'm sure politicians are being lobbied right now to pass laws to remove more of our fair-use rights and change this. Don't make it easier by perpetuating these myths. Google news being in Beta is irrelevant. Google hosting ads next to the content is irrelevant. Google providing an option for news sites to opt in or out is irrelevant.

If the newspapers believe their content is being illegally published then they can serve Google with a proper take-down notice. Then, after Google laughs at them, they can sue and try to overturn case-law precedent and get this sort of behavior ruled non-fair-use. Aside from that, this is all propaganda designed to make you think Google (and you) have fewer rights than you do, so that you don't complain or care when those rights are taken from you with the new laws they are trying to bribe politicians to pass. Or did you think the fact that this was about lobbyists meant something else?

Re:I predict...

[Snaller]

So spammers must have an opt-in, yet Google must have an opt-out?

Yes, because spammers harass you with a lot of crap - you only see Google if you decide to visit them.

EPIC

[Terminal Saint]

http://epic.makingithappen.co.uk/
Just a bit behind schedule.

Re:EPIC

[takeya]

This is the first thing that came to my mind as well... it's like the John Titor of Google!

Oops.

[NetRAVEN5000]

It didn't show the other posts when I first replied. Oh well.

Anyways, it doesn't make any sense to me why they're complaining about Google News being a news portal.

Snow crash?

[jotok]

It's been a while since I read it, but isn't this exactly what happened to the print media in Snow Crash?

Ie, they could not adapt to the new technology, tried and failed to challenge it in the courts, and then gradually became obsolete, to be replaced by the aggregations of thousands of independent news agents?

I better go get "Greatest swordsman in the world" appended to my business cards pronto!

Re:Snow crash?

[alexborges]

I better go get "Greatest swordsman in the world" appended to my business cards pronto!

I dont know...

Are you also an ubercool, black-japaneese, katana-trained, avatar-hacking, underground-acid-music-promoter as well?

Re:Snow crash?

[OrangeDoor]

Google hasn't parsed Snow Crash yet? If I recall, it's been a while for me too [since reading the book], you are correct. There was some derogatory word for people who were "reporters." They basically were walking computers recording everything in hopes of stumbling upon something sellable.

Re:Snow crash?

[Kaimelar]

They basically were walking computers recording everything in hopes of stumbling upon something sellable.

People with the wearable computers recording everything they could were called 'gargoyles' in the novel, as I recall.

Re:Snow crash?

[jotok]

Shit, no. I just want to cash in on the future version of domain squatting before anyone else!

"Are you HIRO PROTAGONIST? Purchase your identity back for the low low fee of $5,000..."

Re:Snow crash?

[Anonymous Coward]

The word you're looking for is "Gargoyles", by the way.

Re:Snow crash?

[Anonymous Coward]

> derogatory word for people who were "reporters."

I'm not convinced "gargoyle" is much more derogatory than "reporter"

Instead ...

[karvind]

The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article --

I bet they instead want: Nothing for you to see here. Please move along

Seriously though, does it mean that I can not read few headlines from the newspaper at the bookstore ? I think the news websites should be happy if their website are referenced at a place which is read by millions and chances are that the reader may actually click on the story and go to their website. Google news gives a quick way to compare the stories as well. If all of them have the same first few lines, why should I bother going through all of them (e.g. when there are articles written by a certain journalist).

Who's doing who the favor?

[gasmonso]

Google just collects news stories and allows people to search them. When the user clicks one they are brought to their website to read the story! It sounds like some good free advertising to me. Stories like this just make me scratch my head in disbelief!

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Not very clever of them.

[microarray]

From TFA:"The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article -- it's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not."

Some companies PAY for a little link to their site to appear when there is a relevant Google search. These newspapers get indexed, and linked to, from a high traffic site, for FREE, and they are complaining. Instead of throwing lawyers at the problem, they should engage their brains for a moment and figure out which option is better for their business.

Re:Not very clever of them.

[trollable]

But this is not a little link, this is a whole paragraph + picture + competitors. I don't say it is good or bad but it is not simple to answer without the stats.

Re:Not very clever of them.

[amazon10x]

I think the reason they are so upset with this is because it makes the competitors more available.

Let's assume that Bob enjoys reading news on the internet. However, Bob does not know of these things referred to as "portals". Rather than pulling up 10 different windows (using internet explorer (Bob is an idiot, BTW) which makes it worse) for NYTimes, Washington Post, MSN, Yahoo, his local paper, and some others, Bob takes the lazy way out and uses only the NYTimes site because he doesn't like swapping windows.

Now Bob's friend comes along and tells Bob to go to news.google.com to get his news. Bob acquiesces and reads Google News from here on. Now Bob gets to see hundreds of different news sources rather than just the NYTimes. This is bad for the NYTimes so they sue Google.

I am not saying I agree with them suing, I believe it is fair use. However, I do see why they're suing.

Re:Not very clever of them.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. When newspapers look at how much traffic they're getting from Google I'd be surprised if they'd want to sue. They'd have very little to gain and many, many Web readers to lose.

Re:Not very clever of them.

[westlake]

Now Bob gets to see hundreds of different news sources rather than just the NYTimes.

Bob is more likely to get hundreds of rewrites based on the NYT and AP wire.

Re:Not very clever of them.

[742Evergreen]

What is worse, letting Bob also see competitors, or Bob ONLY seeing competitors?

Re:Not very clever of them.

[john83]

Exactly - for every Bob who used only visit the NYT site, but now reads lots of others, there is a Dave who used read CNN and now visits the NYT site when Google News links to an article of theirs. Swings and roundabouts.

Re:Not very clever of them.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I am not saying I agree with them suing, I believe it is fair use. However, I do see why they're suing.

...except they don't actually seem to be suing, or even issuing Google with a notification that they believe Google is infringing (that I can see). What they are doing is paying lobbyists to write PR statements and bribe politicians into changing the laws, since they have little chance of winning given existing laws.

Re:Not very clever of them.

[Stultsinator]

Exactly! Why the hell would they complain about another site sending traffic their way? My guess is that because they publish pretty much the same news as other sites they've become even more commoditized. Now they will have to invest even more in generating original content.

However, I dare any web presence to be successful without allowing search engines to index them. Search engines are quite polite about not crawling sites. Just 2 little lines in a file called robots.txt will do the trick. Let me know how that works out for ya.

Also available at...

[urbaneassault]

...the obligatory google news link!

The problem with most newspapers

[w3woody]

I think the problem with most newspapers is that by and large, they are news aggregators, not news reporters. Most local newspapers have a staff of reporters who go out and report local news--but for the bulk of their content they rely upon content that is not written in-house. (Wire services such as Reuters, AP and UPI, along with syndicated columns, form the bulk of most newspapers today--which means that many of the national articles in the Fresno Bee, say, are the same articles that appear in the Washington Post.)

So while it's sort of simplistic to say that this is all fair use, the reality is that Google News, by making a better mouse trap (dynamic news aggregation) is--probably without even realizing it--competing head to head with local newspapers.

Re:The problem with most newspapers

[urbaneassault]

I'm a huge supporter of Google News, but keep in mind that newspapers pay top dollar to syndicate UPI, AP, and Reuters - costs that Google doesn't incur. But, considering the aggregation side of what Google does, I think it's completely within fair use. If they started charging to view the aggregate feeds, or hosted the full text of the articles without permission, that would be a much different story.

Re:The problem with most newspapers

[greenstork]

The key difference being that those newpapers you mentioned actually pay for AP and Reuters content while Google does not pay anyone for news featured.

Re:The problem with most newspapers

[Tweekster]

so what? that sounds exactly fair. Google is giving the person a teaser, a tiny bit of the info, useless on its own Reuters etc is giving the whole piece of content. there is a very clear and gaping distinction between the two

Re:The problem with most newspapers

[urbaneassault]

which is exactly what I am stating. I am making the argument that syndication is much different from aggregation.

Re:The problem with most newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

And Google does not make any money on news.google as well.... Do you see any advertisements on news.google??

Re:The problem with most newspapers

[aaarrrgggh]

The real problem isn't if the newspapers get your ad revenue for the one article-- do you stay around and view other content on the site? Do they build a positive brand awareness regardless of your duration of visit?

I know that some news outlets require registration, so I don't use their versions of stories. Dallas Morning Post comes to mind as an example. While I might be curious about the reporting slant in Dallas on a particular story compared to (say) San Francisco, I now search out another source for the information.

I use google news because all other online newspapers fail to provide a useful user experience for me - I want the presentation of Data much like Google has already done, with 60+ stories listed on one page, not the usual 10-12.

The really depressing fact is that the newspaper's value to most people is the headlines and pictures - tricks to get you interested. Google beats them even here.

Re:The problem with most newspapers

[Forbman]

No, it's not competing with local newspapers. National/world news is commodity information. Winston-Salem NC is not likely to write a story wholely unrelated to NC about McMinnville, OR. So, if I look up anything about "Evergreen Aviation", chances are any news items that show up in GoogleNews are going to be in the Yamhill Observer, Salem Statesman-Journal or Oregonian. Not really competing with them, especially if the best sources for looking at ancillary information to whatever GoogleNews pulled up is from the papers' websites...

It is odd, though, finding interesting Superbowl articles in the Xinhua Times...

Re:The problem with most newspapers

[w3woody]

"National/world news is commodity information."

It is, now. It wasn't when newspapers were king.

Prior to the Internet, in order to read any newspaper other than your local paper, you would have to go to the library and see if they subscribed to it, or you would have to pay for a subscription yourself. In a way newspapers by being news aggregators for various wire services and syndicated articles was a sort of primitive "internet", gathering up articles from various services with world-wide reach and presenting it all for a quarter.

Now that you can bypass the local paper to read Reuters directly, their information has become a commodity. All it took was Google to aggregate the information from various news sources in one place--and bypassing the syndication fees and subscription fees newspapers pay to various wire services by scraping their web sites rather than going directly to the wire services themselves--in order to gather all that commodity information into one place.

Personally I think this is a good thing; Google has in essence built a better news aggregator than a newspaper. What we're seeing now is a bunch of 20th century companies try to figure ot a 21st century market. Some will figure it out, some won't--and the overall quality of news product will be made better for it. It's called creative destruction, and is one of the reasons why we're worried about smog and oil dependency rather than figuring out how to clean the millions of tons of horse shit off our streets after morning rush hour on horseback.

Robots.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet has ways that the news companies can use if they don't want Google crawling them.
By not stopping Google by using the standard mechanism, I'd agree that it is fair use for Google to use the data they provide.

Re:Robots.txt

[jacksonj04]

And not just Google. A properly formed robots.txt will let any search engine worth its salt know how you want the site to be treated.

Re:robots.txt

[mike2006]

"Why aren't they simply blocking google using robots.txt if they don't want to be listed?" They do not want to risk their content being dropped from the archive. But if they make enough noise I believe they hope to extort some money from Google for online photos.

Re:Robots.txt

[Thing 1]

I'm torn between agreeing with you, and wondering "what's the next technological wonder that publishers are going to have to educate themselves about in order to defend their rights?"

On the one hand, robots.txt is simple.

On the other hand, publishers are not code jockeys (and robots.txt was not in the original spec).

Yes, if the default was opt-in, we'd get a lot less news. Perhaps we'd get better news? Those news publishers choosing not to opt-in would simply get fewer and fewer eyeballs as time went on (assuming Google continues its dominance, which after China is not certain).

With trademark law, the trademark owner must vigorously pursue violators. So if this was a trademark dispute, I could understand the onus being on the publishers to tell Google to cease and desist.

However, copyright law is not the same. A years-old violation of copyright can be brought to the court, and redress granted (I don't know how many years, but I'm guessing at least 5).

So the publishers' best bet is to STFU for 4.9 years, then start suing the pants off Google. Therefore, we should be happy that they're making a big stink now (because everyone knows copyrights should be abolished after the clusterfuck that Disney has made of them (someone should patent a perpetual motion machine with copyright extensions as supporting evidence!)).

Re:Robots.txt

[Tweekster]

Why would they have to defend their rights? they chose to publish their info on a medium that is designed things such as spiders in mind. The web actively encourages it. you post info there, you need to keep that in mind or be disregarded when you dont like what happens they have the option of requiring everyone to register... they do not have the option of telling what people can do that is normally allowable by copyright you dont go utilizing a new form of communication without atleast determining some of the ramifications, search engines arent new, screen scrapers arent new its all standard parts of the internet and all legal)

Re:Robots.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

(assuming Google continues its dominance, which after China is not certain).

Because of course it's so much worse of Google to filter search results in China than it is for every other fucking search engine on the web to filter search results in China. I hate Google so much for obeying Chinese law that I'm going to go and use Yahoo instead, because they merely obey Chinese law in an even more repressive way (by not identifying censored searches).

Oh boy, I'm Captain Logical today!

To the media:

[Fr05t]

Please piss off and stop crying. I come to your site and read your news while being distracted by your flashy advertising. This would not happen if not for Google News. Honestly, even if Google News advertised on their site and made a few bucks it's not going to harm you more than it helps you.

The medias reaction to the dropping of 'Beta' only further shows it's gross misunderstanding of technology, and the Internet. This is exactly what is wrong with the commercialization of News Media.

Why do I get the feeling...

[Guppy06]

That by "newspapers" we're talking about the New York Times, the Washington Post, and not much else? It seems that, more often than not, the first link for a particualr news story is a smaller newspaper that doesn't exactly have a nationwide readership, giving their sites (and banner ads) far more traffic than they'd have without news aggregators. The only papers I could see complaining are the ones that already have their own national and/or global distribution channels.

Re:Why do I get the feeling...

[t-twisted]

Actually, TFA is reported from Dublin and is more Euro-centric than US-specific. Also, I would imagine The Washington Post and NYT are less concerned about Google News than, say, USAToday, which has little original content and acts more as a "news aggregator" (I don't know the euro-equivalent).

As for smaller, local newpapers being featured over larger ones, it's all rotated by time, anyway. The most recent article about a subject hits the front page, then drops down as other sources report it and get front-page space, so one can't even argue bias since it's automated.

T.

Re:Why do I get the feeling...

[sheddd]

I imagine you're mostly correct (Big papers hate google, little ones love them)...
Out of curiosity I googled a bit and the Lobbyist group is funded by The newspaper assn of america which has a bunch of big and small members, one of which is the New York Times... interesting robots.txt on their site:

# robots.txt, www.nytimes.com 3/24/2005
#
User-agent: *
Disallow: /pages/college/
Disallow: /college/
Disallow: /library/
Disallow: /learning/
Disallow: /aponline/
Disallow: /reuters/
Disallow: /cnet/
Disallow: /partners/
Disallow: /archives/
Disallow: /indexes/
Disallow: /thestreet/
Disallow: /nytimes-partners/
Disallow: /financialtimes/
Allow: /pages/
Allow: /2003/
Allow: /2004/
Allow: /2005/
Allow: /top/
Allow: /ref/
Allow: /services/xml/

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:

Re:Why do I get the feeling...

[Repton]

I wonder if anyone's told them yet that it's 2006 :-)

Re:Why do I get the feeling...

[tintub]

Just thought I'd add that what that means is that they are explicitly allowing Mediapartners-Google* access to all files, not disallowing. If they wanted to disallow google, they would need the line Disallow: /

Re:Why do I get the feeling...

[Thing 1]

Interesting. This leads me to question, would a news publisher change their robots.txt, and then sue?

How to prove it was changed? They're suing Google, so Google's cache would be suspect (I would presume). There are other caches, but have they ever been used as evidence in a quart of slaw?

Re:Why do I get the feeling...

[OneSmartFellow]

Their Robots.txt file is actually quite funny.

I did a quick google search for "User-agent" and "Disallow" like this: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=User-agent+ Disallow&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

I chose the first title http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tut orial.htm and started reading

"User-agent

The User-agent line specifies the robot. For example:

User-agent: googlebot"

-SNIP-

"Disallow:

The second part of a record consists of Disallow: directive lines. These lines specify files and/or directories. For example..."

-SNIP-

"If you leave the Disallow line blank, it indicates that ALL files may be retrieved." -SNIP-

So, guess who is to blame ?

robots.txt

[cabinetsoft]

or even ... it's not like if you want to protect something you can't. How can they complain about any news aggregator when all it does it draw traffic to their publications?

Google News:Real News :: Google Earth:GIS

[stanwirth]

Much as I like Google, I've stopped reading the Google News much at all. First of all articles get the /. effect, and it's much the same coverage as you see in the NYT and BBC anyway. Worse, because it has a "popularity" filter on it. If I were in a field that relied on any more accurate coverage of world events, I'd have to go to primary sources anyway.

I tried Google Earth the other day too, and it has the same kind of "filter" -- eye candy for Africa, but if you have to look at a non-tourist spot, you're pretty much SOL. Since I'm in a field that does rely on more accurate GIS, I use real GIS software and data.

Re:Google News:Real News :: Google Earth:GIS

[Anonymous Coward]

"I tried Google Earth the other day too, and it has the same kind of "filter" -- eye candy for Africa, but if you have to look at a non-tourist spot, you're pretty much SOL. Since I'm in a field that does rely on more accurate GIS, I use real GIS software and data."

Google Earth shouldn't be considered for something as important as proper GIS software and information would be used for. It is a toy, generally, though useful at times too. I definitely wouldn't goto my boss and tell them I'd rather use Google Earth though.

Re:Google News:Real News :: Google Earth:GIS

[Wyatt Earp]

I don't agree with the assessment of Google Earth. There is alot of "non-tourist" regions in higher res photos than just the tourist spots. For example, rural central Oregon isn't exactly a tourist region, yet it's higher res than say Baghdad Iraq.

I'll do a quick, non-tourist tour for crap res or higher res.

Central Oregon - Higher Res
Mountain Home AFB Idaho - Higher Res
North Central Navada - A mix
Buffalo Wyoming - Higher Res
ANWR - medium res
Eagle Butte SD - Low, low res
Pyongyang DPRK - Higher res
Rangoon Burma - medium res
Desert south of Riyadh - higher res

So really, for a free application, it does a good job.

Re:Google News:Real News :: Google Earth:GIS

[Snaller]

I have no idea what SOL is,but Google Earth is trying to cover the Earth, but its big, it takes a while to get it all in...

let me finish your sentence for you, Mr. Rahnema

[SuperBanana]

"The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article"

Let me finish that sentence for you, Mr. Rahnema:

"...and using it to send viewers to Association member's webpages, bringing us new readers, and generating ad revenue we ordinarily wouldn't have. Sadly, it means we all have to compete against each other, whereas before, we enjoyed regional favoritism. We're absolutely terrified that someone in Boston might find better coverage of a story on the BBC's website, or Washington Post. Or that they can find as much as they want about Elephants, instead of having to read an entire paper, or poke around our site. And they won't pay for the privledge of searching our archives. Especially since much of the time, all we do is parrot an AP/Reuters wire story, word for word....we're terribly concerned about all this."

Hey, if they don't like it- they can always redirect any hit with a referral from news.google.com to "Sorry, we don't support google news." There's also nothing stopping them from blocking all the googlebot crawlers- either by IP range, or browser ID.

Except that then they'd loose a lot of viewers, and become a black hole to the world's most popular search engine. So instead, they run to the legislature...

excuse me?

[joshsnow]

"'They're building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content,' Ali Rahnema, managing director of the association, told Reuters in an interview. 'The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article

A new medium? I think not. I see a photo, a headline and the first three lines of an article which interests me, I click the link and am redirected to the news-site hosting the story. When I get there, I get bombarded with their advertising and have to register to see other articles.

I mean, if google were to drive traffic to my site for free, I'd be all for it.

Now if I RTFA before commenting, I'd probably see the side to this complaint which I'm struggling to see now, so off I go to RTFA!

Confounding

[interstellar_donkey]

After seeing this, and scratching my head (as I'm sure most other people have done) thinking 'Why in heaven's name would a news website get in a huss over another website directing traffic at them?', I can only come up with one reasonable conclusion.

Lawyers doing legal things because they can.

I've always guessed it was the lawyers who have convinced the *IAAs to keep pushing law suits despite overwhelming evidence that filesharing helps the industry.

So, it stands to reason that they would push to have places like Google news punished for helping their clients. What they are doing may be copyright infringment, which means that there may be room for a lawsuit, which means lawyers may get paid. That it's an incredibly foolish business practice is incidental; IP laywers, at least the ones who represent established orginizations, seem to always err by persuing those who do something technically illegal but benifet their clients.

I wonder what it's like to think like that.

Simple choice

[HangingChad]

You can either leave Google News alone OR your worthless rag call fall off the earth as far as the rest of the internet is concerned.

Which part of that choice involves the legal definition fair use?

You turds need Google a lot more than they need you. Bunch of whiners.

Re:Simple choice

[Achromatic1978]

Right. Because if they all fell off the earth, what news feeds would Google News be aggregating?

Pot, kettle, black.

[AnotherBlackHat]

They're building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content,

Last I checked, newspapers don't pay for the quotes they publish either.

Isn't news supposed to be the reporting of facts, not a creative work?

-- Should you believe authority without question?

Re:Pot, kettle, black.

[Gryle]

"Isn't news supposed to be the reporting of facts?">/i> Mod me into oblivion if you wish, but I'm taking this opportunity to vent. News was supposed to be the reporting of facts. Once upon a time I suppose it was. Granted, journalists have the right to make money at what they do, but the rise of coporate media consolodation turned reporting the news into big buisness. On the flip side, are the lofty-minded journalism students into journalism to "change the world" and all that jazz. If your goal is world change, get into politics, become a social worker, or an activist or something. If you wanna be a reporter, report the facst and let the world decide how to deal with them.

Re:Pot, kettle, black.

[Forbman]

Hmm...they pay AP, Reuters, etc. for access to their news feeds...

cool

[beforewisdom]

I loved it when the RSS feed from slashdot ended up in the tech section on Google News. Along with articles from the New York Times, I got to read something published by "Pizza Face"

I suspect

[gr8_phk]

"...that Google's response will be, "If you don't want to be listed, you don't have to be listed. Bye."

It amazes me how willing people are to shoot themselves in the foot."

I suspect the larger news sources would rather have the practice halted completely. This would force people to go to a major news site (them) rather than google which sometimes leads people to lesser news sites. Slashdot has been linked from a Google headline more than once. Big news sites don't want people to be aware of any alternatives.

Smaller news sources probably like the publicity Google provides them. Larger news sources probably don't like the publicity Google provides those smaller competitors.

They don't want to opt out, they want it all to just go away.

Re:I suspect

[gknoy]

If Google were to make it an opt-in (or out, even) service for news sites, and free, the smaller news sites might flock to it, ensuring publicity -- whereas the larger sites will simply opt out.

But I'd rather see if this is ruled fair use. :)

Re:I suspect

[Persol]

But it's never going to be completely halted.

Worst case they make it opt-in... with the opting in papers getting much better returns on traffic then they do now.

Re:I suspect

[mspohr]

I think that they want to continue to be listed on Google News AND they want Google News to pay them. Not likely to happen and Google will be happy to skip any news source that opts out. This would divide the news sources (and that part about shooting in the foot would be true)... but if they all get together and sue Google, they can try to force payment.

Re:I suspect

[ScrewMaster]

They don't want to opt out, they want it all to just go away.

Good point. The old guard in any industry simply wants the newfangled stuff to simply "go away", so they can get back to doing things the way their Daddy and their Granddaddy did. The problem is, if the new is substantially better than the old it becomes really hard for the incumbents to just make it go away. Sometimes (not often) they wise up and get with the program ... other times, they lack the requisite vision and try to maintain the status quo ante at all costs. That's why the RIAA/MPAA, the Baby Bells, (and now probably some newly-formed cartel ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H "industry trade association" of publishers) has to go to Washington to get anticompetitive laws made.

Even so, in the long run it is usually the incumbents that end up just going away, with the only real issue being the amount of damage they're allowed to do before they are finally put to rest. George Gilder once termed the process of new technologies displacing existing ones as "creative destruction", and that's a pretty apt description, I'd say.

Re:I suspect

[swilver]

Well, I bet the "last" "major news site" however will be quite happy to be listed exclusively on Google News, when all the others have told Google to unlist them...

Slashdot too?

[eander315]

Slashdot doesn't use photos, but they often quote a few lines from the articles. Often enough that almost no one RTFA. Looks like the newspaper industry is about as forward-looking as the RIAA and MPAA. This whole Inter-Net thing apparently caught them off guard and they've just noticed it.

What sort of idiots...

[pclminion]

What sort of idiots turn down the massive number of referrals that Google News is sending their way? Before news.google.com, I would never have had a reason to read an online newspaper from Indiana, but now I do. Hey, if they want to lose my eyes and my ad impressions, I think Google should give them what they want. Fuck'em.

Google News Fights Back, Caches Everything

[digitaldc]

The campaign comes as a pending U.S. court case pits Agence France Presse against Google. AFP sued the company last year, alleging that Google News carries its photos, news headlines and stories without permission.

Cache the latest news on Google.

La France, toujours dérangée avec le logiciel des USA.

if i go to a newstand

[circletimessquare]

i can scan the front page headlines of about 10 different newspapers without buying a newspaper. but if i am interested in knowing more in depth, i'll buy the newspaper

if i go to google news, same thing: i can scan the front page headlines of about 10 different newspapers without visiting the newspaper's site. but if i am interested in knowing more in depth, i'll click on the link and go to the newspaper's site

are newspapers now going to prohibit people from looking at newsstands unless they intend to buy a newspaper?

this is utterly ridiculous. do newspaper sites want no traffic? how the heck do they expect people to find their stories?

Re:if i go to a newstand

[cswiger2005]

The newspapers would like you to become a registered, paying user who has to sit through a full-page interstitial ad or two before getting to see the "real content", whatever that may be. Case in point: Times Select of the NY Times.

As others have pointed out earlier, Google honors robots.txt and the META noindex and nofollow tags, so any news site which wanted to keep some or all of their content private from webspiders, Google's cache, news.google.com, or anything else can do so trivially. Frankly, it's up to them to take minimal responsibility before publishing content to the entire world if they want to impose restrictions.

I've found that disabling image rotation ("animated GIFs") and refusing to install Macromedia's Flash player makes the web a far more pleasant place, with a lot fewer ads. Using ad-blocking tools which work with a proxy server like squid can help block most of the rest of the ads...

Re:if i go to a newstand

[warrior003]

I agree with you "are newspapers now going to prohibit people from looking at newsstands unless they intend to buy a newspaper?" sure if newspaper sites are so worried about it then they should just distribute their newspaper in black plastic bag. All google is doing is to give us the clip of news which many of the popular newspaper already have them on their website. If I want to read full story, I can subsribe to that newspaper. I don't see any copyright law being violated.

Re:if i go to a newstand

[extrasolar]

"this is utterly ridiculous. do newspaper sites want no traffic? how the heck do they expect people to find their stories?"

This is hard for us geeks to understand, but most of these big newspapers make money on their name and prestige. The geek ethos is that only merit matters: not so in the real world. People subscribe to New York Times because it's considered prestiguous and prestigious people read it (I guess the big wigs in Washington are considered prestigious). So they either don't like, or aren't used to, the idea of a drive through newspaper service: people who are only interested in reading one article and aren't interested in subscribing.

Other sites

[Chowderbags]

What about a site like Drudge Report? Or even any blog out there? Sure, they may not be as automated as Google, but will the courts see it that way? I hardly see it as an issue of copyright if a site not only cites a source, but links back to get the whole story. Besides, this is the industry that thrives on AP and Reuters stories to fill most of it's content. Well, that and the random reporters that steal from Wikipedia: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/15/151321 6

Re:Other sites

[Anonymous Coward]

I think drudgereport pays AP/Reuters and AFP. He also uses links to sites that accept his traffic unless he posts his own "exclusive" or "developing" story.

well...

[Run4yourlives]

Although I tried to RTFA, the orignial website is a mangled mess.

I believe Mr. Rahnema is looking for this page, however.

Mr. Rahnema, my invoice of $100 is in the mail.

thx!

"Shooting themselves in the foot" is right

[GPS Pilot]

Thanks to Google News, I've made hundreds of visits to news organizations' web sites that I wouldn't otherwise have made. And on all of those visits, I've viewed ads for which the news organizations earned money.

Silly journalists...

Re:"Shooting themselves in the foot" is right

[beedle]

The funny thing is that the news companies just cant opt out of it...without making every other person that comes to their site sign up for an account or something similar that would effectively close the news site off to pretty much everyone and everything on the web. Anything that is open content on the web is 100% legal to re-use on another site provided that it is referenced properly.

The news companies cannot win here because they are fighting two different battles with opposing goals: one to protect their online content and one to preserve its already shrinking customer base, and it seems that in this case they just will not be able to win one without losing the other.

Re:"Shooting themselves in the foot" is right

[jc42]

Yeah; I have too. But you should understand that this is exactly what the big news sources are fighting. We're supposed to visit only their sites. We're not supposed to be told that there are 938 others reporting the story. And we're certainly not supposed to visit those and get alternate takes on the story.

This isn't about keeping us away from news sites. It's to block our tool for easily finding other news sources than the big ones. In particular, we're not supposed to go directly to the local source of a story; we're supposed to get it filtered by a very few big news sources.

But the time is ending when a handful of people could control our access to news and make sure that we read only an acceptable version of a story.

Re:"Shooting themselves in the foot" is right

[zotz]

"The funny thing is that the news companies just cant opt out of it...without making every other person that comes to their site sign up for an account or something similar that would effectively close the news site off to pretty much everyone and everything on the web."

robots.txt

http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tut orial.htm

Are we claiming that google does not obey robots.txt?

all the best,

drew
------
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/58805

Re:"Shooting themselves in the foot" is right

[KarmaMB84]

Can they block only Google News? Or is this a blackmail scam where you either let Google have free reign or you have to blacklist yourself from the internet?

Re:"Shooting themselves in the foot" is right

[zotz]

I don't know, but I do see your point.

So, they want to build their businesses on the back of google's search engine which they do not pay for, but google news should not build its business on the back of the papers unless it pays the papers. Is that about how you are saying it should be? (Or are saying they say it should be.)

I know that may come across a bit offensive, please do not take it so, just make the necessary corrections and we can continue the discussion.

all the best,

drew

Why is this a problem?

[DrIdiot]

You'd think that newspapers would like having pieces of their stories on Google News. You don't read the whole article on Google News, you read the headline and click the link. The link that goes to the newspaper's website.

Note to online newspapers:

[Locke2005]

You might want to log the "referrer" tags of all the pages hits you get and notice what percentage of your traffic is actually being driven to your website by google before you start attacking them

Stupid

[Derling Whirvish]

Google should send a bill to the next paper that sues them and demand $X for continued links to their stories and say that if they don't pay then Google won't continue to link to them and drive new readers their way. I can't believe how stupid the (legal department at) the papers are in this.

MOD OFFTOPIC

[Anonymous Coward]

At least read the summary. sheesh.

Hmmm....maybe I'm blind

[NickySantoro360]

But, I don't see any ads on any Google News pages.....So how is it Google is exploiting these papers for financial gain? -Santoro

Re:Hmmm....maybe I'm blind

[dangitman]

It's called "building the brand" or just "branding." Of course, there is nothing wrong with what Google is doing, but it is obvious to see how they stand to financially gain from offering this ad-free service.

Not really about the NYT

[Anonymous Coward]

by "newspapers" we're talking about the New York Times, the Washington Post, and not much else?

The article makes it clear that this is a primarily European association, and the only specific mention of the New York Times in TFA is as follows: "Google ...has worked in partnership with some newspapers, serving ads to the Web site of the New York Times".

Alexa shows...

[ScottCooperDotNet]

PC World as an article on this where AFP sued Google for copyright infringement and Google dropped 'em. It appears AFP is just now getting back to the traffic levels they had before the row with Google.

OK, I've RTFA

[joshsnow]

Having read the article, it seems to me that it's a case of the print media having to modernise or die - and this action is an attempt to avoid doing either.

Most print publications tend not to offer all (or any) of their print content in the web version of their newspapers, using the website as a means of advertising the print publication or attracting people to take subscriptions to the print publication.

The problem for those who do, is that a service like google news allows web users to use the newpaper websites as sources of news (rather than advertisments or subscription bait) which said web users don't have to pay for.

At the same time, google will eventually be looking at ways of making a profit from the people using google news - none of which the sites providing the content will be able share.

So what do the newspaper publishers do? It's a bit of a rock and a hard place for them - web based news is already contributing to a fall in the circulation of printed newspapers. If a newpaper decides to run a full web version, how do they stop it from cannibalising sales of their print version, while selling a full edition on a regular basis to subscribers?

It's a bit of a cliche, but it's true that the web is changing the way we communicate. The era of print news (which survived the advent of television) may be drawing to a close. Meanwhile, newspaper publishers will have to be creative in the way they offer content to the public - maybe by making certain stories/pictures available for free to aggregators, and requireing subscription for a full web version of the printed paper. If memory serves, the Financial Times, and several other papers are using this model.

In the UK, all of the national broadsheets except the Telegraph have resized to tabloid size in an attempt to attract new readers.

How is this?

[rm69990]

Someone please explain to me how this is any different than Google Search indexing these exact same articles and making the first few lines available through their search engine? Or Google images making these exact same images available from Google's servers?

Either way, Google is still directing web traffic to their sites. There are a lot of news articles on various sites I would have never read if it weren't for Google news. I don't have time to track thousands of different online news outlets, so Google does it for me. I have even *gasp* clicked on ads after being redirected to the news vendors website. Even more shocking, there has been a few (5 actually) news outlets who's RSS feeds I have subscribed to after reading a few articles of theirs linked to from Google News.

Oh well, there are no laws against stupidity. This is almost as dumb as book publishers getting in a panic over Google Book Search, which is free advertising as far as I'm concerned. Or do they fear people will be satisfied with the page shown on Google Book Search and not buy the full book? Generally, when I want to read a book, I want to read the full book. The same thing with the news. I don't read the Google News homepage and not go to the full source.

robots.txt anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you don't want search engines to index your content, just use the god damn file.

so, let's say google indexes a page, a newspaper article.

The indexing is ok if the reader visits the page and reads the content (and the ads), and the newspaper doesn't pay any referral fees nor anything back to google.

The indexing is not ok if it's used by google without paying

Oh well, I guess it's ok to index their stuff and publish a few lines in the search results, and it's ok if the search engine spends millions creating something that will index their content and pay for many many servers to make these search results available to the whole world (potential visitors), and it's ok if those visitors see the ads they put up next to the article....
but it's not ok to publish more lines.

God, I'd just change the TOS: if you are a news provider and want us to index your content, we can use a few lines in both the search results and google news.

How Ironic

[windowpain]

Companies pay pay Google to place (very brief) ads in search results of particular words. Google News uses much more enticing excerpts from news sites that a user must click on if he or she wants to read the full article excerpted. The link clicked on goes directly to the news site's (ad-laden, revenue-generating) page.

Newspapers have a problem with this? Google should comply with any news source that wants to be excluded from Google News. And then have their salepeople call on them and see if they want to buy Google Adwords on the Google News page.

But, but,

[Anonymous Coward]

We must....

ATTACK....

GOOGLE!

EPIC

[ApharmdB]

A relevant flash movie with a possible scenario about the future of news aggregation that people might find interesting at two locations. It has been linked to here on Slashdot before, that's how I know about it.
http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/
http://epic.makingithappen.co.uk/

Re:let me finish your sentence for you, Mr. Rahnem

[McGiraf]

Google also so link to more obscure news sites that the big ones, reducing trafic to these and creating *GASP* competition. The big newspapers must be the ones complaining about this not the small ones.

Mod parent funny!

[Spy der Mann]

This was the most ironic link i've ever seen so far :) thumbs up.

So Mindnumbingly Difficult to Deal With

[hunterx11]

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

You know, if they hired me as a consultant to deal with this problem, I'd probably get a few thousand dollars for typing 34 characters.

What would this mean for Slashdot?

[Disposable Rob]

"'They're building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content,' Ali Rahnema, managing director of the association, told Reuters in an interview. 'The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article -- it's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not.'"

Except for the occasional unique content like interviews, doesnt this describe Slashdot? Along with Fark, Digg and countless blogs whose entire sites who report what others are reporting, except they use people instead of Google's crawlers.

Re:What would this mean for Slashdot?

[typical]

Except for the occasional unique content like interviews, doesnt this describe Slashdot? Along with Fark, Digg and countless blogs whose entire sites who report what others are reporting, except they use people instead of Google's crawlers.

How much money do you think CT and friends make off of Slashdot? I don't follow it, but I'd assume that Slashdot is profitable, but probably not something that is going to make the Slashdot editorial staff all multimillionaires.

Google, on the other hand, this the darling of the tech industry after the dot-com blowout. Every business rag has run a story on Google.

Now, if you're a publisher, wouldn't you throw some money into a pool to get some lawyers working on even a 10% chance at a piece of that pie?

Are they going to win? I doubt it. Do they want Google to stop linking to them? Hell no. It's just a grab at a small chance at a lot of money.

How businesses plan for growth

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Reduce number of readers that can find advertisement-filled content.
2. ???
3. Profit!

Pick & Choose

[ackthpt]

Now if its similar to /. where a few lines from the article is posted in a headline, and a pic I see no reason for a problem should there be a link back to the original story. This generates traffic and possibly new users to your sites. If however said site is trying to plagarize [SIC] a whole story that is very different.

Google News gets to Pick & Choose what's on their headline page. Same as any paper does, which immediately makes it a target, same as any other paper.

what google news really needs is funnies!

Newspaper Stands & Machines

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference between somebody reading part of the paper out of the newstand or paperbox before they decide to read the whole story?

Translation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah blah blah blah blah -Money- blah blah blah blah -I- blah blah blah -want- blah blah blah blah -some-. Blah blah blah -let's- blah blah blah -sue-!

Town Criers Lobby congress

[fermion]

The considlated federation of town criers, villiage idiots, and buggy whip vendors, are petitioning congress to protect them against thin sheets of papers printed with daily news and advertisements. These so-called news-papers, made practical by recent innovation in moveable type. The town criers insist that they have spent much effort organizing a network of reliable informants, and that the news-papers are able to undercutting traditional news outlets because they do not have such expenses. Even though the criers are fully attributed, they object as this may cut down on public contact and potential revenue.

In addition, the villiage idiot objects as these papers also supply a high quality entertainment, thusly potentially destroying the trade of villiage idiot and the untold community benifit such a person provides. The buggy whip manufacturers are concerned as the papers offer non-local cheaper alternatives to the buggy whip, and prints stories about a post-horse power economy which threatens the entire industry.

Foreign News Would Love Our Audience

[comforteagle]

I run a news crap-filter called 180n.com which allows the reader to determine which of the stories are actually worth reading & 9/10 the sources are foreign news outlets like the BBC, India Times, even Aljezerra. US News Media don't do "news" anymore. They're media outlets the same as Oprah & Survivor. Reel you in with sensational bullshit and try to hold you there as long as possible by promising something worthwhile... just after this break or right after you view these ads for classmates.com!

Wait a second..

[SirFozzie]

didn't this just get ruled as fair use? At least with the "Caching" involved?

Seems to me that the Newspaper companies are using the courts as a weapon.. "Pay us for our stuff or see you in court.. You probably will win, but that won't make your legal bills any lower.."

These people are stupider than the RIAA

[voss]

I would NEVER read their newspaper websites if it were not for
Google News. Google news gives them free pagehits which exposes
their newspaper and their web page ADVERTISERS to a larger audience.

If I were a newspaper publisher I wouldnt be angry about my newspaper
being in Google news, I would be angry about my newspaper not listed
among the first three sources.

All google news is a News search engine with links to news sites.

My god Google news is GIVING YOU BUSINESS without charging you....
Google news has your newspaper websites RELEVANT again...more so
than TV news. Are you newspaper publishers really that fracking
STUPID as to punish them for it?

mod parent up

[Potor]

although i completely detest the attack on google news, the comparison between what gnews does and what the news media does is specious.

I want to use my new slogan...

[zenasprime]

Copyright is NOT a right, it's a PRIVILEGE.

I don't think I have much else to say on the matter anymore.

Irony Via RSS?

[Sephiriz]

Anyone else find it slightly ironic that all these newspaper websites OFFER RSS feeds so that you can syndicate and read the first few lines of an article? Oh, and how about the fact that most of the traffic they get is probably only received via Google.

Take Aim

[AkA lexC]

Alot of slashdot seems to be 'X takes aim at Y'.. sort this out please

robots.txt

[amembleton]

If a newspaper doesn't want to be indexed, then they can update their robots.txt file.

What's the problem again?

[aduzik]

So, newspapers are complaining because Google is sending traffic to their sites? When you make this stuff available for indexing on your web site, often via RSS (hell, SYNDICATION is right in the name!), and in turn you get a bunch of people visiting your site who may not have otherwise read your newspaper, you get pissed because... why?

Loss leader.

[jotaeleemeese]

Please, stop insulting our intelligence....

screenshot!

[hey]

Did you notice the Reuters article had a screenshot of Google News.
Did they get permission or is it fair use ;-)

RIAA all over again

[nurb432]

Here we go again... Another old-school industry that doesnt want to change with the times, and profit off it.

I see a pattern here

[CaptSnuffy]

ATI vs. Nvidia in a Video Shootout

Sony Takes Aim at Xbox Live

Newspaper Lobbyists Take Aim at Google News

Theft, pure and simple

[Nom du Keyboard]

What a crock! You've put the stuff out there for free. Google makes your content a million times more findable. And now your intent is to rob them for being a value added supplier simply because they have a lot of money that you want. Newspapers are the thieves in this, pure and simple.

If you don't like being indexed, put a frigging robots.txt file on your site and watch how much you'll be saving in bandwidth costs afterwards as your traffic plummets.

The newspapers not only need to lose on this one -- they need to lose big!

Re:Theft, pure and simple

[Forbman]

...or do what the NYT does with its stories that end up on GoogleNoose. I freakin' hate NYT articles in GoogleNoose, becasue they make you go thru the login form to read them.

On the other hand, Yahoo News slurps the entire article and presents it in Yahoo's portal style, not redirect you to the original article on the source's website.

Re:Theft, pure and simple

[Nom du Keyboard]

becasue they make you go thru the login form to read them.

www.BugMeNot.com
And allow NYT to set cookies. You only login once this way.

Re:Theft, pure and simple

[pipingguy]

Personally, I think that use of the word, "frigging" needs more exposure.

For those who don't speak Crybaby

[cpu_fusion]

I fed Ali Rahnema's comments in the article through a "crybaby to english" translator, and got:

"Waaaaa! We didn't think of it first!!! Waaaa! We can't embrace change!!!! Waaa!"

Re:Copyright violation? Why wait? $$$

[Nom du Keyboard]

Why wait this long? Google News has been running for YEARS, albeit with the 'beta' moniker.

Because Google has lots of money now, and they want to get their hands on it. Rule number 1 in laywer school: Don't sue poor people because they can't pay.

I know.

[IAAP]

But can they copy it almost word for word without giving credit? I've seen that a few times.

If that's part of the deal, then I stand corrected.

Re:I know.

[Achromatic1978]

IIRC, yes, depending on the amount of the fee you pay. "Rebranding".

But I may well be wrong.

What took them so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there something about Beta that makes Google News non-threatening? GN has been here in its present form for quite sometime even with the Beta label. Why are they complaining now?

What about sites like Slashdot?

[Kickboy12]

Google is no more violating copyright than Slashdot, Digg, or Newsvine. Google gives proper links and credit for all information to the respected copyright owners. There is nothing to sue over here.

They don't acknowledge the benefits of google news

[guacamole]

Google News can be good for online newspapers because google news is how people can find their articles. I suspect that many of those newspapers would probably stop whinning if google offered them to stop from being indexed if they wished (and if the practice was found to be illegal).

It seems like what those newspapers really want is to have have a cake and eat it too (that is, they want to be listed through news.google.com because it's certainly benefitial to them. They also want to get paid for that).

Only One Word...

[Anonymous Coward]

robots.txt

Such fun to watch idiots...

[TractorBarry]

Tomorrow morning I think I'll go out and shoot a certain someone who's pissed me off (don't worry, I'm only kidding ;)

But I hereby give advance notice that this act is copyright "mice elf" and anyone wishing to report it using any currently available broadcast medium (TV/Radio/Intermaweb/Papyrus/Talking about it over a garden fence) will have to pay me X billion dollars/euros/pounds/"whatever I feel like charging for it" (where X is a rapidly increasing sum depending on how many "0"s I can be bothered typing ony my keyboard...).

Hmm... "Intellectual copyright"... I saw the sun today, if you want to look at it tomorrow you owe me 50 new pence.

Ho ho fucking ho. No wonder Humans will soon (on a geological timescale) be extinct.

Slashdot less exposed than Google News

[mike2006]

Slashdot has less exposure than Google news due to the fact they are not using a photo with the news article. Since bots can easily be restricted through the robots.txt standard I do not see this issue going anywhere.

robots.txt

[cnb]

Why aren't they simply blocking google using robots.txt if they don't want to be listed?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

you're very confused

[geekee]

"Quiet down and pay for the rights to see the same AP or Reuters article on 200 different web sites. It's the Capitalist way."

Since when have you ever paid for an AP or Reuters news story online. The news sites posting them pay for them, and use advertising to subsidize. Google doesn't pay for linking to them and uses advertising to subsidize their non-payments.

Re:you're very confused

[Frostalicious]

Google doesn't pay for linking to them and uses advertising to subsidize their non-payments.

Most people WANT Google to link to them, and even pay Google for the privilege. Why is this different?

Re:you're very confused

[thirdrock]

Google doesn't pay for linking to them and uses advertising to subsidize their non-payments.

You're not a very accomplished liar are you? Show me one advertisement on news.google.com and you might have a point.

Since when have you ever paid for an AP or Reuters news story online. The news sites posting them pay for them, and use advertising to subsidize.

Yes, and they create almost no news of their own. In other words, what Google is showing is that all of these so called 'NewsPapers' are nothing more than distribution channels for syndicated news. Or to put it another way, there is no reason to buy one newpaper as opposed to any other.

I think the real issue here is that the concept of the 'Newspaper' is dying. With the Internet, news is obiquitous, instantaneous and democratic. One can invision a future where consumers will subscribe to a single news service and then filter by region, topic etc. All journalists will then be working for the syndication companies.

This turns the whole news business model upside down. Currently, "The New York Times" is a brand that is used to sell advertising space to corporate advertisers. There is a huge vested interest in sustaining this model for a number of reasons.
1) Advertisers influence the type of news that is printed. In other words, the flow of information is influenced, nay corrupted, by the corporate world.
2) Huge amounts of money have been invested into these news 'brands'. Changing the model dilutes the value of the brand,effectively causing a capital loss.
3) Following on from (1), information flow influences political thought. If the newpaper influences political thinking, and advertisers influence the newspaper, then the advertisers (corporations) indirectly influence political thought. This is a powerfull lever that nobody would want to give up.

YMMV

Re:you're very confused

[drivekiller]

Almost.

Google provides me a service (location of interesting stories) but they don't provide the actual stories. Guess what, idiot lobbyists? If you don't want your site to show up in Google News, you can accomplish this with a robots.txt file. Remedy is trivial -- your issue is a thinly disguised protection racket.

But you were probably being sarcastic anyway.

Re:you're very confused

[GaryPatterson]

Not to disagree, but could you point out these ads on Google News? I just checked and can't see a single advertisement. What I can see are many links back to the source sites, which then have their own advertising.

I can't see how Google make a cent on this, unless the actual news providers are paying Google for click-throughs.

Re:you're very confused

[Magic5Ball]

Most people WANT Google to link to them, and even pay Google for the privilege. Why is this different?

Many news web sites are not treated as profit centers, but as expenses. I know of a number of smaller papers (circulation < 250,000) that see 90 per cent of web traffic come from Google, which is next to useless for their readership numbers and local advertising. The lucky ones use Google ads to pay for the bandwidth used by random Google visitors, the others are SOL.

<bias>As someone who runs the IT for a weekly community paper in addition to my day job, I'm currently trying various methods of reducing the Google effect to less than its current (and steadily increasing by 5-10% per month) 4.5 Mb/s of bandwidth usage for hits from Google search results. It's not really a cost center for us, but I would like to use the bandwidth for faster e-mail attachment downloads and such...

Re:you're very confused

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

As someone who runs the IT for a weekly community paper in addition to my day job, I'm currently trying various methods of reducing the Google effect to less than its current (and steadily increasing by 5-10% per month) 4.5 Mb/s of bandwidth usage for hits from Google search results.

robots.txt?

Re:you're very confused

[toddbu]

As someone who runs the IT for a weekly community paper in addition to my day job, I'm currently trying various methods of reducing the Google effect to less than its current (and steadily increasing by 5-10% per month) 4.5 Mb/s of bandwidth usage for hits from Google search results.

Could you post a link here so we can all /. it? :-)

Seriously, there's gotta be a way that you can make money from all these visitors. Put up ads, beg for donations on PayPal, require registration and then spam them, etc. That many eyeballs must be good for something.

Re:you're very confused

[xanalogical]

Magic, I don't understand what you're trying to do to your weekly paper, re "reducing the Google effect". If you don't want people to find you via Google, how are they going to find you at all? I, and many others, have no loyalty to a specific paper. We're not going to be a persistent "customer" for your paper to sell as a demographic to your advertisers. If you block Google from either indexing or referring to your paper, then few will know you exist. Your bandwidth problems will be solved.

I'm not being difficult, I'm scratching my head trying to figure out where you're coming from and what you want.

Re:you're very confused

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think that google news does not generate a profit. But of course google hopes that if you use their news search engine then you are more willing to use their normal search engine which does have ads and makes them a profit.

Re:you're very confused

[bgalbrecht]

Google doesn't advertise on Google News, and doesn't contain entire articles. So, if people are interested in reading a particular AP or Reuters article, they're going to see the advertisements from the news site actually posting it. IMHO, the two reasons why the online news media are upset is because they're missing out on the advertising on their front page, and Google News prevents them from having a online captive audience, which is something the TV/newspaper parent has in their non-online media.

Re:you're very confused

[Anonymous Coward]

With the Internet, news is obiquitous, instantaneous and democratic.

I think you misspelled digg.com

Re:you're very confused

[LifesABeach]

I believe the parent is wrong here.

"I resent that remark; Slander is spoken. In print, it's Libel." -- J. Jonah Jameson

I guess the grandparent has not come to terms with "Public Domain".

Re:you're very confused

[Scyber]

Yes, and they create almost no news of their own.

While I agree with the point of your post (that the concept of the newspaper is going away). The above statement is flat out wrong. There are some "newspapers" that are simply reprints of AP or Reuters content, but most newspapers provide lots of local content that none of the syndicate news sources cover.

Re:you're very confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Money, money, money. Why must it always be about money? Some things are better free. Information is one of them.

Things that should be free:

Information
Healthcare
University through doctorate level

Craigslist is handily killing newspapers and this is a good thing. This is technological evolution and we're seeing it happen. Newspapers will never die outright, but they will become relatively niche players serving certain segments of the population.

Re:you're very confused

[Magic5Ball]

We don't mind people finding us via Google. The potential issue is that we're the top or second search result for about 250 different keywords and phrases, which draws a lot of one-time hits to archived content (great, but does nothing for the community). robots.txt is not really an option since we also have a subset of readers and expats who use our archived stories via Google as signposts for historical research.

I'm toying with the idea of dumping anyone with Google in the referer string to a text-only/print version of content, which would reduce bandwidth usage by about 50%, but that only gives us about six more months of headroom.

Re:you're very confused

[Snaller]

The news sites posting them pay for them, and use advertising to subsidize. Google doesn't pay for linking to them and uses advertising to subsidize their non-payments.

What sick world do you live in if you think a site should pay to link to another side. Google provides traffic free of charge.

Re:you're very confused

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't get it. Seems like your problem is that you are too successful, and too many people like your site. So you could shut your site down, or make it crappier.

I wish I had your problems.

Re:you're very confused

[WindBourne]

Quite probably, blogs will take over a lot of that, until somebody gets smart and moves towards converging that into a truely new source of info; a pure virtual paper for the local area. One without the overhead of unions and paper presses.

Re:you're very confused

[thirdrock]

Quite probably, blogs will take over a lot of that, until somebody gets smart and moves towards converging that into a truely new source of info;

I think that the evolution of the blog is the multi-blog. Which will be somewhat like your vision of the pure virtual paper. There would be X (say 10) bloggers, each with their own column, organised into articles. Kind of like slashdot!

Re:you're very confused

[rtb61]

I don't think you get the idea of what is going on. The larger name papers want to block Google because the want to kill the internet presence of smaller newspapers. The internet allows for small news site to grow and challenge some of the biggest news players.

The big players of course cannot say the want to kill the small news sites, so they are trying to create the illusion that this challenge is for other reasons. They are trying to claim that when the customer goes to the news site as a result of a Google news search and watches that news sites advertising that somehow because the referral come from Google that somehow Google was stealing something.

The advertising that the major news players want to kill is of course that there are a wide range of news sites to pick from. They do not want sites like yours to get any exposure at all, other wise your advertising department might sit down and figure out a way to generate revenue from those additional visits and as any growth at your paper means shrinkage at theirs then Google is stealing their customers and giving them to you (more readers for you, less readers for them).

They want to be able to drop random adds in the middle of an article, over the print, at random intervals. They know how annoying this is and they know how many readers they have lost when they have tried this (Wired and NYT, idiots at both companies have tried this and lost big time). They of course loose those readers to other news sites that people have discovered using Google news (the only times I read NYT and Wired are now as a result of a Google news search or when Wired/NYT trolls point to their articles on /.).

HEY! LET'S ALL JUMP IN!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's find other beta shit to sue google on! GOOGLE MAPS SHOWS DIRECTIONS TO MY BUSINESS! I'M SUING FOR PRIVACY VIOLATIONS IN THE SUM OF $14,000,000,000,000! THEY SHOULD PAY ME TO SHOW PEOPLE DIRECTIONS TO MY BUSINESS!

It's a copyright violation.

[blair1q]

Google's intent is not to comment on the news or add value to it, but simply to become the portal to it. Their brand is advertised at the top, always, as are their other services. Therefore they're profiting from it.

It's a copyright violation, clearly. Google should be compensating the producers of the news for the value of the service they're receiving.

Links to otherwise "Who gives a crap" websites...

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's fair to say that the news section of google ads stature to the google website(for those who use it), I think it's pretty obvious that the buttfrack idaho news sites are the ones getting serious exposure.

And if buttfrack idaho news inc. doesn't like it, it isn't terribly difficult to keep google from crawling their site.

I say we let the free market decide. Who will get hurt more if google news shut down for a month, google, or the all the small news sites who get added traffic? Not just small sites either. I go to the New York times(and click on some of their ads sometimes) almost exclusively after seeing a blurb and a link to them on google news. The reverse has NEVER been true.

Soylent reading

[cnflctd]

Easy solution: Make paper from the skin of corpses. "People is ... people!!!"

Watch their traffic jump?

[KrackHouse]

Idiots. The management probably doesn't have the technical know-how to see where their visitors are coming from. I can see it now. A month after they send Google a cease and desist wondering, "Geeze, I wonder why our web traffic just fell off a cliff. Must be that damn Craigslist again."

Google News?

[darjen]

Slashdot's the only news I need!

Easy solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, newspapers, put this in your robots.txt:

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

Let's see how well that works out for business!

good for the little guy

[posterlogo]

I've noticed recently that I'm actually far more likely to visit unheard of newspaper's websites when I see the story linked from google news snippets. Perhaps this has reduced my visits to the major news organization websites, but then that isn't what they're complaining about.

idiots

[inverselimit]

Go ahead, get removed from google, and watch your userbase die away

they could squash them ...

[zogger]

...like a bug, easy.

Scenario 1: Googlenews could just drop a small to them sum and carry AP, UPI, AFP, etc stories under their own brand name, and not even bother with other papers. They could then offer the now redundant newspapers to pay them to be indexed.

Scenario 2, if for some reason number 1 wouldn't work: Google could put out the internet call for independent reporters en masse around the world, offer a small fee per word/pic/video for accepted and published product, and probably squash the news syndicators. They could have 10,000 reporters (whatever, pick a big number that would work) within a week if they wanted to, every language, every location, every topic. Maybe even squash or at least scare the big broadcast networks for that matter. Most of them use freelancers for a boatload of their product anyway, so quite a few might be lured into working for Google. They could turn this whole argument around, and it would be the local newspapers and broadcasters paying Google serious folding money for content and indexing services, instead of complaining about them "stealing their stuff", which is a crock anyway.

The only dead tree paper I get anymore is the freebie that comes in the mailbox, and that gets used for woodstove fire starter kindling, it's still good for that. I honestly don't care about local high school sports scores. All that is left with local papers of any value is a smidgen of local politics and the classified ads, and there the ads are being taken over by the freebie "ads only" papers you see. The big city papers are even worse, their news is exactly the same as everyone else's, so there's little need for the dead trees version unless you just like to rattle newspaper around at the breakfast table, and also hence why I never "register" to go to any of their website versions, it's like, why do you need to do that when there's 500 other sites with the same exact information and don't require registration? You want my eyeballs to view your site and ads, don't make me register for that privelege, because I won't.

The so called "main stream news" needs a big shakeup anyway, IMO, they need to get scared and go back to their roots a little more, and rediscover real journalism and get rid of being parrots of a few official party lines.

I'm a serious old time news junky, I taught myself to read by reading the newspaper headlines compared to the TV news headlines before I went to kindergarten, and the newspapers have lost *me* as a customer because it just gradually turned into corporate shilling crap and government propoganda mixed in with bread and cicuses hollyweird news and sports gods "scores". And they wonder why their product is being abandoned......

Google News: Not as important as you think

[Conright]

I love it how so many of you think not being listed on Google News is the end of a newspaper's career. You do not realize that Google News is not even in the top 10 for most popular news site on the internet.

Here is a quote from a Marketwatch article today: "Yahoo! News is No. 1, with 24.6 million unique visitors in December, up 15% from a year ago, followed by AOL at No. 4, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Google News stands at No.13 with 7.8 million unique visitors..."

Re:Google News: Not as important as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

That's still a pretty damn high ranking, isn't it?

I wish I owned the 13th most popular site on the 'net.

I have a dog in this fight.

[aliscool]

My site, linked below on my sig if you care to look is 90% content driven RSS and RDF feeds, of news and blogs, which are provided by the News site or blog site for exactly this type of aggregation via a feed.
Although I get content for my viewers, it is actually also a service for the news or blog site I aggregate. Unless they fully feed the article my readers get teasers which link the the parent site for the full article. I do have moderation and comments related to the news article in question... but the teaser drive folks to the parent site.
What they get for providing me a steady content stream is free linkage and traffic from my site. I am more than happy to provide it.... but its a I scratch your back you scratch mine arrangement.
Google does the same thing on a MUCH larger scale. But the principles apply.

Huh?

[idlake]

I don't see what they're complaining about. Google gets contents via two kinds of sources: (1) feeds, and (2) crawling. That means that publishers have full control over whether and what they want Google to index. So, what's the problem? Too lazy to put in a robots.txt file?

nonsense

[idlake]

On the other hand, publishers are not code jockeys (and robots.txt was not in the original spec).

Oh, please, how naive can you be? The NYT web site was created by highly paid, experienced web designers and developers. Of course, they know about robots.txt, and any court would expect a company of that wealth and publishing experience to hire people that know about it.

And even if the NYT employees were so incompetent that they don't know, Google tells them about it. Google even gives you a means for removing your site immediately.

Re:nonsense

[BasilBrush]

Absolutely. This makes a complete nonsense out of the newspapers claims. Trouble is, what the newspapers want is not for their site to be removed from the index, but for Google News to be shut down, as they see it as a competition as a news portal. If they only withdraw from being indexed themselves, they'll only succeed in reducing traffic to their site, whilst Google News is every bit as much as a news portal competitor as before.

Re:nonsense

[zCyl]

Absolutely. This makes a complete nonsense out of the newspapers claims. Trouble is, what the newspapers want is not for their site to be removed from the index, but for Google News to be shut down, as they see it as a competition as a news portal. If they only withdraw from being indexed themselves, they'll only succeed in reducing traffic to their site, whilst Google News is every bit as much as a news portal competitor as before.

There are strong sanity limits on what the courts could do here anyway. In the absolute worst and most insane case, the courts could rule out fair use, and then google news indexing would resort to opt-in only. So google would then immediately put out a call for people to add an "index me google news" flag to their robots.txt, and every news site that wants traffic will add it. It would temporarily disrupt google news, and then it would return to the same situation where all the news sites have to decide if they want traffic going to them, or to their competitors. This would reduce traffic to a few of the smaller outfits that don't know enough about running a site to be able to opt-in, but in general google news would continue functioning the same way as it is now.

Re:nonsense

[16K Ram Pack]

I've worked in a few industries, and some of these industries have run on really tight margins. The difference between the cost of materials, machinery and staff per unit and the actual prices was not that great. It was also the case that as volume rose, the costs went down, but not that much.

The content industry is completely different. The "per item" cost is almost nothing. The real cost is in the initial creation, and often, the promotion of the item.

The idea that the content industry wants to cut off the promotion by someone for short-term gains is counterproductive.

Re:nonsense

[KarmaMB84]

Why should a news organization have themselves delisted from the search engine when it's Google News that's the problem?

Re:nonsense

[Thing 1]

I think the court would judge based on the law, not based on trendy technologies. But there I go being naive again.

And, Google doesn't "tell them about it"; they have to know to look at Google's pages, Google isn't emailing every news publisher about their service. (Or if they are, then I'm not only naive I'm also ignorant.)

Nothing new

[countach]

Google news is not doing anything different than regular old google is doing. It's just specialized towards current events and newspapers and is a bit more intelligent in grouping results. Other than that it's just another search engine displaying an excert, albeit a very clever one.

another incorrect use of "content"

[brre]

They're building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content

They don't have to. The content is free. It's the expression that's copyrighted.

What he means, of course, is aggregators aren't paying for the articles, the news, the writing, the copy, the expression.

how...what...huh???

[akhomerun]

How can they even get mad about this?

If they don't want Google to use their articles...well...then don't put them on the internet!!

How is even possible to get mad about? If you put your web site on the internet, it's already free. Hey, look, if Google lists your news site on Google News, then you get more web hits! What more do you want? "Oh no, Google News ate my bandwidth!"

It's definatly fair use. I can't even see how Google can make money on the news section, with no sponsored links, NOTHING of the sort. Google has strange ways but I even can't see this one making them any cash at all.

Maybe, I dunno, they could READ the FAQ that Google has posted:
I work for a news organization. Who can answer my questions regarding our news content and the Google News service?

Please contact us. We're pleased to work with individual publishers to ensure their content is appropriately represented in Google News.

If after all this newspaperdudes still hate Google News, they have one of two options.
#1 Suck it.
#2 Make their pages subscription based. Hell, the actual newspapers are subscription based. So if you REALLY want your FREE web page to NOT be seen on the internet, then by all means shut Google News down

Its the about the Benjamins

[zygote]

If you're a newspaper/news service trying to figure out how to compete in this crazy Interwebs age, you have a couple of choices.

You can let Google put your content on their aggregator for free and count on possibly, maybe, hopefully getting some revenue generated from people visiting your site via news.google.com...

or

you can get paid by a Google competitor to be part of their news service and likely have a whole lot more control over how you content is served up or whatever the Hell those partnerships deliver and get paid.

What would suck would be for the other search engine to see... well you get the idea.

Hmmmm....how can you be sure this crazy "fair use" idea won't cut ruin everyone's fun? How, oh how?

yeah, that's it

[macsox]

they were just waiting for it to come out of beta, so they would get a glimpse of how it works. :p

Have these people heard of robots.txt?

[autopr0n]

I mean really.

Does Google make money from Google News?

[Hanasoni]

This is the question mostly at the heart of the debate. And judging by the fact that there is not one ad on Google News, I would have to say that the answer is no. Google is not making money off of this service. And unless that changes I have to believe that the courts will be in their favor.

New Aggregator

[DeadPrez]

I like to click on different newspapers I haven't read before. I think this is a net benefit as it widens exposure to an otherwise limit locale.

Fair use, yes, but also the Right Thing(tm).

MSN Newsbot

[Anonymous Coward]

But do they complain about the MSN Newsbot, Yahoo! News Search or even the Ask Jeeves News section?

(which are all incidently powered by Moreover)

Re:let me finish your sentence for you, Mr. Rahnem

[aztektum]

It occurs to me that if the legislature sides with them and says "Google, don't do that." they will still become a blackhole to the world's most popular search engine as Google will simply say "Ok." and remove them. With or w/o Big Brother's involvement, they could end up losing.

Those that do not want to play...

[Jugalator]

I'm sure these newspapers can contact Google News and have their news source removed. Actually, I thought they first had to make an arrangement with Google to even be listed, but I guess I was wrong. I can't believe Google forcefully index those though, but rather make them a service, much like keeping them in their web search index.

If not even this works, there's always robots.txt as well.

But you have to wonder what the point would be. They'll be discovered by less people after all, which is kinda the point with Google News in the first place. To find news.

Google Newspaper

[hkmwbz]

So, what if Google had paid for these stories from wire services, published them on google.com, and automatically filtered out other news publications carrying the same text?

Google could link to only original stories on other news sites.

That would be awesome, I think. These whining news publications would notice reduced traffic because "everyone" would just use Google News for their news needs most of the time anyway.

(Note: I don't know if Google News is actually popular enough that it would make a difference, but I'm assuming that this is the case above.)

apples and oranges

[idlake]

The problem with opt-out for spammers is that you receive at least one message and that the opt-out procedures for spammers differ from spammer to spammer.

Opt-out for indexing has existed as a standard for many years: robots.txt. If you don't want to be indexed, all you have to do is put a single file on your web site once and you will be protected from all search engines in perpetuity. If spam opt-out worked like that, that would be great.

It's probably the free marketing that annoys them

[jesterzog]

Why pay for advertising when you can get someone else to do it for you for free?

This is speculation, but perhaps it's because this particular someone who does it for free will also advertise your less-rich but higher quality competitors for free, giving them an advantage in the marketing.... if only because producing quality is harder than simply getting attention by spending. Cast doubt over the legality of Google's business model, and you can once again win by spending more money on marketing.

Iranian guy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ali Rahnema is an Iranian name. Off topic, I know...

Broadcast use of print & the death of Old Medi

[StWaldo]

Now how come the print media hasn't taken on broadcast media over the now-ubiquitous "An article in today's says...", or even better, the roll-up segments of print articles, pieces, even cartoons! Flipped the other way, the print will do articles occaisionally on broadcast pieces. So really, a notable chunk of "work" done by both media is really just parroting the work of the other.

Of course, the question of fair use here is muddled by the fact that print and broadcast media are often arms of the same entity, so it can't really be "stealing". It's the Old Media taking care of itself.

What this all comes down to is that this is another in a series of death knells for the Old Media business model. All of these issues; Google News, Google Print, DRM, VOIP fees, blogs; are all just different faces on the same issue: The death of the Old Media business model. The writing has been on the wall for years now since the Internet started becoming the New Media: adapt or die. And rather than seek out and embrace revenue streams evolving from the New Media, they cling to feeble kludges of the Old, and when those start falling apart, they seek legal protection, often to the detriment of the New Media. The sooner the business and political world absorbs this fact the sooner they can move ahead to bigger and better things.

Secret Google Hack #1536

[Anonymous Coward]

If they just hide the words "tiananmen square" on each of their web pages, I think Google filters them out automatically?!

Google could blacklist them if they want to

[johannuhrmann]

Google could offer a blacklist service for "newspaper lobbyists".

If a newspaper does not want to be presented (and that's what it is -
merely a presentation) on GoogleNews, Google could simply blacklist
them.

Do I hear a newspaper lobbyist who wants his paper blacklisted?

No one? Anyone?
OK!

Re:let me finish your sentence for you, Mr. Rahnem

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, and then the smaller sites who are benefitting from appearing on Google News will grant Google license to use their materials, further compounding the black hole effect, since then the sites who complain will be completely out of the loop.

It's not about content

[oDDmON oUT]

It's about money.

With many news orginazations hemorrhaging cash and suffering cut backs, the monkey-headed managers will look to any source for a new income stream, and what could be better than a new company with an incredible capitalization as a target?

They want Google to get out their wallet and write them a fat cheque.

Show's over, nothing to see.

search results same?

[pgudge]

"The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article -- it's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not.'"

Google search result have a title (headline), snippet of page (first three lines of an article), just no picture, does this mean we can ALL sue Google if they display your page in the search results?.... ...I think not.

Be careful what you wish for

[Churla]

Here is a not to far fetched scenario.
a) Newspapers pay AP or Reuters for news feeds.
b) Newspapers use this information, adding in advertisements to make money back.
c) Google News builds it's "composite" newspaper without paying for the news , or paying the person providing the content.
d) This harms the revenue stream of the newspaper (this is the part they still need to prove)
e) Newspaper goes out of business
f) Google loses amount of content.

The real kicker here would be if the courts rule that since google doesnt advertise on the news page it's not making money off them so it's fair use. Then at some point what happens when Google needs to start turning revenue streams on from all these projects (look at http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c7108d38-929e-11da-977b-0 000779e2340.html for why) and puts some discreet ads in the news page. Does the court revisit and change rulings if Google is making money off them?

They need to sue the local newstand

[Anonymous Coward]

That's where I read exerpts and look at pictures from all the front page news. Right there on the stand, at no cost whatsoever. Clearly the store is using the newspaper's work to generate business without paying a dime! That's shameful.