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Content Owners to Charge Royalties for Searching?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pieces-of-the-pie dept.

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?"

2 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. About robot.txt by HatchedEggs · · Score: 1, Redundant

    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.
  2. Since when did the world work for Google? by mccalli · · Score: 0, Redundant

    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