Slashdot Mirror
Content Owners to Charge Royalties for Searching?
dwarfking writes in with a story that follows up on the impact of recent Google events: "Ok, maybe I'm a little dense here, but isn't this plan more of an impact to the content provider than to the search engines. From the article: 'In one example of how ACAP would work, a newspaper publisher could grant search engines permission to index its site, but specify that only select ones display articles for a limited time after paying a royalty.'
So, ok, a search engine company decides it doesn't want to pay royalties and therefore doesn't index the provider's site. Now won't the provider actually lose readers since their articles won't be locatable by search anymore?"
Sounds like one of the dumbest ideas I have heard, this goes alongside the MPAA and RIAA shenanigans.
Many publishers feel, however, that the search engines are becoming publishers themselves by aggregating, sometimes caching and occasionally creating their own content.
This is on par with charging money for getting lyrics online. Greed never ceases to amaze.
So using the courts they have failed to get royalties and achieved what they could have achieved with some robots.txt files.
Evil people are out to get you.
is the worlds most common and least forgivable form of stupidity.
What do you expect? *AA like to use their size to affect price and generate revenue. This is their job. If the New York Times and Washington Post jump on board, wouldn't Google look foolish for not being able to return stories which match nicely to the search request?
Although I do find it funny that the NAA (http://www.naa.org) is made searchable through a Google Mini appliance.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
There's really not much more to say about this. Let 'em wallow in their own stupidity, and they'll come around. Sometimes, like children, you have to let someone learn the hard way, and they'll never do it again. :)
:(
"You'll shoot your eye out! You'll shoot your eye out!"
Side note - anyone else lose their login cookie this morning only forced to log back in and fill out a captcha? Weirdness. Worse, I saw no option for the visually impaired to log in either. Tsk tsk tsk....guys, come on. I'm not meaning to toss flames around, but you've got to provide some sort of opt-out link for those who can't see your captcha images.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
The premise of the submitter only holds if ALL of the search engines hang tough. If only Google tells em to go piss up a rope, they lose most of the news sources and readers start using someone else. One of the failing search sites will pay (because for them the cost will be mimimal.... at the time) and with luck become successful. Then they give all the profits to the news providers and become a .bomb and we repeat the cycle until they are all dead except Google who only derives a small income from banner ads on Google News. See online music P2pP sites become DRMed music providers and then die for a template.
Democrat delenda est
Sounds like rounds for suing the search engine for lost revenue to me !
"Your honor, by refusing to pay our fee the search engine is not only depriving us of our fair due, but also giving an unfair competitive advantage to our competitors. We demand that they add us to their search database and pay our very reasonable fee for accessing our pages."
And if anyone mods me funny, well... that's one naive fellow, then.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
These news sites are taking the point of view that not all publicity is good publicity. If they don't want their content to be aggregated into a section of another (and very popular) web site that they feel is encroaching on their business, then who are we to say that they shouldn't try to take action? If google decide to put ads up on Google News, then they'd be making money from others' content, why shouldn't they want and get a piece of that pie?
You mean like robots.txt?
This sounds like willful ignorance. All the search engines mention it as the method to avoid having particular content indexed. They might not read RFCs but a quick peek at the help pages on the search engines in question would've answered this (and squashed the lawsuit) in no time.
My spoon is too big.
Instead, it'd be the content provider paying the search engine. I can't imagine a scenario where the webpage is so valuable that the economics would work this way. Further, I don't understand their concern about indexing content. It's not hard at all to block or steer search engines. It strikes me that these publishing companies are either ignorant of the value provided by external search engines and/or delusional about the value of content that isn't indexed by a popular search engine.
Let's just shut down the net. Damn thing has been nothing but trouble since the beginning. We probably should outlaw all communications that don't provide more income for the content "owners". That means no more printing, writing, singing, painting, talking...anything. If we don't want to give all our money to these damn people, we should shut the hell up, right?
And put in your earplugs
put on your eyeshades
you know where to put the cork...
Oops, there goes another violation.
What?
"What is required is a standardized way of describing the permissions which apply to a Web site or Web page so that it can be decoded by a dumb machine without the help of an expensive lawyer."
They already have this. It's called the robot.txt file. You can use it to tell search bots not to index you. This just seems to be a richer permissions model, that includes things like caching and excerpting options.
In the longer term, I agree that this hurts content providers more than Google. Overall, it makes the search index less useful. However, it makes the content unfindable. Content that uses this will simply be replaced by content that does not.
Why would Google pay to provide better search results for content? It would make more sense for them to pay for the content direct so that they could have an exclusive. Or for content to pay to appear in the search results, like with Yahoo.
But is it really "dumb"? I don't have any doubt that these media outfits have very talented economists, financialists, and lawyers working for them. These are people who can accurately predict what will happen if the media companies were to take this course of action. They know how consumers will respond, and they know how it will affect their company's bottom line.
So while it may seem "dumb" to you, I think that many manyears of analysis have gone into this situation, performed by very bright individuals with a variety of backgrounds. And collectively, they have realized that this may very well be the most effective and profitable course of action for their company to take.
If a newspaper wants to make money, they'll set the "tax" low enough so most search engines will just pay the fee. They'll do this because they know at least one of their major competitors will do the same, especially those competitors who are ad-supported.
If a newspaper wants to be delisted, they can charge a very high fee.
It's like the 19th-century import duties in the USA. Small taxes on imports were a large part of Washington's tax base. However, to protect American producers, some items had huge taxes. Washington didn't make much money off of those taxes.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is just the latest in an attempt to survive for the traditional newspapaper. Back when the web first started remember how many newpapers refused to be online at all or required registration hurdles to prevent "linking", after enough bad PR and dropping subscription levels, most reluctantly accepted the web and started to regain credability. I have a newspaper salesperson that comes to my door at least once a month, the last time he was here we argued about the value of the newspaper, he mentioned classified, i mentioned craigs list, he mentioned local news I mentioned kanascity.com, for every "exclusive" I could easily counter with 2-3 web alternatives that were not only more up to date but also allowed a certain level of interactivity. Print newspapers just cant compete.
There has been a huge content shift with many newspapers mainly due to the readiness of up to the minute news online. Many papers now rely on their columnists and unique local features to survive, some have managed to flourish but most will never be as important to their respective cities as they once were, for a publisher that hurts. They all still want to maintain their mini-empires which frankly is impossible in the modern information age. Limiting their content will do nothing but limit the views to their content, further exasperating the very problem they feel they are facing.
- The Managing Staff Of The New York Titantic ^H^H^H^H^H^H mes
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Think about it, search engines make the internet go round. Well, not really.. we could in many ways survive without search engines, but it would be inefficient and problematic.
Content owners that try to make somebody pay to search for their content are going to find that the desire to find that content "miraculously" dries up.
Things might eventually change a bit in how pay sites are indexed so their content isn't made free to all, but as you'll find with the companies that got one leg up on Google this time, they will be the ones that end up suffering in the long run.
Search Engines are your friends... they drive content to your site. The game is how to get the traffic to your site and make money on it once it gets there. Not trying to charge people to help bring you money.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
There will always be smaller news outlets who want to get additional daily viewers. They want Google to direct people to their site. If the large news organizations want to opt out, there will always be someone to take their place.
When you look at Google news, you see a brief summary of the news article and then when you click on it, you are directed to that website. The website will earn revenue from their advertising. If they have an attractive and useful website, people may go to their site directly. New unique users. Often I find that after I've read an article I found through a search, I will go to the homepage of the site (through the hacking known as modifiying the URL) and look at their other articles. Most websites would pay Google to have links to them, now some sites want to Google to pay them? Google will just ignore them and their competitors will prosper.
Doesn't slashdot do something similar. Someone reads something interesting on the web and suddenly there's a link to it. I'm sure if some sites wanted to charge a fee to slashdot, they would promptly be ignored.
The idea that comes to mind is revenue stream. Someone working for the news organizations came up with the thought "Google has lots of money, let's take it" and so it began.
BTW, the Belgium newspapers, when asked about why they didn't just use robots.txt, stated that it should not be on their shoulders to have to keep others from misuing their copyrighted work.
What this translates to is that not only are they too lazy to spend 5 minutes updating their site so that Google doesn't index it, but then they fail to understand the benefit that they obtain from Search engines. Which in reality is probably quite great.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
This would work fine - *if every content provider did it*. (when I say work fine I mean how the content providers would like it to work.
i.e. Lets say The Guardian the Independent charged a royalty for indexing certain articles. and the Times didn't then when a person searches for something that would under normal circumstances return all 3 content providers articles (say you are searching on current news - or better an archived new story - say the search is for "Falklands War Newspaper Headlines" or something. Instead of getting all three papers returning a result you would get just the one from the times.
Now assuming not everyone knows that certain papers charge search engines for permission to index their content, it will simply look like the Guardian and the Independent didn't report the Falklands War - or whatever you searched for.
Repeatedly this may even turn customers against their traditional sales, especially with more and more people using multiple online papers and buying a paper copy. I mean if you start reading the Times on-line everyday as it is the only remaining fully indexed paper, are you more or less likely to buy it when you decide to get a real copy? I guess it would do wonders for international brand recognition too - I mean if you are not indexed for common searches who is going to know who you are enough to trust you for the occasional bit where you have allowed yourself to be indexed.
Really this is all about the fact that search engines generate advertising revenue for themselves using others content, content providers are now looking and saying -
"hey Google makes X million dollars by directing people to my site and advertising for my competitors, it indexes my content (goggle images / news etc..) so people aren't coming directly to me, maybe If i threaten the source of their content they will pay me and I can finally make some money from this inter web thing without having to actually charge people ourselves!"
I guess this is an attempt to get at the revenue they assumed that they would get from selling content to their visitors directly through online subscriptions which didn't work. (unless you were a specialist or exclusive provider - such as companies providing financial information / stock prices / adult material etc..). It didn't work because others didn't charge, why pay for access to ITV news or CNN online (if they charged) when the BBC or some other organisation offered the same stories (with a different editorial slant..) for free?
What they should be saying is how can I get a search engine to get as many people to my site as possible where I can then try and sell whatever services or exclusive content I want! after all the more page hits the more (theoretically at least) conversions.
Anyway - let them try and charge a royalty - or enforce their rights regarding copyright and prevent thee search engines from making money by including their content in their search engines, it will only harm them.
The internet really is a level playing field, anyone with a good site can get listed on a search engine and get hits - hopefully achieving whatever it is they are trying to do, why do some people want to change it so that it benefits them more? all that will happen is that it will break the way the internet works, or is perceived and damage their own web activities. Plus some content providers simply will never do this (probably at least) the BBC in the UK certainly would find it difficult, so too will other public service information providers (I assume) too so I guess there will always be at least one or two news site out there.
I know I have focused on newspapers here (and that does appear to be the gist FTA) but providers of other content such as music, video, software etc. are in the same position. Problem is the internet using public like getting stuf for free, and probably wont pay for something if they cant have access to it for free for at least a while first.
Ah well, (By the way I'm absolutely
First, we must remember that not all web sites are found through Google. When was the last time you did a search for Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com? Sure, it's nice to be listed but hardly deadly if they weren't - they already have the name recognition.
Now, there is a legitimate downside to being listed on Google News - all of your competitor news sources are also listed - right next to you. If the New York Times runs a piece from the Associated Press, I can see that the Des Moines Register runs the same story, why go to the big name source? The NYT has spent decades and millions of dollars building their reputation and get listed next to other, less-known papers. It serves to dillute their name and reputation.
For those of you convinced that you can get plenty of news from other places and that these print publications can adjust to new business models or die, are you crazy?!? One nice thing about having a huge newspaper is that they generally try to verify their stories, or at least avoid making things up. (I said generally...) When your paper owns buildings and huge printing presses and is sold at every newsstand your reputation means something. If you are a few people working out of a basement, then who cares? As long as you got people reading, you are happy. I like the idea of responsible journalism. It may be less than it was, but if I see it in the NYT I am inclinded to believe it. If it is in some tabloid, I am inclined to not believe it. In a strictly Internet world, how do you tell the difference?
I hope that a good arrangement is made between the press and the search engines, but I don't think the survival of the press is based on them being indexed by Google.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
There have been a dozen stories and lawsuits over this crap already. Why the hell hasn't robots.txt come out in court yet? I have a hard time believing the lawyers defending against this are so incompetent that thery wouldn't someone with a clue on the stand to explain that the system is already there and the people aren't using it. In fact a smart lawyer would counter sue because the system IS already there and they failed to use it and instead wasted the courts time. Imagine (diddly do diddly do slashdot analogy time) you sue the auto manufacturer for not including a safety harness in their vehicles because you got injured while not wearing your already installed seat belt.
Or maybe there is something more to this than the typical slashdot "duh robots.txt" response...who knows...but I really would like a meaningful answer about if its something more...if not someone needs to make this shit stop! Maybe these places are using robots.txt and the search engines are ignoring it, or someone is using it wrong, or maybe we should get together and write a nice pretty page on robots.txt and submit it to all the news stations as a "new innovative" way to protect online content...maybe they will get it then...and then we can all laugh as all those sites fall off the net because no search engine can find em.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Isn't there an implicit assumption that indexing every conceivable shred of garbage on the net is a service? Isn't there a tacit understanding that anything useful, or interesting, or commercial will be herded behind tents and flogged by carnival barkers (thinking of Boing Boing or a score of others) for dimes at a time? Isn't there an immodest presumption that this activity shall be passed off as "scholarship" (such as requiring a disambiguation page at Wikipedia to disentangle Omar Khayyam, Persian poet, from Omar Khayyam, suicide bomber?) I have no objections to godless capitalism whatsoever, so long as it does not turn into Mordac, the Preventer of Information Technology. Let the shakedown ... er ... shakeout begin!
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Aren't websites not sing the robots exclusion essentially in the public domain?
It would be totally unlike a music CD where it's not free to download, hence a site couldn't necessarily crawl and put it up there for everyone to see.
Since the website was free for anyone to see in the first place, no harm done. Unless the site requires a subscription and if Noogling that bypasses it, there really isn't anything that can be done I think.
"Now won't the provider actually lose readers since their articles won't be locatable by search anymore?"
Yes.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
How about Congress authorizes creation of the CCCA (Content Creators of America) as an "opt out" platform under which there is a basic royalty scheme for search engine to pay content creators when their items arise to a certain level in their displayed results?
Allow content creators to "opt out".
It's all about transforming a classic technology monopolist (unavoidable given technology facilitated increasing returns to scale) holding court over a decentralized competitive supply market, into a classic duopoly.
As a matter of fact, the status quo is a significant disincentive to content creation. The duopoly model would be better.
All these points of view are predicated on the fact the content providers should be grateful to have their content placed in a search engine. Well, these people have explicitly said that they are not grateful, and that they don't want it to happen.
Any 'content holder' that whines needs the same thing done to them with no option for reindexing without paying enough to bleed them white
What sort of attitude is that? You see, that's exactly why people get fed up. A search engine could not exist as a commercial entity if there were nothing to search. Original content needs to be generated somewhere, and these people are saying that content is generate for the benefit of their site, not for Google's (or MSN or Yahoo et. al.). They are saying that the ad revenue for viewing headlines on the site should go to them, not to Google. That the terms of viewing the site should be set by themselves. That they own copyright where they say they do. And, since they originate the content, I agree with them.
Cheers,
Ian
Draw gun. Aim at foot. Apply pressure to trigger. Reload and repeat as needed.
No. Regular readers will visit the site regardless of indexing by google news.
Eventual readers will keep visiting whatever gets to be in the frontpage at the time they load it.
Many companies with supposed "very talented economists, financialists, and lawyers working for them" have done things that failed. Look at Sony and their rootkits? In 1986 many "very talented economists, financialists, and lawyers" commented buying a PC software only company, Microsoft, would be a very bad investment. Many people said the same thing about a company that sells over priced coffee -- Star Bucks. A very talented manager at HP ridiculed Steve Wozniak when he designed a personal computer.
Fight Spammers!
Regards from the web (something which you obviously don't understand).
Wether this is stupid to do or not should be entirely up to the copyright holder.
:-(
I should not tell NOT to index my side, I should tell to DO index my site.
Not opt-out, opt-in, just like anything else, if possible.
In every other business opt-in is desired by all here, except when it concernes Google, because then it it handy for us.
Nice double standard.
Go on, moderate me into oblovion, I have Karma to burn.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You suggest that Google should deal with anyone who threatens their profits by removing them from their index, essentially a death sentence for any online business. (Google has a 54% market share [Wikipedia], probably the more web-savvy half that consume the most) This is an apalling suggestion. I very much hope they don't do anything like this - but how could we tell? Business go to any lengths to beat their competitors, I'd wager Google receive hundreds of emails offering ridiculous values of currency in return for bumping up one site past another on pagerank. Thousands of sites will offer to do this for you, and needless to say if they do work, then it's by spamming.
You can't assume Google will always act ethically. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Scandal is inevitable, be it privacy, corruption or censorship. The way we use Google has eeroded the web's greatest quality, that of the hyperlink to render all sites equal. The hierachy of pagerank means sites beyond the first ten results are often ignored. This influence is dangerous.
There's so much talk on Slashdot of Microsoft abusing their stolen monopoly. Yet we've handed Google one. People blindly swear allegiance to them, defending their more questionable actions that if another company perpretrated, they'd certainly condemn. Honestly, when did last use another search engine? When Google's broken, are you even able to find one?
"What is required is a standardized way of describing the permissions which apply to a Web site or Web page so that it can be decoded by a dumb machine without the help of an expensive lawyer."
They already have this. It's called the robot.txt file. You can use it to tell search bots not to index you. This just seems to be a richer permissions model, that includes things like caching and excerpting options.
You don't expect expensive lawyers to understand dumb machines, do you? It's much more profitable to make obfuscated law than obfuscated code.
They certainly can ignore robots.txt, but I don't think that any major search engine does; Google obeys both no-spider and no-cache restrictions, as does the Internet Archive.
When you get right down to it, a court order is basically a request too, it just has some more weight behind it, if you happen to live in that court's jurisdiction.
I think that a robots.txt file would be something like a "No Trespassing" sign; if you had one, and then you were cached or spidered and went to court, it would give you a big advantage because it would show that the search engine / database willfully ignored the standard request not to be included in their system.
Anyway; you're right that any system can ignore robots.txt -- you can test this yourself if you want just by using curl. Last time I checked it had an optional flag to ignore it, and would further do lots of other fun things like insert random pauses between page requests, to make its robotic nature a little less obvious to the webserver. This in and of itself isn't illegal, but depending on how you used it, it might be.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Don't make the same mistake as AOL did in the 90's.
on second thoughts...
Perhaps the record companies and musicians union might ask the RIAA to "cease and desist"?
SOmeone has lost the plot here. Must be me!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Royalties to index a site for a search engine. This is the same chicken-shit thinking that causes cities to pass hotel room taxes. This era we live in where everybody has to make a buck on everybody elses back is the main reason life is so miserable these days. I would love it if search engines shut down for a week. Nobody goes anywhere on the net that they don't have the I.P.address for. Lets run the net like the old BBS days and see just how loud the little bitches squawk.No hits, No ad revenues, No nuthin, just a bunch of geeks gathering in well worn little niches in cyberspace and no commerce. We rule the internet. It is the way it is because we needed much of what it has become. If we want to stop this crap from happening we have to pile scorn upon dickheads and embarass them, shame them into being useful and harmless same as we need to do to our elected officials who do not listen, embarass and shame the bastards into quitting or submitting.
Ok, fine, content owners are entitled to royalties from Google.
...as does Jeff Bezos' mum and grandma.
And when writing a story about me, or my company, I deserve royalties too. Sure, you might argue that publicity is valuable, but I say that without ME and my circumstances, these content owners would have nothing to write about.
And, obviously, my dear old mum deserves royalties too. After all, without her genetic contributions, I couldn't exist, couldn't do anything news worthy, couldn't be the basis of a content owner's story.
And lets not forget about Grandma. And great-grandma.
And of course, I am writing this comment on a MacBook, so its only fair that Apple gets a piece of any slashdot ad revenues generated by people reading this.
And, obviously, those interested in clicking on the slashdot ads are using Amazon's patented "click" technology, so they deserve a cut too.
barack to the future?
If they want to shoot themselves in the foot, we have no place in stopping them.
An organisation representing French and German speaking newspapers in Belgium has won a court order forcing Google to stop indexing these journals. They also forced Google to post the order on its homepage in belgium: http://www.google.be/ Here the address of these enlightened people: http://www.presscopyrights.be/ Lucky I speak Flemish and NEVER read these newspapers anyway. Nothing is lost, I assure you. Only a bunch of isolated people will get even more isolated since any news of them will totally fall into oblivion.
Sounds like they've discovered how robots.txt works.
Being anonymous is not cowardice.
what the filthy bastards need is their own cartel - the Published Articles Association of America. they are never going to extort money from google when there are limitless deals to be struck with all the article providers of the world. at least with a solid bunch of the biggest news sites they may have some bargaining power with those theiving search engines types. much the same as mtv thieves from the RIAA by aggregating their video clips. damn i should get into the evil genius business.
This is one of those ideas that sounds good in the board room and eventually reaches daylight because no one has the nads to stand up and say it's a really dumb idea that will ultimately be counter-productive. I run into the management group-think attitude all the time. And the dummer it is, the more likely there's some hard-headed, gung-ho upper-level manager determined to ram it through. As if being tough, determined and dogmatic magically transforms it into a better idea.
Almost as dumb as charging content providers for faster delivery pipes. Only that stupid idea had a lot of high paid lobbyists behind it and government-funded studies that echo how great for consumers it would be. Perhaps the telcos are desperate to ram it through now just in case they lose their majority this fall.
I don't know if anyone else sees this, but it seems lately I've run into more managers absolutely convinced of their own "rightness", even when common sense and good practice would dictate another course. There has always been some of that in corporate structures, but in the last five years it seems to have gotten much, much worse. Winning seems to be more important than being accurate.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This just seems to be a richer permissions model, that includes things like caching and excerpting options.
At least the caching directive also exists: <meta name="robots" content="noarchive">
anyone who charges "royalties" to places like google news will learn how it really works very quickly.
here's the formula i worked out for the way it works right now:
(site advertisment click probability * click price * readers) + (subscription signup probability * subscription price * readers) = revenue
this is how it will work if they charge royalties:
(royalties per click * 0 + (site advertisment click probability * click price * 0 + (subscription signup probability * subscription price * 0) = revenue = 0
-- lol pwned
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Big $$$ online providers desperately want to create the monopolies they enjoy in city-wide newspapers, radio, tv advertising. Ultimately it comes down to this: Who gets the ad revenue? If the "yercity gazette" knows that ONLY its site will have the ability to present its own table of contents, guess where people in yercity have to go to see what's happening in town this weekend? Even bringing up the main page of the website will generate revenue, where a google listing doesn't (at least, not for the gazette's publishers). If the majority of the news services (i.e., 3 or more) lobby congress to enact a forced royalty, they kill two birds with one stone: The search engines ad revenue becomes the publisher's; and the small-time up-and-coming competitors are out of business, since the "cap" will be set high enough to be a significant barrier to entry.
And then the web will suck just as bad as local radio, tv, and newspapers do.
Other big $$$ bidniz benefits too - cuz now they'll have a bigger hammer to shut down websites that tell the TRUTH about their products and propaganda. And politicians will likewise benefit. WHo loses? Anyone without a billion bucks.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
A typical academic library spends at least six figures to get the (free) Google News equivalent for peer-reviewed journals -- which usually charge to have their contents indexed -- in the form of subscription research databases... many of which don't even provide the full text of articles.
With the advent of Google Scholar and Microsoft Live Academic this may be changing (hopefully), but cases like this show its a constant tug of war between the profiteers and those that support the free distribution of information -- an old idea that would never get off the gound today.
(These are notes I jotted down as fast as I could as I was listening in on one of their meetings) -Unsold books actually somewhat decorative... charge Barnes&Nob. a "decoration rental fee"? Interior design fee? -When content creators drive cars around, they're kinda expressing themselves... should charge oil companies money to put gas in our cars -Remember to think outside the box...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
the only way i could see the publisher's plan to work is if they get all (or at least all significant) content providers on to their program; essentially creating a content shortage for the search engines and increasing its value. then they can play the different search engine companies against each other.
but if a few content providers 'cheat' - that is, make private side deals with one or more search engines, then the royalty system will very likley break down.
one way search engines could break the content providers' monopoly on content would be to boycott the big players. deny them the links to customers that search engines currently provide for free. when a content provider's web site stops getting hits and their advertisers get angry, then they'd be more willing to deal on the search engines' terms.the question is, would we, the public, spank the search engines like google if google suddently decieded to boycott a content provider such as cnn.
also remember, search engine companies also want content to be a little hard to get or cost a little money, the idea being that this would make it hard for new, possibly less well funded search engine companies to get a foothold in the market.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
> Moral, as always: don't get greedy.
You took the wrong lesson. The true moral is to BE greedy. Greed is about grabbing all the loot you can, but does not require being stupid about it. Doing something that will hurt your haul isn't greedy, it is stupid. Which is why enlightened self interest is the best way to go. When you dig down far enough almost everything immoral is also stupid.
Democrat delenda est
When you search, Google finds and lists the text of the article.
... ... to aircraft parameter estimation"
But when you follow the link, you get a different page which says 'Buy Article for $10'.
Worst offenders are IEEE (Institute for Exorbitantly Expensive Engineers).
Google for this: "aircraft site:ieee.org"
You get this:
[PDF] Nonlinear estimation of aircraft models for on-line control
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
"application to state and parameter estimation for aircraft.
ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/7416/20151/00931241.pdf
Now click on the link:
Instead no article but page with this comes up:
"IEEE Article Purchase Users
Enter the username and password you received when you purchased the document. Once you access the document, you have 72 hours to download the Full Text PDF. Please complete the online Technical Support Form if you need assistance."
So they show one thing for Google, and you something else. Google has shut down other web sites for this, but many Academic journals do it.
What sucks about the IEEE is it's supposed to be a professional association. But they get articles and standards other people write, slap their copyright on it, and charge $$$. Many "Standards" once they ratify it (usually developed outside as open standards) suddenly become so expensive that only corporations can afford it.
For other Academic Journals, same idea. They're run by companies. They only publish articles if the author agrees to give the journal the copyright. After that, the author isn't even allowed to distribute it through their web page.
I think this deserves a thread in its own right.
So let me get this clear. Somebody is willing to charge for the ability to automagically (like using tools/algorithyms) read the content that is otherwise freely aviable?
Like f.e. I have a website where I display something and I tell:
1. You can use my website.
2. You cannot run web crawlers over it.
???
It does not make any sense at all. If you want your content to be paid and protected use well established facility like, you know, user authorization. Make the users login with their own well paid username/password to access content. This way no crawler will access it because it does not know the freaking password. Now if some legitimate users run crawlers (or it would seem like) on your site you can block them - it is your own content and you can block whoever you wish (just make sure it is in terms of usage).
So basically somebody wants to get money. He wants his content to be public (if he doesn't he should lock it) but also he wants somebody to pay him for indexing of his content.
Waaaayyy stupid.
They want to be able to make a buck off of it too.
No, seriously, hope many free things are out there (google search indexing, GPL software, etc) that some jerk has to try and think of a way to break the system in order to get a free ride and make a profit? Seems like we're seeing more and more of that nowadays
Google can take your content and make pages containing ads. You can not take Google's content (RSS feeds, for instance) and make pages containing ads
If you let them.... there are plenty of standards (robots.txt) or other methods to prevent your content being scraped. There are also plenty of sites that aren't indexed or at least not fully indexed by google.
Google's informal corporate motto never was "Do no evil," rather it is "Don't be evil," (reference) which carries an entirely different set of implications with it. In the case of China, Google decided that to completely deprive the country of its information would be more evil than to voluntarily censor the government-forbidden sites, at least for now. I can't say that I agree with Google completely, either, but there's no need to misrepresent their stance via straw man.
The same is true of every other corporation in the planet, and is the reason why capitalism absolutely needs a strong central government: it is the only thing capable of keeping the coporations in line.
Both corporations and governments can be corrupt, however because government has arms, when governments abuse their power they are more dangerous than corporations. The only way corporations can get as much power is through government. The only way to control both is with small not big government, and with a strong judiciary.
This is also the reason why globalization will end in a disaster
Globalization, which is a tool, is like any other tool. It can be used for good or bad. If it wasn't for globalization groups of people from different nations wouldn't be able to coordinate or work together. All of those demonstrations and protests whenever the World Bank, IMF, and WTO meet all happen because of globalization.
FalconShould there be a Law?
There's so much talk on Slashdot of Microsoft abusing their stolen monopoly. Yet we've handed Google one. People blindly swear allegiance to them, defending their more questionable actions that if another company perpretrated, they'd certainly condemn. Honestly, when did last use another search engine? When Google's broken, are you even able to find one?
We don't all use Google all the tyme, as the stats from wiki you posted show. Sure I may use Google most of the tyme but I also use other SEs as well, like About, Alta Vista, Open Directory, and Mooter. About has good sections on Anthropology and Archeology as well as Photography, all of which I am interested in. Actually it was when I searched Google in these that I found them, Google returned them. I've found Alta Vista is good for science and technology, better than Google in some areas. And when Google doesn't give me what I'm looking for Mooter and the Open Directory sometimes will. I don't use Gmail either, instead I use Yahoo! Mail.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Google and other like search engines do drive traffic through indexing. They cant prove otherwise. Any loss of consumer interest in thier publication is a direct result in thier ability to produce good copy, content and stay up with the times. Nothing more, nothing less. They are just looking for someone to blame. However, another intersting areas that may possbily affected are any RSS feed services (other than Google, Yahoo etc..)which provide a headling and or mini synops of article. This is almost reminicent of what TimeWarner recently did: Got their panties all up in a bunch over YouTube and many others, posting their SNL music video spoofing "The Chronicles of Narnia". They threatened everybody under the sun, until they pulled their heads out of thier @#$%&s and realized that it drove traffic and interest. Go Figure!
Barnes and Noble is a "search engine" - you go into their stores, search for books, and buy what you need. I don't remember why, but B+N started publishing their own classics and other books recently, bringing back high quality late-19th century translations to the shelves, and basically telling content providers (book publishers) that they wouldn't be messed with. Google ought to scan out of print books and newspapers, and put that info on a super-portal, and ignore newspapers, publishers, etc.
These news sites are taking the point of view that not all publicity is good publicity. If they don't want their content to be aggregated into a section of another (and very popular) web site that they feel is encroaching on their business, then who are we to say that they shouldn't try to take action? If google decide to put ads up on Google News, then they'd be making money from others' content, why shouldn't they want and get a piece of that pie?
Simple, if they don't want to be indexed all they need to do is to use a robots text file. Of course if not then they don't want someone finding them either. I have no pity for anyone who puts up a website and then complains when a search engine links to the sit. If they want to keep it private then either don't put it on the web or put it behind a login page. However nothing is stopping them from either putting ads on their own pages or from starting their own search engine.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If a newspaper wants to make money, they'll set the "tax" low enough so most search engines will just pay the fee. They'll do this because they know at least one of their major competitors will do the same, especially those competitors who are ad-supported.
If a newspaper wants to make money then they want to be found. Charging search engines for listing their website is a good way not to be found. IF I were an SE and someone came along with a website and they said they wanted me to pay them for linking to their website I'd go to their competition and say "Hey, do you want free traffic to your website while your competition doesn't get any?
FalconShould there be a Law?
"Reading it in the bathroom, bed, etc."
And I'd say:
"I have a printer".
"Bird cages"
"I have no birds."
"Fish and Chips"
"Good, I don't like Fish and Chips."
"Training the dog"
"I only have a wolf that lives in the woods."
"Reading the sports while she reads Lifestyle and junior reads the funnies"
"I don't read the sports, but even if I did I have three computers networked. And my news is more timely."
FalconShould there be a Law?
Lunacy abounds.
And on the Internet...
Lunacy abounds abundantly.
Want proof?
RIAA
MPAA
Is there more to say?
bye bye those "content providers" who demand royalties for their content.
Others will continue to publish and to be indexed. For the others, there's always paid advertisement.
Google are correct in asserting that what Google News does is lawful, and whether you want to call it "publishing" or not is a semantic choice that doesn't change this clear fact. (OK, Belgium may be unusual, I don't know, but generally across the world, what Google News does is lawful.)
As for 'google cache' of pages, well the publishers should get used to the idea of caches, the internet would not function without them, and google's service is useful and I doubt it results in people browsing google cache in preference over the original site.