German Law To Make Google Pay For Snippets

judgecorp writes "The German government has announced plans for a copyright law which would require Google, other search engines, and aggregators to pay for small snippets of text displayed on their pages. Journalistic citations and private users will be exempt."

Comments

Yeah, that's fine.

[gcnaddict]

Google, Bing, et al. will just stop linking to sites which enforce this.

Who thought this was a good idea?

Re:Yeah, that's fine.

[MarkvW]

This is a great idea. If a site wants to keep their material off Google, then they can. If they want their material to be on Google, they can do that too.

I fail to see the problem.

Re:Yeah, that's fine.

[ichthus]

see robots.txt. Google honors mine.

Re:Yeah, that's fine.

[Sir_Sri]

Ya, if anything the market has shifted the opposite direction, and you pay them to get your website featured prominently (however you want to define that specifically).

Search engines have no incentive to pay to link. As long as they can minimally link for free they will, and if they have to pay for everything they link, well that isn't going to happen is it, because then you'd have no search.

It's like demanding the phone company pay businesses for the right to list their name in the phonebook.

A couple of weeks ago there was a story here about some campground in spain getting screwed because a search for Alfaques or whatever it was produced a slew of images from some terrible accident near them 30 years ago. That happens because the people who publish those images have made sure their results are at the top of searches, with images in thumbnails, and they are bigger companies than the small little campground. The system can't work both directions at once, and I can't imagine it working with search providers having to pay for what they are currently paid for.

Re:Yeah, that's fine.

[medcalf]

It requires needless software development. Instead of honoring robots.txt for sites that don't agree to be indexed, Google will either have to extend robots.txt to allow oppt in or alter their internal code with a list of what they will not index regardless of robots.txt. More cruft and potentially nonstandard extensions on the web is not a good thing. Or Google could just stop indexing any site with an IP addr in Germany.

Re:Yeah, that's fine.

[Tharsman]

Honest question:
Can you configure robots.txt to allow Google to index your site for search results without summarizing your news in news.google.com?

Re:Yeah, that's fine.

[dkf]

Which is pretty much an internet death sentence. Smart.

So? Google is not under an actual legal obligation to index or describe any site hosted in Germany (or anywhere else). The enormous majority of people outside Germany wouldn't care if their sites vanished from the face of the earth. The simplest technical response to such a law would therefore be for search engines to not return any matches at all for German sites (and to not provide any results at all to people in Germany). Very simple to implement. Complies with the law.

Also totally not what the legislator had in mind, but who cares about what passes for thought in his or her neck of the woods?

Re:Yeah, that's fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

This was hard, wasn't it?

Re:Yeah, that's fine.

[MightyMartian]

Don't worry... he's coming.

Re:Yeah, that's fine.

[Rhodri Mawr]

Bloody Germans, shutting down Google in Greece. How low will they stoop? Is this another condition of the bail-out?


(the German TLD is .de BTW)

Re:Yeah, that's fine.

[Your.Master]

Leaving aside your assumption that Google can afford to do this more than Germany can (obviously both sides can, but I think Google would be the clear loser in pulling out of Germany), you're not answering the question that was asked.

The question was about Google refusing to service sites which insist that German law be enforced, implying that Google would still serve German sites that let them pass. I strongly suspect that would be illegal whether or not there's any antitrust concerns.

All link to english web site

[aepervius]

It is not that I don't trust you all guy, but I would rather read the german law than the (eventually biased) interpretation by some english blog/web site.

Re:All link to english web site

[rolfwind]

The announcement doesn't surprise me at all. Germany is retarded with copyrights and riddled with the copyright industry lobbyists, they make auctions now give a percentage of art sales into a fund to be distributed to the artist who made it. This even affects art that was sold before the law. All it did was spring up masses of organizations that claim to represent a list of artists to claim the money and then take their commission.

Not to mention that the people who invested into art suddenly lost a few % to these leeches.

Before anyone claims that's right or correct, should volunteer, when selling their house, to give a few % to the carpenter/bricklayers/plumbers/electricians/etc. who built it, into perpetuity. Or when their used car is sold, give a few percent to the manufacturer. Or used books on amazon. Etc.

Re:Nein nein nein

[gstoddart]

Achtung!!! this is a bad idea, copyright law is out of hand.

You know, I increasingly think that this be read aloud any time a government tries to pass a law about technology.

DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FUR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN!

If you don't know how it works, don't touch it. :-P

Re:again?

[next_ghost]

No and no.