Slashdot Mirror
EU Copyright Reform Proposes Search Engines Pay For Snippets (thestack.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader reports that the European Commission "is planning reforms that would allow media outlets to request payment from search engines such as Google, for publishing snippets of their content in search results." The Stack reports:
The working paper recommends the introduction of an EU law that covers the rights to digital reproduction of news publications. This would essentially make news publishers a new category of rights holders under copyright law, thereby ensuring that "the creative and economic contribution of news publishers is recognized and incentivized in EU law, as it is today the case for other creative sectors."
the eu does some o.k. things, but then they pull stuff like this out of their collective asses.
just the administration of some bullshit like this is going to cost so much more than the 'snippets' are worth....
and where 'fair use' exists, 'snippets' are covered so long as they are just a very short excerpt. so, sorry, bub. try again.
"Well, we'd rather not have to pay, so... we'll just not index your content anymore. kthxbye"
(Meanwhile Microsoft probably had something to say too, but nobody asked.)
This idea was already implemented in Germany (Leistungsschutzrecht, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_publishers). It failed completely as google just stopped linking to some of the papers and they suddenly had a drop in their user counts and advertisement revenue. So especially google never paid anything. So it's strange that they try to implement in the whole EU if it's obvious that is does not work like intended...
I manage to read news every day without Google's help. In fact I never use Google when in search of news. I go direct to news sites.
If one organisation disappears from Google because of a paywall then readers will go elsewhere, to one that isn't.
But when every news organisation in your country is not indexed by Google, what will you do? Just read news about America and elsewhere? No, you'll go direct to the news websites.
Remember that if publishers died and produced nothing then Google would have nothing to index and there would be nothing for people to read.
Even if it does pass, I really don't see this one being a problem for the search engines - just the opposite, in fact given the way Google responded to a similar legislative attempt in Spain. It's a "request for payment", at least in this version, so I would imagine it'll go down like this: Some media outlets "request" payment. The search engines cough up some cash for past transgressions and strip the snippets from future search results for those companies. Search engine users click on alternative links that still provide snippets. Media outlets that made the requests for payments have to go back to the search engines and beg for a new deal, which will obviously be loaded in favour of the search engines.
As a bonus, as search engine users and media consumers, we'll also get to sort out the dinosaurs in the media business (Hi, Rupert!) from those that are actually willing to try and embrace the new Internet order and make it work for them; I know which group I'd rather support...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Sounds like Spain tried to do this almost verbatim:
source: [thestack.com]
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
Alternatively Google and Microsoft will start using their paraphrasing engines to sidestep the copyrights entirely. Copyright is a restriction on a verbatim copy of the original, so their algorithms just need to change a bit here and there while still keeping the gist, and then they win for free.
When you see something like this your first reaction is bound to be, "Well, stupid ignorant politicians proposing foolish laws that wouldn't work - yet again". And yet... politicians aren't always stupid and ignorant. Many of them have a certain low rat-like cunning, especially when it comes to getting and keeping office, and currying favour with the rich and powerful who can help them. So, just as a hypothesis, what more might be behind a proposal like this?
The obvious starting point is that, rather than pay a tax to content owners in return for doing the service of indexing and making known what they have to offer, search engine companies would simply stop indexing all such material. That would be really bad, huh? Or would it... from a certain point of view. Suppose you own the New York Times or The Guardian or some other boring obnoxious conventional media outlet. Your view of the Web is probably pretty jaundiced. It's full of people who find your stories through search engines and then read them for free - unless you put up a paywall, in which case they just stop coming altogether. Moreover, increasingly they don't even want your lousy stories because they can find so much better and more up-to-date material on the Web, from a thousand independent and dynamic sources. In fact, in the long run your company is probably facing bankruptcy sooner or later because it can't compete with what's available (mostly free) online. Not good. Wouldn't it be marvellous if someone could put a stop to all this "Web" nonsense and take us all back to the good ol' days when you just had to pay for your newspaper and your cable TV and take whatever they gave you? Wouldn't it?
The search engines could just stop indexing such sites, but over time - at least, so the politicians might think - that would shrink the search engines' usefulness so much that they might go right out of business. Oh boo-hoo, the conventional media owners would grin, rubbing their hands happily. What a terrible shame.
And we, who rely so much on the Web, would find it that much less rich and useful. We really should be thinking about how to react to politicians, responding to their rich buddies, who want to shut down the free Web and replace it with a monitored, controlled pay-per-view thing much along the lines of what Bill Gates had in mind before the Web came along and spoiled his day.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
If ALL publishers died, then Google would have nothing to index. They astounding thing to note is that the publishers got their "lex Google" in Germany, and they've already caved and given Google a free exemption, so this isn't going to hurt Google, just other search engines. Instead of limiting Google's power over their business, they have increased it. And they STILL keep pushing for this on a larger scale. I'm sincerely convinced that getting an MBA rots people's brains. There is no other reasonable explanation.
They should hire TheRegister editors to train the algorithms. Then I might go back to reading news.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Except, they will get the news.
From American sources. Or Canadian sources. And so on.
The internet is global. Deal with it.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
"You are not allowed to advertise our business without paying us for the privilege"
"Oh, and you are obliged to advertise our business"
Patently absurd when applied to any business, except publishing apparently. It's a brilliant plan, really. The EU values a healthy, independent press. Even though I use the term independent very lightly, it wouldn't be good if government were seen to subsidise the perss directly. So instead they give them the power to tax private parties with deep pockets.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Then we get a resurrection of that other gem of an EU proposal (which I believe was also instigated by the news outlets): the notion that simply linking to content constitutes copyright infringement.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
From American sources, you usually don't get that much European news.
What's more sad: There were some local news aggregators in Germany, which couldn't afford the license fees and thus closed shop when the law went into effect. And now we are left with even less news aggregators which have even more market power.
They'll just remove the newspapers from search results, just like the other umpteen times it was tried.
Perhaps, but again, it just demonstrates that the media companies simply don't get it and having cut of their own nose have now proceeded to remove other facial features. People don't use search engines to find out what's going on in the world (e.g. the snippets of news articles of TFS), they'll go directly to their MSM site(s) of choice for that with no linking or royalties required, or go through a new aggregator. People use a search engine for news stories because they either already know what they are looking for but don't know where to look for it or are looking for an alternative take on it, and in that case having some indication of how relevant the results are (in the case of the snippets) or any results (in the case of linking in the first place) are going to dictate where their clicks go.
What the MSM sites don't seem to grasp is that this is free traffic generation for them; when a user searches for some given event/gossip/whatever and ends up on some random news site purely because it happened to pop up in the search results with a relevant looking snippet of the article, they've got an opportunity to serve up some ads, sell other services they offer, and maybe even acquire a new regular reader. Remove the snippets, let alone the links, and all of that traffic is not just going to go away - it's going to go to one of your competitors that had more of a clue about how things work. Both the search engines and MSM companies need each other for this arrangement to work, but the relative numbers of major search engines to MSM sites puts the advantage firmly in the hands of the search engines; they need *some* MSM sites, but they don't need all of them, and they certainly don't need the ones the like to haul them into the courts at the drop of a hat.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Why all the fuss? They can already de-list themselves.
And from European news you don't usually get the American angle. It's good to read both to understand both sides of the coin.
-SR
"is planning reforms that would allow media outlets to request payment from search engines such as Google, for publishing snippets of their content in search results"
IMO they got that backwards. It's not the outlets that drive traffic to search engines, it's the search engines that help that traffic to reach the outlets.
If I were a search engine provider/developer, I just might happen to come up with the idea to require outlets to pay me for indexing their content in the first place.
There's nothing forcing search engines to index the idiots' contents. They should actually be either thankful that they can be found, or create a better search engine that they can control - and which noone will use.
Lots of content providers would never be found without the search engines. They should be a bit more humble and re-evaluate who's who in this relationship.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
what if search engines just dropped all your data and info completely and then you just disappeared off the internet completely??? then the cost of advertising your products and services would quadruple
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
There is not much difference between the European angle and the American angle. If you truly want another angle, then you will get it with sites like Al Jazeera.com, RT and Chinadaily.
A similar attempt to charge search engines for snippets in Spain resulted in the shutdown of Google News in the country, and is believed to have contributed to a 14% loss in traffic and related closing of several Spanish publications. When faced with the closing of Google News, the Spanish Newspapers Publishers’ Association requested intervention from the Spanish government and EU competition authorities, but to no avail.
Journalism is almost entirely taking "snippets" from other people in the form of quotes and information and compiling them into a story, so I must assume the newspapers will also be paying out royalties on their articles to anyone they interview, mention, or quote (including when they search for comments on twitter and facebook as they like to do now).
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
There is not much difference between the European angle and the American angle.
You're only thinking about European-English news now. There's plenty of difference in the general European and American angle. I read Swedish, Finnish, German and British news quite often and the contrast with American news is yuuge.
The news sites you mentioned give other angles, yes, but the OP mentioned not getting European news from American sources, hence the vice versa reference.
-SR
Let me spell it out for you:
1. Google created and maintains at its own expense a mechanism for redirecting users to your site and Google doesn't charge you anything for it.
2. Now you're demanding that Google pay you for what you're already receiving at no charge to you.
If, given (1), it sounds like (2) is pretty fucked up, that's because it is.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
News publishers are struggling to make money on the internet, but they still have political influence. So the idea was to force Google to share some of its profits by forcing it to pay license fees for the snippets on news.google.com. Lobbyists claimed that this would only be used to target Google and smaller services needn't worry.
What happened of course, was that that Google discontinued the service in the relevant countries and the number of news readers plummeted. The publishers gave Google an exception to get their visitors back. Now the only result is that anyone from bloggers to other news aggregators is facing legal problems. They can contact the publishers, but are usually ignored.
As a result, the legislation only cemented Googles dominance.
On the other hand, there's a brand new market to provide Eurocentric news in Euro languages from somewhere outside the EU. No fees, so Google doesn't have a problem with displaying them, plus ad revenue, lots of eyes because it's what the Euro types see when they type a search into Google, etc....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Do they understand that if they charge google for including search results, google will just totally drop that source, effectively killing that pages revenue?
Or do they have their heads so far up their asses they dont care?
Well of course Google News makes money for Google.
They wouldn't run that service if it didn't.
The content providers get their share when they provide news that people want to read (i.e. click through to).
Local news matter to locals. That's the only part of your post that you got right.
What made you think I was thinking about "European-English" news only? My first language is not English. And no, there is not much contrast between Europe and the US (unless of course you compare things "Fox News" with "Le Monde Diplomatique").
In reality, there is not. You can keep your news outlets within the EU. You just don't ask for the fee you will be entitled to if this becomes law. About half of the german news outlets did so, when the german version of the law was introduced, and the other news outlets which asked for a fee, caved within some months because of their visitor numbers plummeting.
And that is the point. It is "content", not news anymore. Hardly anyone is "reporting" on anything. Look at nearly every single tech site. They only just regurgitate press releases from this or that manufacture or "report" on what was written on some other site.
Everything they post is skin deep drivel.
Most of the "so called" news sites are nothing more than click bait at best and attempts to brainwash the masses into adopting the political message of whoever owns the site.
There are a couple of sites which I do carry a subscription to, but those are the few who really take the time to research their articles.
Google would be doing us a favor to just delist nearly all sites.
Should the robots file be updated to indicate a site requires payment to appear in search results? Sure for anyone who gets tech it will be equivalent to 'do not index', but maybe a lesson to content owners?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
"In an attempt to save Spanish publishers from the horrors of being sent monetizable traffic by Google News the authorities have managed to cause the closure of that service in that country. There is almost no one who benefits from this new law and a considerable number of people who lose out. Further, the way the law has been written means that there’s no real way out for any of the participants."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/12/11/spanish-practices-close-google-news-in-spain/
She is exactly right.
I wonder, where does it say that singers / actors deserve vast sums of money? Why do governments try to protect these businesses which the people have decided are not worth the amount of money they are asking for? Where is the free market love everyone is talking about?
It would be fair use only if used infrequently. For example, if you want to quote someone else's article in your article, that's fair use. However, if your entire business is dependent upon making snippets from thousands of articles, that's no longer fair use, it's commercial use.
No, you're wrong.
First, fair use applies to both commercial and non-commercial uses. For example, when Mad Magazine did a movie parody, that would be fair use, even though the magazine us sold for an increasing cheap price and is a commercial venture.
Second, the previous poster didn't really explain it well. Fair use is when a copyrighted work is used without permission in a way that, but for fair use, would be infringing, but which is not infringing because it is in the general purpose of copyright to allow such a use. It's evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and is completely fact dependent. This, any particular use might be a fair use, but not just any use actually is.
There's a test for finding out whether a use is fair or not. It has four factors, though it isn't a matter of adding up how many factors go one way or another, and depending on the case, one factor might be treated as outweighing another. Plus, it's just a tool; other factors can be considered too.
The factors are: 1) the purpose and character of the use, such as whether the use is for profit or not, whether the use would advance the progress of knowledge by resulting in something new or otherwise helpful; 2) the nature of the work being used, such as whether it is fictional and therefore very creative and worth protecting, or factual, and therefore not worth protecting quite so much (how a work presents itself is also often relevant in copyright; if you claim that something is a fact, even though it's made up or is just a hypothesis, others may get to treat it as a fact) as well as whether the work being used has already been published or not; 3) the amount of the work used, and how important to the work that portion is; and 4) whether the use will have a negative effect on the value or market for the work (positive effects are not considered).
Snippets of this type -- in aggregate, mind you -- have repeatedly been found to be fair use in the US because for the first factor, although the use is commercial in nature, it provides a benefit to society in being able to search for this material (which of course requires as much material as possible to be used in constructing the index, even though the index itself, as opposed to the results of a search, is not made available), the second factor may weigh against the use depending on the material being indexed, but it is not treated as being very important, obviously the whole work must be used to make the index for the index to be useful, so the third factor doesn't matter, and for the fourth factor, it doesn't harm the market for news articles to be able to find them and to see in one or two lines why they match your search terms. It doesn't matter if that's the business model.
And if you think this is extreme, look at time shifting, which is bad on all of the first three factors, but is sufficiently successful on the fourth so as to be fair use (in a general way, since again it is highly fact dependent)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Small snippets are not considered copyright infringment.
That's not entirely accurate. For example, here in the UK, there is no specific minimum amount of material that has to be copied before copyright is infringed. Any work significant enough to be subject to copyright protection in the first place is also potentially subject to infringement.
As an aside, the AC you replied to was overstating the position of US fair use law as well. The amount of the work being copied is only one of the four factors that determine fair use, and again there is no specific minimum required for infringement. If the original publishers could demonstrate (and I'm not saying they can or should, but hypothetically) that the headlines or excerpts being copied by automated news aggregators represented a substantial part of the overall value of the original work, then that copying would not necessarily be fair use.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
What made you think I was thinking about "European-English" news only?
Because that's the only way your argument would have made even some sense to me. I can hardly relate to what you said otherwise. When I read Swedish news and compare them to just about any news outlet in the US, the difference in standpoints in reporting is extremely visible. Even the most liberal ones in the US seem like right-wing publications when you compare them to left-leaning Swedish counterparts.
-SR
It's just like radio.
Sure, radio makes some money but they're really an advertising arm of the publishers. They expose people to things that they can then go and buy. They keep the publishers in business.
Some publishers even PAID for the privelege.
Google can just index everything else. They are the gateway for EVERYTHING, not just lame troll bait news organizations.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
the European Commission "is planning reforms that would allow media outlets to request payment from search engines such as Google, for publishing snippets of their content in search results."
In unrelated news, search engines are planning to encourage media outlets to provide payment to include snippets of their content in search results.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
"News paper industry not failing fast enough, seeks to increase the pace of it's demise by further reducing it's readership."
Pretty soon the mega news media entertainment industry will collapse and we can get on with citizen reporting. Anyone can do better than the lipstick-smothered anchors found on weather.com anyways.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Besides, going with US (or other external) sources isn't a defense. You can still be sued to pay them. The actual defense is to go to the wire services and pay them, and I'm rather sure they provide translations in most European languages. (For the rest, work on improving Bablefish.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No, but you are required to wear clothing, and people who sell it to you can set their price.
The difference is that selling clothing isn't a natural monopoly, and has only minor network effects.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You're wrong, even though your conclusion is right.
Local news is important, but most "news sources" aren't sources, they repeat what the wire services send them. And Google can subscribe to the wire services for a lot less hassle than dealing with every local paper. And I rather expect that the wire services provide translated versions of the news into most European languages, so THAT's not a problem.
This might cause the wire services to devote more effort to local news, of course.
This is a structurally bad answer, but it's the answer that the economics of that law would encourage. It will lead to increased monopolization and homogenization of the news...but laws can do that kind of thing.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If I want local news, I'm going to the specific website of a local news outlet that I already know of.
If I want national news that the local site may not cover, I'm going to a specific national news website (or a Few to get alternate views).
If I want to research a specific current event topic and get as many relevant alternate sources as I can, I'm going to Google AND DuckDuckGo.
If I don't see a snippet of an article in the search results that gives an inkling that it contains information relevant to what I want to know about, I'm not going to bother with the link. It's that simple, and that's what's going to cause these outlets to shoot themselves in the foot.