EU Publishers Want a Law To Control Online News

suraj.sun writes with news that European publishers are also seeking ways to "protect" their content from the big bad intertubes. Their rant, termed the "Hamburg Declaration," asks the government to step in with a legislative fix. "Most of the statements in the relatively short declaration, which will surely take its place among thousands of other European declarations on intellectual property and other matters that have come out over the past few years, hinge on the idea that 'universal access to news' does not equal 'free.' In this respect, the publishers want to maintain the democratic ideal of a 'fourth estate' that provides news to an informed citizenry, while simultaneously restricting access to that news to those who can pay for it directly. What sets this declaration apart from the other Hamburg declarations out there, or from the various Geneva declarations or Berlin declarations, is that this one is intended to give the publishers' favorite solution to the news-stealing problem, the Automated Content Access Protocol, the force of law."

Comments

This won't Work

[dmacleod808]

people will gravitate towards free. If they go pay... people will just go elsewhere its simple as that, law or no law.

Re:This won't Work

[RDW]

'people will gravitate towards free. If they go pay... people will just go elsewhere its simple as that, law or no law.'

Well, I think we should at least consider the terms of their proposal carefully. Check out the full text below:

"Hamburg Declaration regarding intellectual property rights

The Internet offers immense opportunities to professional journalism - but only if the basis for profitability remains secure throughout the digital channels of distribution. This is currently [ERROR! ACAP VIOLATION IN PROGRESS! YOU HAVE EXCEEDED THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF CHARACTERS ALLOCATED TO THIS NEWS AGGREGATOR! PLEASE DEPOSIT EUR 50 TO READ THE NEXT 100 WORDS OF THIS ARTICLE!]"

Re:This won't Work

[DriedClexler]

Insightful? He didn't even figure out how to circumvent the ACAP limit.

Rot13 next time, dude.

If you don't want it indexed, then either

[Amazing Quantum Man]

1. Don't put it on the web
2. Learn how to use robots.txt

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[MozeeToby]

You misunderstand their argument. Of course they want it indexed, just look at how many thousands of people look at their news everyday that wouldn't if it weren't indexed. They desperately want that readership... to pay them for the service. They aren't saying "we don't want people to read us", they're saying "we want everyone who reads us to pay for it".

Saying robots.txt is like telling a hungry 2 year old that they can't have a Popsicle and should go eat a green beans instead. Yeah, the green beans will make them not hungry, but it's the damn Popsicle that they want (incidentally, you'll get about the same response from either group).

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[BikeHelmet]

FYI, robots.txt can be ignored by anything that chooses to ignore it. In fact, many web crawlers have caused problems because of this. If directory "huge_downloads_in_here" is marked to disallow, it's annoying when a web crawler starts downloading everything in there 10 times per day.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[sakdoctor]

Saying robots.txt is like telling a hungry 2 year old that they can't have a Popsicle and should go eat a green beans instead.

In many parts of Asia, green bean popsicles are popular with all ages. Where is your god now?

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[TubeSteak]

In many parts of Asia, green bean popsicles are popular with all ages. Where is your god now?

Asia is already full of copyright scofflaws and I forsee a huge business opportunity for whatever Asian country is willing to host search engines and tell the publishing industry to go fuck themselves.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[Korin43]

But the biggest search engines follow it, and that's what's important.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[Runaway1956]

Robots text? Strange, I would have thought they use radio.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[blahplusplus]

" they're saying "we want everyone who reads us to pay for it"."

The problem is no one wants to pay them, i.e. there is no market for it anymore because of the internet.

I find it humorous that people chant "Free market" and "choice for the consumer" but suddenly backtrack into collectivism under the rubric of property rights, trying to enforce something on people that the clearly do not want by manufacturing artificial monopolies (laws), even if the law won't have any it still shows how ridiculous people are.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[Beetle B.]

You misunderstand their argument. Of course they want it indexed, just look at how many thousands of people look at their news everyday that wouldn't if it weren't indexed. They desperately want that readership... to pay them for the service. They aren't saying "we don't want people to read us", they're saying "we want everyone who reads us to pay for it".

Not sure why they can't do this.

Just post indexing info and excerpts for free, and put the rest behind a pay-wall. Google News will still carry it, and everyone (except readers like me) will be happy.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[cthulu_mt]

Where is your god now?

Right behind you.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[shentino]

It's just plain selfishness. Economic theory is based on the assumption that people are greedy and will advance their own self interests. Sadly, it's a sound theory exactly BECAUSE people are greedy.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[blahplusplus]

It goes beyond just selfishness, the whole point of the free market is the buyer chooses of his own will, making a law to force people to pay for something that they don't want and did not choose freely is the anti-thesis of that.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[shentino]

Selfishness however is what makes corporate fatcats lobby for such laws in the first place.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[polar red]

it's a sound theory

Economic theory is a bunch of inapplicable hogwash, because it is also based on the assumption : total information available to all players.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[rtb61]

Not really true. Only the minority are truly greedy, those that no matter how much they have always want more. The majority truly do share and care, whilst the greedy minority try to hide their psychopathy behind the claim that the everyone else that struggles for a comfortable place to live, healthy and satisfying food for the family, a future for their children basically trying live healthy and happy life with good neighbours, is somehow greedy, a real lie.

In this case the fourth estate who sold 'truthiness' to the highest bidder better suck it up, because if the fourth estate is truly protected than it is the truth that the fourth estate can produce that will be protected not the corporations that profit by the abuse of the truth. So protect the 'truth' in the fourth estate, corporations that hide, distort, and downright fabricate the 'truth' should be punished for the harm caused by that deceit, it is the fourth estate that is protected not mass media news as entertainment and advertising, in fact that version of it and it's commentators, corporate talking heads should specifically be targeted, prosecuted and imprisoned for the harm they wilfully caused to fourth estate based upon 'true' psychopathic greed.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[Nazlfrag]

Every time new media comes around the print world goes into armageddon mode. First it was radio they waged war on, then television and now the intertubes. The doomsayers who see threats instead of opportunities shouldn't be in the creative business anyway and deserve to be culled. The weak will die off, the strong will adapt and prosper and balance in the force shall be restored.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[shentino]

Not always. Knowledge is accounted for. Such as: Moral hazard in the insurance industry, information itself being a commodity, as well as how price discrimination can exploit how three different grades of green beans are actually the same. The FTC actually had a case about this, since the consumers did NOT have complete information.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[julesh]

Not sure why they can't do this.

Just post indexing info and excerpts for free, and put the rest behind a pay-wall.

The problem there is they want the search engines to index based on the full content of the article, but don't want them to quote chunks out of that content. This can't be achieved without a fundamental change in how search engines work, which is what they want legislated. They ignore, of course, the last 50 years of "fair use" legal history and the fact that even countries that don't currently have a fair use exemption (e.g. the UK) are leaning towards introducing one in the near future.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[Phoghat]

Bill of Rights

Number one, with a bullet. Number 2? also with a bullet.

Re:If you don't want it indexed, then either

[polar red]

actually, i meant : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_informationperfect information, not total information.
also see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics#Criticism_of_assumptions

Nevertheless, prominent mainstream economists such as Keynes[157] and Joskow, along with heterodox economists, have observed that much of economics is conceptual rather than quantitative, and difficult to model and formalize quantitatively.

What garbage

[Dr_Ken]

I hope Obama doesn't buy into this stuff. The "fourth estate" has enough clout already.

Re:What garbage

[Freetardo Jones]

And it's doing even worse at all those things in relation to the current one. The current regime went from zero to corrupt in a time span that would make even Dick Cheney's head spin.

Re:What garbage

[Darkness404]

Bush didn't appoint a ton of "czars" that were accountable to no one. Yes, the Bush administration had a lot of flaws, but Obama'a administration looks to be expanding on them.

Re:What garbage

[Freetardo Jones]

really???? worse than bush???

Yes. Multi-trillion dollar deficits, continued flushing of money down the toilet on bailouts to shitty companies, pardoning the telecos for helping in illegally wiretap citizens.

cough, cough... ENRON... cough...

cough, cough... GM... cough...

Re:What garbage

[Freetardo Jones]

Oh and just as a further note, Enron's fraud and corruption happened during the Clinton Administration. Their big pump-and-dump happened in the last year of Clinton being in office so lumping that failure on Bush is pretty unfair and disingenuous.

Re:What garbage

[Tom Smith]

millions needlessly dead, war over large parts of the planet, mass alienation and destabilisation, worldwide economic collapse...

i don't think any politician at all is "good", but you'll have to get up pretty early each morning and put in some very long hours to be actually WORSE than bush...

Re:What garbage

[Freetardo Jones]

Yes, the Bush administration had a lot of flaws, but Obama'a administration looks to be expanding on them.

Exactly. The funny thing is that now the Obama supporters are pulling the "But Bill Clinton did !!" that they were all complaining about the right doing it with regards to Bush's bullshit, but now they are doing the same thing with Bush to make excuses for Obama's bullshit.

Re:What garbage

[Tom Smith]

Multi-trillion dollar deficits

inherited from the previous administration, nothing to do with obama...

pardoning the telecos for helping in illegally wiretap citizens.

entirely ordered and operated by the previous administration. condemned, ceased and genuine efforts made to find the best way to put it into the past with the least damage. original controversy nothing to do with obama...

so let me get this straight... your entire criticism is based around blaming every single thing on bush, then saying:

continued flushing of money down the toilet on bailouts to shitty companies

which may or may not be a good idea, but is 100% entirely, confessed by you, obama's best efforts to clean up the mess that bush left america in...

i am waiting for the part where you show obama to be worse...

Re:What garbage

[Freetardo Jones]

millions needlessly dead

Millions? Really? Even the most outlying figures for the death tolls have never been in the millions.

war over large parts of the planet,

This was something new only to the 8 years of the Bush presidency? Last time I checked there was also war over large parts of the planet during the Clinton years too.

mass alienation and destabilisation,

That's new?

worldwide economic collapse...

Wow, so Bush is no single-handedly responsible for the worldwide economic collapse? Hyperbolic much? I was against Bush all throughout his stay in office but even I spot this as being total fucking bullshit. The economic collapse was catalyzed by the bursting of the housing bubble created by Alan Greenspan during the Clinton years.

i don't think any politician at all is "good", but you'll have to get up pretty early each morning and put in some very long hours to be actually WORSE than bush...

Obama must be working overtime, because in many of the areas you mention above they've only gotten worse, and will continue to get worse, under Obama.

Re:What garbage

[Freetardo Jones]

inherited from the previous administration, nothing to do with obama...

No, they are a direct result of his budgets. He's even admitted to so.

entirely ordered and operated by the previous administration. condemned, ceased and genuine efforts made to find the best way to put it into the past with the least damage. original controversy nothing to do with obama...

But he definitely made sure that no one could ever hold them responsible by giving them immunity and as such providing tacit approval.

so let me get this straight... your entire criticism is based around blaming every single thing on bush, then saying:

No, I blame them both since Obama has taken what Bush has done and expanded it and made the situation that much worse.

which may or may not be a good idea, but is 100% entirely, confessed by you, obama's best efforts to clean up the mess that bush left america in...

Sorry, but I've confessed no such thing. I disagreed with it under Bush and I disagree with it even more with Obama's huge expansion of the bailouts.

i am waiting for the part where you show obama to be worse...

I already did. The fact that you attempted to hand wave it all away doesn't change that fact.

Re:What garbage

[Freetardo Jones]

so the clinton family are the oil family that were filthy with the corruption of that scandal and still to this day have not wiped that particular stink off and the bush family were totally clean, having little to nothing to do with oil investments, right?

This is a great non sequitur. All of Enron's scams and corruptions happened years before Bush was even in office. Their big stock pump-and-dump happened in August of 2000 before he was even elected. This grasping at straws to blame anything and everything on Bush is both sad and laughable.

Re:What garbage

[Darkness404]

millions needlessly dead,

...As opposed to people who would have died during Saddam's rule? Yes, the intelligence Bush got was faulty about the WMDs in Iraq, but you have to remember this is a dictator who not only invaded other countries but launched chemical warfare on his own people (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack ). The invasion of Afghanistan really should have happened sooner and with a more powerful attack. But after the 9/11 attacks, you couldn't exactly ignore a huge terrorist group that very successfully attacked the USA.

war over large parts of the planet

...Because two countries consist of a "large part of the planet"? One of which was already at war (Afghanistan).

mass alienation and destabilisation,

Of who? And of what?

worldwide economic collapse...

Which we all know Bush is to blame for everything... Really, it started with Clinton and Clinton's desire to have every American own a home. Sure, its a noble idea but it went way to far. For example, a person who would ordinarily qualify for a $150,000 loan would be bumped up to getting a $1750,000 loan... So then eventually they couldn't pay it back because they borrowed more than they could afford. (see http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2008/02/clintons_drive.html for an article on what I'm talking about).

Obama's plan seems to be lets spend our way out of an economic collapse! Mixed with tons of regulations. For example, I have a good friend who runs a home building business, he has been in business since 1982 and hasn't defaulted on a single loan and hasn't been late on any of his bills in the past 20 years. Today, he can't get a loan to build another house because Obama's administration says that he is "too big of a risk" WTF!?! This person has sold all of their houses, how exactly is he supposed to get any more money to build houses and sell them if he can't get a loan for it? It makes no sense at all.

Re:What garbage

[Tom Smith]

did someone blame anything and everything on bush? i must have missed that comment.

i personally don't think any politician is worth anything at all. i would not piss on any of them if they were on fire...

but obama has barely passed half a year in office and it is a matter of record he inherited one of the worst messes any new president has ever had to deal with.

the fact that cannibalism has not taken off is to his credit i think...

Re:What garbage

[Darkness404]

yes, millions. i do not count only "allied" soldiers. several million civilians are known to have died.

...Yet many the counters let people put in whatever number they feel like. Some are even sponsored by anti-war groups. Yes, many civilians have died, but you would be a fool to call the counters accurate.

i always chuckle a little when people like dismiss the idea that the several trillion dollars spent on wars of aggression, surveillance and CIA torture camps could not possible have contributed in any way to the economic meltdown...

...Because we all know that whenever the government spends money on wars it never goes to anyone it just vanishes into thin air right? I mean, we don't pay our soldiers, nor buy military equipment from any contractors. Nope, whenever the government spends money on a war it just ends up getting tossed into a black hole.

And CIA torture camps, how do they have anything to do with an economic meltdown? Yes, they are bad, we get that. Did it have anything to do with the meltdown. No.

Re:What garbage

[adminstring]

I'd like some clarification about that last paragraph. Exactly how is Obama's administration preventing him from getting a loan? Can't anyone with money lend it to anyone they want, as long as the recipient isn't involved with something criminal that would make the lender an accessory to a crime? Or have the rules changed somehow?

Re:What garbage

[Attila Dimedici]

did someone blame anything and everything on bush? i must have missed that comment.

You did blame Enron on Bush at least by implication, so his accusation is spot on.

Re:What garbage

[Darkness404]

Because all banks get evaluated by various governmental agencies as oversight. To them now all loans to home builders are considered "risky" and banks don't really want to be red-flagged and be government-controlled. Mix that with the fact that a few homebuilders in the area (unrelated to my friend) have defaulted on a few loans, makes it hard for them to really lend.

Re:What garbage

[PitaBred]

Politics has never been about the best man for the job, it's always been about getting your horse in the lead, and if that means brushing away "bad" facts and hammering on "good" ones (relating to your candidate), so be it. I can't remember where, but I've seen a study on how highly partisan people react completely differently to the same hypothetical situation depending on which candidate it was applied to. Rationalization is a scary way that most people deal with otherwise intractable hypocrisy or other cognitive dissonance.

Re:What garbage

[jedidiah]

It's not hard to "really lend". It's hard to "fake lend" and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

It's a baskeball sized pill of cod liver oil but it's a natural correction.

Lenders got far too accustomed to not needing to worry if loans ever got paid back.

The financial industry is dealing with a very big "bubble" hangover. They've been on
a bender for 20 years and it's not easy to come down off a high like that.

Re:What garbage

[adminstring]

Sounds like he could use some private investors who are willing to take big risks to get big rewards.

If the local real estate market makes building profitable enough, he should be able to make it worth their while. If local homebuilders are defaulting on loans, though, the market may not be ready for new homes to be built at this time. It sounds to me like the banks are watching their backs for now. That's understandable, given what has happened to real estate over the past year. However, there are always people looking for ways to make money from investments, and if your friend has the numbers to back up his proposals, he should be able to convince someone to buy in.

Re:What garbage

[julesh]

Yes, the intelligence Bush got was faulty about the WMDs in Iraq

There's practically incontrivertible documentary evidence that Bush knew WMDs would not be found and wanted to provoke the war on any grounds he could. (In case you want to talk about political bias and slanting in my sources there, The Guardian is a left-leaning paper, but The Times is a right-leaning paper owned by News Corporation, the same people who own Fox News.)

Really, it started with Clinton and Clinton's desire to have every American own a home. Sure, its a noble idea but it went way to far. For example, a person who would ordinarily qualify for a $150,000 loan would be bumped up to getting a $1750,000 loan... So then eventually they couldn't pay it back because they borrowed more than they could afford.

It's amazing how Clinton even managed to cause excessive lending and a property price crash in the UK, where he had no legislative power at all.

Or perhaps these have nothing to do with governments and everything to do with banks who were too greedy and got their hands burned when the inevitable property price slide (which should have come as no surprise, as financial experts have been predicting it since about 2005) started to happen. Here's news for you: an extra 15% on top of people's loans makes little difference when prices fall by over 30%. Most people who bought close to the top were still in serious financial trouble because of it. And there was no obligation on the banks to take that funding -- if they believed the customer wouldn't be able to repay, they were obligated under various codes of practice (let alone plain and simple commercial sense) not to offer the loan.

The banks thought they could make loans that they knew had a good chance of never being repaid, bundle them up into financial instruments and sell them for more than they were actually likely to get back. And for a while the scheme worked. But of course, in the end, it failed.

Obama's plan seems to be lets spend our way out of an economic collapse!

It's a good plan, to be honest. Government spending has a way of finding its way back to the government via taxes, so isn't as expensive to the economy as it at first appears. And it does get people spending money, which is the whole problem.

Mixed with tons of regulations.

Yes. The financial services industry has shown itself to be too irresponsible to be able to manage the significant chunk of the economy it currently does manage. Something needs to be done to tighten that up.

For example, I have a good friend who runs a home building business, he has been in business since 1982 and hasn't defaulted on a single loan and hasn't been late on any of his bills in the past 20 years. Today, he can't get a loan to build another house because Obama's administration says that he is "too big of a risk" WTF!?!

This has nothing to do with Obama or any regulations. This is just banks' typical overreaction to any property price crash. The same thing happened in the UK in the late 80s. Banks lose a whole string of money on property development projects that suddenly find themselves in negative equity, so decide not to invest in property development because the entire industry has a huge risk rating associated with it in any statistical analysis. Quite simple, really.

Re:What garbage

[Sique]

...As opposed to people who would have died during Saddam's rule?

The number of victims of Sadam Hussein's rule in Iraq over about 24 years is estimated at 300.000 people.
The number of victims of the invasion and the subsequent civil war and the terrorist uprising after the invasion is estimated at 300.000 people.

So between 2003 and 2009, about the same number of victims have died as between 1979 and 2003. A job well done!

Re:What garbage

[wall0159]

I love listening to Democrat-supporters and Republican-supporters argue..

Democrats-supporter: "Bush is a fundamentalist nutcase who wants to turn the US into a militarised fascist theocracy!"

Republican-supporter: "Clinton/Obama is an atheist scumbag who wants to destroy the family and turn the US into a drug-addicted gay playground!"

I mean really -- what ever happened to the middle-ground in US politics? Can't people recognise that most of the time politicians (on both sides) actually are doing what they think is right? (I'm not saying any are perfect, but neither are they the devil-incarnate).

Re:What garbage

[JCZwart]

...As opposed to people who would have died during Saddam's rule? Yes, the intelligence Bush got was faulty about the WMDs in Iraq, but you have to remember this is a dictator who not only invaded other countries but launched chemical warfare on his own people.

So let's try to get rid of this evil dictator by means of war, what a splendid idea! I see an awful lot of opportunities where Bush could have started a trend to police evil nations worldwide. Well, maybe another American president will...

The invasion of Afghanistan really should have happened sooner and with a more powerful attack. But after the 9/11 attacks, you couldn't exactly ignore a huge terrorist group that very successfully attacked the USA.

Terrorists aren't really locatable in one region or another. That's one of the reasons terrorism keeps reoccuring: it's just such a good strategy. Throwing large numbers of soldiers at it won't really work. I don't quite understand why the USA keeps trying to solve this kind of problem with military action only.

Re:What garbage

[Hognoxious]

Last time I checked there was also war over large parts of the planet during the Clinton years too.

Ah, yes, "Clinton did it, too". Did you notice you're not actually refuting his argument? Quite the opposite, you're admitting that he is, in fact, correct.

I think his point was that there are large parts of the world that are at war for reasons of their own and totally unconnected with whoever happens to be in the Whitehouse.

RSS, robots.txt and paywall

[guyfawkes-11-5]

Simple. Disable RSS feeds,disallow all robots and then put it behind a paywall and see what happens.... either it thrives as the Wall Street journal seems to be doing, or it doesn't, as the 99% of other sites who have tried similar ideas. Where do I send my invoice?

i don't see it happening

[Tom Smith]

totally unworkable

who is to say that one report is ripping off another?

or that another report is not ripping off the first?

impossible to police, even harder to prosecute.

I suppose I will start getting my news...

[SUB7IME]

... 2.5 hours later ( http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/07/13/0531215/Traditional-News-Media-Lead-Blogs-By-25-Hours?from=rss )

freedom will not be found in "free" countries

[Blue Shifted]

how ironic that true information freedom will end up being centered in countries such as russia, or countries with less governmental control, such as on the african continent, or south america. hell, so called "unfree" countries such as china, even with it's great internet wall, will become safe havens for data that is heavily regulated by the west.

Re:freedom will not be found in "free" countries

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I wouldn't go that far. The (much less ironic) observation is that different governments have different priorities and their policing tactics reflect this.

China doesn't much care about bourgeois western "intellectual property", so you can send spam hawking pirated software all you want. Send out invites for your next falun gong meeting or democracy protest, though, and you'll discover what 'so called "unfree"' really means.

The US is quite solid on speech that doesn't upset major corporations, and is an excellent spot for saying mean things about religious figures, expressing all kinds of fun political theories, hosting your "handguns I have known and loved" archive or whatever. Not such a good place to host "WareZ and DeCSS 4LyFE!", though.

There are plenty of locations(though exactly where they are tends to drift over time) where the state is weak enough, or enough in need of foreign investment/aid, that(as long as you maintain a polite disinterest in local politics, and pay the occasional bribe) they won't really bother you at all. Pretty much any government will come down on you like a ton of bricks in response to some class of actions on your part and pretty much any government has another class of activities of which it approves, or simply doesn't care.

Re:freedom will not be found in "free" countries

[Blue Shifted]

thanks for fleshing out what was implied.

but i think you have shown even more widespread ironies, going both directions between dramatically different political and cultural spheres.....

Re:freedom will not be found in "free" countries

[GreyWolf3000]

The US is quite solid on speech that doesn't upset major corporations, and is an excellent spot for saying mean things about religious figures, expressing all kinds of fun political theories, hosting your "handguns I have known and loved" archive or whatever. Not such a good place to host "WareZ and DeCSS 4LyFE!", though.

Really? You really consider copyright violation to be an exercise in free speech? And the crackdown on torrent sites a concession of our freedom to the "big evil companies?" I definitely think our government has pandered too much to the **AA, and that our copyright laws are in serious need of reform, but I think it's hard to make this into a freedom of speech issue.

Re:freedom will not be found in "free" countries

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Straight copyright violation, no. However, I would consider things like the DMCA's ban on "circumvention devices" or the asymmetry between the ease of sending a DMCA takedown and replying to one, as distinctly relevant to free speech concerns.

I don't have a problem with copyright, within its bounds; but it is used to push a lot of very dubious stuff.

Hamburg Declaration

[camperdave]

Hamburg Declaration:

"I'll have mine with cheese and bacon."

Re:Hamburg Declaration

[erroneus]

Here I was imagining Obama flying to Germany making a famous "Ich ben ein Hamburger!"

Oh how I would love him to say that...

Re:Hamburg Declaration

[DoofusOfDeath]

FWIW, I get your joke and think it's very funny.

BTW, it's "bin", not "ben".

Re:Hamburg Declaration

[camperdave]

Busted:

So, while the proper way for a Berlin native to say "I am a Berliner" is "Ich bin Berliner," the proper way for a non-native to make the same statement metaphorically is precisely what Kennedy said: "Ich bin ein Berliner." In spite of the fact that it's also the correct way to say "I am a jelly donut," no adult German speaker could possibly have misunderstood Kennedy's meaning in context.

Re:Hamburg Declaration

[Dragonslicer]

Hamburg Declaration: "I'll have mine with cheese and bacon."

But are you going to pay for it today or on Tuesday?

Re:Hamburg Declaration

[shentino]

Now that's what I call being a "grammar nazi"

Re:Hamburg Declaration

[tnok85]

Oh I wish I had mod points... I actually laughed out loud.

Re:Hamburg Declaration

[DoofusOfDeath]

Touche!

Oh, ummm. Sorry.

Touché!

The Internet Says "No"

[flydude18]

Sorry.

Re:The Internet Says "No"

[L4t3r4lu5]

If only the internet could bother to get off of the internet and say "No" officially.

I wish they'd focus on the news

[reboot246]

I'd settle for news organizations doing a better job of reporting the news, and stop the spinning and opinions. I'd pay for real news with no bias.

Just the facts as best you can report them please. Leave your opinions at home.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[Tom Smith]

only on the condition that there is ZERO reportage of "celebrity" nonsense

i would not pay a single penny if their inanity were infecting a news source i was paying for, it's bad enough seeing their crap all over the BBC news site (which i suppose i actually AM directly paying for already, but we don't have a choice but to pay for that).

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[samkass]

Many governments publish gigabytes of CSV files, PDF files, and database files. I assume that's what you're referring to when you say you just want facts published. Should the New York Times just be filled with tables of data?

If you want that information translated into written English, the author of that text is going to have a point of view and a context within which they write. It's the way language works. And everyone wants other people to share their understanding of events.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[Darkness404]

I find the BBC's world news to be pretty unbiased as for the part of opinions. Though I do think they publish stories with only a few "facts" to sway one side or another.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[Darkness404]

But if you look at American televised news, you see that it really isn't news but rather a bunch of opinionated people trying to create A) Panic so more people will tune in (look at how they handled Swine Flu) B) A "shocking" story that isn't news or C) Things that paint their company in a positive light. Electronic and print news has bias, but it is less of opinion and more on the selection of stories. While some of it could be justified (people reading TorrentFreak aren't going to really care about how some guy got busted selling bootlegged DVDs in China) a lot of it is to spin the "facts" towards one side.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[MichaelSmith]

The BBC is paid for by the British Government, one way or another. In a different country that type of funding would be a really bad idea.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[FourthAge]

The BBC definitely are biased. The thing about bias is that you only tend to notice it when it jars with your own personal world view. That's when it really stands out, and you think "OMG WTF, how can you say that?"

I often find this on the BBC, but then, I disapprove of their predominant ideology, and that of the government they serve (see my sig). I live in Britain.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[RiotingPacifist]

I think government funded TV works (with varying degrees of unbias) in much of the western world (BBC,ABC,TVE,etc), i do agree that trying it in America would cause hell though.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[somenickname]

Many governments publish gigabytes of CSV files, PDF files, and database files. I assume that's what you're referring to when you say you just want facts published. Should the New York Times just be filled with tables of data?

No, they should describe the contents of those documents in English and in an unbiased manner. That's what "the news" is. It's not sensationalist crap with a slant on the writers/editors/publishers view.

If you want that information translated into written English, the author of that text is going to have a point of view and a context within which they write. It's the way language works. And everyone wants other people to share their understanding of events.

Then they shouldn't be writing it. It has nothing to do with the language. What you are describing is a blog. The news is not a blog. If I read a news article that says, "this reporter thinks", "our analyst thinks", "our correspondent thinks", and I gave a fuck about what any of those people think, I would subscribe to their *blog*.

Tell me the facts and go away.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[Tom Smith]

the BBC is not paid for by the government.

the BBC is paid for by the british public through a "license" we are pretty much forced to buy.

sure, if you do NOT own or possess a television, VCR, dvd player, radio or computer, you don't have to pay for it... (including in your car)

do you know anyone without any form of electronic entertainment?

the one good thing about this system is that the british government has zero influence or control over the BBC (in theory) and the BBC is free the criticise the government or its policies in any way it wants.

the biggest problem though, is that most of the output of the BBC is complete crap, vying for the attentions of the lowest common denominator (stupidest) of dole scrounging (welfare) scumbags (jerks) from sink estates (the projects). american translations in brackets for those that need them there...

in other words, the license is very expensive and the bits of the BBC that are good do not actually cost much.

i am still waiting for the day they break up the bbc and i just pay for the parts i think are worth having...

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[MichaelSmith]

the BBC is paid for by the british public through a "license" we are pretty much forced to buy.

By the Government. Thats what I mean by "one way or another".

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[cpt kangarooski]

the biggest problem though, is that most of the output of the BBC is complete crap, vying for the attentions of the lowest common denominator (stupidest) of dole scrounging (welfare) scumbags (jerks) from sink estates (the projects). american translations in brackets for those that need them there...

In America we call those parentheses. Brackets are either square: [] or angle: . Then there are these {}, which are braces.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[Tom Smith]

the government does not force it, the judiciary does...

you get extremely large fines imposed by the courts if you are caught with electronic entertainment equipment and no license...

the government has nothing to do with it.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[MichaelSmith]

ABC

So Disney is considered a government now?!

Australian Broadcast Corporation. Funded directly by the Australian federal government. Otherwise, run like a smaller version of the BBC.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[jedidiah]

"bias" is not so much of a problem as is lack of any real content.

Intelligent discourse can survive "bias" as long enough information is presented.

Buckley and NPR are both good examples of this.

Re:I wish they'd focus on the news

[brainiac ghost1991]

actually, it's only with a TV connected to recieving equipment that is used to recieve TV broadcasts... you don't need to pay if you have a radio or PC, or even a TV only connected to a VCR, DVD player and games console (but NOT recieving live TV footage)

Steamengines

[santax]

I make steamengines and I did not believe in the combustionengine. Please make it a crime to own a combustion-engine. That is what these people want. Nothing more, nothing less.

People are mis-understanding this issue:

[popo]

This isn't about free web content, or copyright.

The newspapers are trying to establish ownership of the underlying INFORMATION, not just the words they use to convey that information.

Newspapers who actually go out and "get" news are trying to establish control over that information so that those who re-report do not compete directly with the original report.

This isn't about copyright, it is about establishing a new 'estate' of IP which establishes ownership over directly sourced/reported information.

Re:People are mis-understanding this issue:

[Zerth]

Which is hilarious, since most newspapers have been axing their writers left and right. Something like 3/4 of your major local rag is probably AP stories.

Like the AP needs help sucking money out of newspapers.

Re:People are mis-understanding this issue:

[mckinnsb]

I would refine your observation with the following: European Newspapers aren't just trying to establish ownership of the underlying information, they are trying to:

1. fundamentally change the way it is packaged to their proposal, after a free market decided against said proposal
2. fundamentally change the medium of delivery, and then force everyone else to use it a la 1)
3. foist all the costs onto either a) the search engine companies b) the taxpayer or c) the government (which ultimately leads to a or b anyway)

.

The main problem with the ACAP system is that you cannot accurately index the content (or index the content as well) because bizarre restrictions may in be place given the media in question, causing incorrect evaluation. I'm not sure if the execs understand that their system will decrease their content's visibility, or if they expect search companies to foot the bill for the erection of a third meta-index to interface with proprietary content - both of which are equally asinine.

(apologies to any newspaper execs in the audience) /cheeky

Re:People are mis-understanding this issue:

[PPNSteve]

I have 'news' for you;
News is NOT IP it is facts of something real or that has happened. No company or agency "owns' the news. (only their telling of said news is 'owned' by them, not the news itself.)

You can't copyright facts.

Re:People are mis-understanding this issue:

[Ihlosi]

News is NOT IP it is facts of something real or that has happened.

The representatives of several tabloids would like to have a word with you.

Re:Why is it always draconian?

[Tynam]

Because Draconian is the correct adjective for laws which demand disproportionate punishments for minor offences.

Vampires, sadly, have nothing to do with it. Although, most articles on DRM make me want to impale someone, so I suppose there's a connection.

Remember Salon and Slate tried to charge too..

[Dr_Ken]

and how well did that work out for them? They both had to back off immediately or go extinct. I've heard the NY Times is looking into charging for content. I dont' expect that'll work out well either. People will just migrate to free every time. Pooh on you EU!

Re:Help me Rob Malda you're my only hope!

[digitig]

Help me Slashdot! Me and Steve Jobs were jacking each other off

Disgraceful. It should be "Steve Jobs and I".

BBC has my favorite example of slant

[a2wflc]

I love this BBC world news title: "2007 data confirms warming trend". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7142694.stm Nowhere in the article does it mention that 2007 was cooler than 2002-2006 or 2007 was cooler than 2006 which was cooler than 2005.
 
Fortunately they included a table so anyone who bothered to re-sort the table by year would know that their definition of trend is a little odd.
 
Unfortunately most people read the title, a few less read the first paragraph, and relatively few analyze the data tables.
 
I'd call this bias unless they admit the negative short-term trend up front and explain how climate scientists determine trends. At the time, they could have used nasa temps instead of Hadley's and it wouldn't have looked so bad short-term. So I don't think it was intentional bias, but writers/editors not knowing enough of the subject to write an article and just copying press releases (which are always biased towards whoever releases them)

Not news

[marco.antonio.costa]

Just another special privilege which the government will grant to special interests and the less-free-with-each-passing-moment market will be blamed for.

Re:Not news

[spire3661]

And the internet will route around them....

Re:Not news

[John Hasler]

The governments have a plan for that.

Search engine retaliation

[zogger]

The big dogs like google could start charging these guys to index their precious. I wish they would have done something like that rather than cave into AP, etc, for just quoting little snippets to have *something* to show where this news link was coming from. Do it on a case by case basis, the various news websites want their news paywall to be indexed, they should pay for that professional servgice, if they don't throw up a paywall, then they get indexed for free, like today. Ball is in the news orgs court then when it comes to what they think things are worth or not.

I have mixed feelings about google, but sometimes I think they are too nice and cave in too readily. It can't be that much fun to be the biggest of the big dogs and not get to bite some ass once in awhile.

Re:Search engine retaliation

[Tom Smith]

google do charge you for indexing your "precious".

you have to pay a small fortune for the "pizza box" thingy that sits on your network, supposedly indexing, but rarely working properly and requiring you to set your infrastructure to how the google box thinks it should be and not configuring the google box to work with your network how you wanted it...

if you ask me, they are better off hiring a coder to make their own site indexing, get it exactly how they want it and having the whole system evolve over time.

but you didn't ask me, so just keep paying a small fortune for the stupid google "pizza boxes"...

Re:Search engine retaliation

[sakdoctor]

Perhaps you should try an actual pizza box instead

Re:Search engine retaliation

[Tom Smith]

would certainly give you a lot less stress and a lot more satisfaction...

not so sure about its indexing properties though...

to badly paraphrase... "no-one ever got fired for buying google."

Re:Search engine retaliation

[locofungus]

All I want is for google to give me the option to not display hits that I cannot view.

When you try searching for anything vaguely technical you get hundreds or thousands of hits to links like nature, linkinghub.elsevier etc.

Some (most) of us are laymen most of the time, often doing searches "just out of interest". We're NEVER going to pay to view the articles. Even worse, because the searches tend to be in fields we're not familiar with (in the fields we are familiar with we already know about the seminal works, will often have many of them to hand already etc) we'll have no idea which papers to pay for even if we were prepared to pay for one of them.

For example, I was interested in the mechanisms that bone uses to dissipate energy. I know that it first undergoes elastic deformation, then plastic deformation and finally breaks but I've no data on how much energy is involved in each of those stages or whether the proportions of energy depend on the particular bone.

But googling "bone energy dissipation" is useless. I'm never going to write any papers on this. I quite likely won't understand most of what is in most of the papers returned by google if I could read them, and I'm not too worried if any information I do get turns out to be wrong if I ever talk to an expert in the field.

I thought google refused to index sites that showed a different result to google than to google's users but that appears not to apply to pay per view journal articles.

Tim.

American newspapers

[andersh]

While that is true for many American newspapers it's not the same for European newspapers. And Europeans read more newspapers than the average US American (according to the int'l newspaper association).

Then again Europe is not a country and with over 47 countries there are a whole lot of variety in newspapers (and sources).

In my own country newspapers are seen as an important public function and are subsidized to support independent, varied and local reporting. It's given to support political views and cultural issues such as publishing in the regional language (official language, not dialect). Small, regional newspapers are seen as part of the democratic foundation of my country. I suppose that's why my countrymen and I read the most newspaper per capita in the world.

Re:American newspapers

[phantomcircuit]

It probably doesnt hurt that norway is dark and encased in ice for a huge chunk of the year.

Re:American newspapers

[sveinungkv]

You forgot to mention that the subsidies mostly go to newspapers that our old overlords like. They even admit it them self: Ottar Grepstad, the leader of Kulturrådet, said to the extreme left newspaper Kalssekampen that he is happy to be called "highest editor"* (article in Norwegian) when he removed the subsidies for papers he didn't like**. One of the newspapers loosing the subsidies, the Christian Right newspaper Norge IDAG*** said it quite well: (my translation) "It's not that we believe the state has a duty to give us subsidies. But when there are subsidies for some newspapers there should be subsidies for all."

* is there a better way I can translate "overredaktør"?

** "Make a better paper!" Grepstad (my translation from an article from the press conference were it was announced)

*** that probably lost their subsidies for being (as far as I know) the only Christian Right newspaper in Norway. So much for the argument that subsidies are here to ensure diverse political views.

...But it was still funny.

[zooblethorpe]

In spite of the fact that it's also the correct way to say "I am a jelly donut," no adult German speaker could possibly have misunderstood Kennedy's meaning in context.

Be that as it may, my German teacher, who is German through and through, described watching the Kennedy speech on the tube with her family in Germany and busting a gut when he uttered that line, for which her grandmother scolded her for being disrespectful.

A person from Hamburg is called, in both English and German, a "Hamburger", and thus the proper way to say you're from Hamburg in English is to say, "I am a Hamburger." In the proper context, this is understood to mean a person from Hamburg -- but it's still funny. :)

Cheers,

Re:...But it was still funny.

[Sique]

Be that as it may, my German teacher, who is German through and through, described watching the Kennedy speech on the tube with her family in Germany and busting a gut when he uttered that line, for which her grandmother scolded her for being disrespectful.

It gets more complicated. The speech was given in Berlin, and in Berlin the famous jelly donut is not called Berliner. So for each Berliner, to whom the speech was addressed, it was clear that it meant "citizen of Berlin". If Kennedy wanted the people of Berlin to know that he equals himself to a jelly donut, he would have said "I am a Pfannkuchen" (Pfannkuchen = pancake for most Germans, but not for people of Berlin and south of it, the pancake is called "Eierkuchen" = egg cake in Berlin).

Re:Help me Rob Malda you're my only hope!

[Obfuscant]

Disgraceful. It should be "Steve Jobs and I".

Jealous?

Re:Why is it always draconian?

[Dragonslicer]

Interesting. I always thought "draconian" was the adjective form of "dragon", which are traditionally thought of as being cruel, terrorizing people, and once in a while eating someone just for fun.

Simple depiction

[andersh]

It probably doesnt hurt that norway is dark and encased in ice for a huge chunk of the year.

Nope. That's a simple and untrue depiction of my country. If you knew anything about Norway you would know that there is a great deal of variety from arctic Finnmark county to the summer paradise of our southern coastal regions. It's a very long country. You seem to think there's some kind of total winter darkness here? That's only in the far north, the majority of the country experiences four regular seasons. And the winters vary a lot, some regions don't even experience snow.

You do realize we do not have polar bears in our streets? The last weeks we've had great sunny days with temperatures above 86 F (30 C) - 95 F (35 C). Winters can be cold of course.

In fact the major factors behind newspaper readership in Norway is the high levels of education, grassroots political and organizational involvement. It helps living in a country where the majority of the population is college educated [for generations], and education is free. Even the least academic workers attend vocational schools here.

Also volunteering and involvement in organizations from sports clubs to the Red Cross/Lions/Kiwanis is extremely common. Everyone takes part. It helps create debate and involvement on issues and politics from local to national levels. Remember, it's a "socialist" country.

Re:Simple depiction

[Daimanta]

"You do realize we do not have polar bears in our streets?"

Bummer, that's one country I won't be going to on my vacation.

Google could kill this proposal

[gdshaw]

What they should do is implement ACAP as a front-end to their existing robots.txt filtering capability

Of course, the correspondence would not be exact. To stay within the rules they would have to translate each ACAP restriction into one for robots.txt that was at least as restrictive (technically very easy since robots.txt allows little discrimination).

Any publisher who tried to use the new features would then risk not being listed at all.

(This only works while ACAP-enabled sites are a small minority, otherwise Google would be hurting themselves, but I think it would have a very good chance of preventing the system from achieving critical mass.)

Re:Why is it always draconian?

[j-b0y]

Thank Weis and Hickman for that.

Re:Help me Rob Malda you're my only hope!

[Dekker3D]

okay, my friend.. think about this for a moment: do you really want to know?

Publicly accessible = publicly accessible

[dugeen]

The news content is on open HTTP servers whose URLs news organisations actively promote. That constitutes an invitation to use their server to download and read a copy of the content. If that's not what they want, then they're free to wall off their sites behind a subscription mechanism.

Re:Why is it always draconian?

[dugeen]

And anyway, dragon law probably does demand disproportionate punishements for minor offences. Just look at what Smaug did to Esgaroth when he thought the Lake-men had nicked his gold cup. (Although he could be described as having lost a counter-suit).

So let me get this straight:

[Hurricane78]

You want to ban all your propaganda, misinformation, FUD, press-releases in disguise, and advertisements in disguise from the net, unless someone pays a way too expensive price for it?

Well... go ahead! :D

I will go read some RSS news from blogs in the meantime. :)

Very good point

[zogger]

And yes, this is annoying to me as well. I think that if there is even one penny of public tax money that goes to the researchers who write these articles, that the entire paper be free to view in its entirety. Those academic paywalls are *most annoying*, especially when even the summaries/abstracts suck and don't tell much. I try to not even tease myself anymore and just use sites like PlOS, etc. Google should have a way to not show paywalls on request. You can do that with the negative modifiers with your search, -elsevier.com, like that, but it's a chore.

    On a side issue, I'd go further and say similar for patents, any public monies used, the patents become public domain.

Here's the rub:

[Biswalt]

The problem is (from the perspective of the media companies) that there are too many free readers. And in the past because it was so easy to control the distribution of information (printing presses being expensive to operate) the media companies could monopolize the news distribution frame work. But now they can't, and that means more and more people are refusing to pay for the news. I for one don't ever buy news. I feel like it's wasteful to purchase news because I don't feel someone should have the right to monopolize the description of current events. Secondly, most of the news is provided for news media organizations for free. The AP for example doesn't pay anything to be able to quote political speeches, and they shouldn't have to. I mean, pick up a paper and read it cover to cover (other than the sports section, and the business section) how much news is investigative journalism that significantly costs the media companies anything, versus how much of that same newspaper is just a retelling of some event without any real extra costs to the news papers. Then look at how many outlets for info your typical media company like say the Hearst newspaper group has, and lastly look at how much money the heads of the newspapers are getting. It's not like the people who own the media companies aren't getting paid because ad revenue is down. My argument would be that newspapers are losing money not because websites are linking to their articles, but because while they are experiencing diminished ad revenues the owners of these media companies are making record personal windfalls!

Boycott. Abolish. these will teach them.

[unity100]

moves detrimental against people by interest groups that are no different than french nobility, can be countered by moves like french revolution. totally boycott their profit making instruments, refuse to have to do anything with them, ignore their existence, and name your reason. this teaches them not to limit people's freedoms for their own profit.