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Google Warns News Sites May Lose 45 Percent of Traffic If EU Passes Its Copyright Reform (thenextweb.com)
Google's SVP of Global Affairs, Kent Walker, laid out Google's opposition to the EU's highly contested copyright reform rules. "Google warns Article 11 and Article 13 could have catastrophic effects on the creative economy in Europe by hampering user uploads and news sharing," reports The Next Web. From the report: Article 11 in its current form will limit news aggregators' abilities to show snippets of articles. According to Google's own experiments, the impact of it only showing URLs, very short fragments of headlines, and no preview images would be a "substantial traffic loss to news publishers." "Even a moderate version of the experiment (where we showed the publication title, URL, and video thumbnails) led to a 45 percent reduction in traffic to news publishers," Walker explained. "Our experiment demonstrated that many users turned instead to non-news sites, social media platforms, and online video sites -- another unintended consequence of legislation that aims to support high-quality journalism." "Article 11, called the 'link tax' by opponents, requires anyone who copies a snippet of text from a publisher's articles to have a license to do so," reports ZDNet. "Article 13 demands that online platforms filter and block uploads of copyright-infringing material." The European Parliament approved Article 11 and Section 13 in September. The finalized version may be passed in March or April of this year.
Censorship is always funny until it happens to you.
After shadow banning comments, demonetizing and deleting channels for wrongthink on Youtube,
Goolag is finding out how unpleasant arbitrary censorship is, especially when masquerading
as good intentions.
The "link tax" is bad for Google and other news aggregators, bad for consumers, and likely bad for news sites as well. It is an erosion of the public's right to fair use of information.
A publication can just register a waiver with Google. As I see it, it't simply the fact that the power is in the hands of the publisher.
I mean, regardless of whether you think the rules are correct or not, I think it is highly doubtful that publishers will willingly not give a waiver.
The real issue is that they now have collective bargaining power against Google. That's a completely different issue.
The copyright reform is a Reall Bad Idea(tm).
Personally, I think Google should close down it's services for a week in the EU to give a little hint as what is going to happen. I say that as a citizen of the EU.
GDPR is already causing me to lose access to certain non-EU websites, because it's easier for them to block us than to comply with GDPR. Understandable business decision.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Here is why, Spain tried same type of law not to many years back. News sites in spain saw a massive drop in traffic when google removed their sites from their news feeds.
In other news, Eastern European drug lords warn that drug dealers may loose 45 percent of revenue if EU passes anti-drug legislation. This could have could have catastrophic effects on the drug economy in Europe by hampering user access to cocaine and heroin.
Wording straight from Google, just applied to a slightly different product.
Google should be shut out of the EU completely and forever.
As for the GDPR, it's doing its job, and protecting you from shitty americunt websites that didn't respect your privacy, and were full of fungible bullshit anyway.
The internet was way better before it was commercialized, and we should do everything we can to restore it.
Brussels is hoping that people will be driven back to print media or their subscription sites for news. You know, to the days when everyone got their daily news from one, prefereably local source.
it's the news site that lose visitors not google
Yep, Google didn't blink with Spain, I don't think it'll blink with the EU as a whole either. The EU clearly isn't bothered if a few websites overseas - even if they do include some fairly major US newspapers - decide of their own volition to block EU access because of the GDPR, but they'll absolutely be bothered if it's their own media that's getting cut off at the knees. Google know full well how badly the news sites need them to drive traffic in their direction via search, so I fully expec them to just pull the plug as they did with Spain, wait for the publishers to start screaming and shouting about the lost traffic/revenue, and only then open negotiations on exemptions and workarounds. At that point they'll be doing so from a much stronger position and with an industry that's desperate for a quick solution, so a deal more favourable to Google is much more likely.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
yeah you're a moron, people will still use google, they'll just end up going to non-Europe based results that provide higher quality preview links
That's good. I don't care for euro nazi propaganda. They can siegheil themselves to eurohell.
this should be an optional thing, if a news site wants to be paid for links, fine, let them decide that on their own. they will probably come to the conclusion that it's not worth it and revert back to 'free' links because of the loss of visitors.
i'm sure there are more enough sites who don't agree with it being enforced.
this will only be valid for EU sites? that means we'll just get more links from sites outside of the EU.
it's all so stupid, because a lot of news sites just recycling news from other news sites, most cases without doing any actual fact checking. not a month goes by that another hoax got played on all the news sites because they didn't bother checking the sources and didn't do much more then a copy-paste with some word changes here and there (if that).
if that is what you call news-reporting, then news-aggregate sites aren't really that much different.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Journalism is vital to democracy and the internet has destroyed a lot of the business model.
Something has got to change, we can't just allow a handful of tech gi...... NO CARRIER
If you "don't care", why are you posting your replying with your retarded nonsense? Kill yourself, stupid n1gger.
What everyone seems to forget is that this is a European law, not an American case law, meaning it is open to interpretation, and will be interpreted upon for years to come. The law in Europe is not set in stone.
I mean, you are the kind of person that uses SJW unironically.
Why use news-aggregation at all? You can just go directly to Breitbart.
I am so impressed by googles innate ability to find things to whine about even when it appears impossible
Let's say this will go nuclear and Google will be counting on wires services like the AP and Reuters. Many of the EU news media content are part of those wires services and can the EU go after those? EU can propose any news reporting on those wire services falls under this law because they have bureaus in the EU regardless if the reporter was working for NYT.
Stupid SJW shit pops up not only on news.google.com, but every search result will show that junk.
Unless there is a specific get-out clause, Article 11 could easily be interpreted in court as applying to search results too. After all, if you search for a particular piece of news, the search results will be an aggregation of that news and include snippets.
Or covfefetard propaganda, as it may be.
Wait a minute, how can it be bad news for news aggregators and, specially, for consumers? News sites have RSS subscriptions, which nicely show up notifications whenever the "content creator" puts content online. If the creator has a compelling summary in the RSS and, more importantly, I am interested in it... I will click and go to the "content creator"'s website. RSS feeds are not afected here.
Where is the negative impact there?
Now, if you go to website A (or use non-RSS iApp B) that shows _everything_ in one single place... (whether I am subscribed to a specific outlet or not) equally, as a consumer, I will click and go to the website. It might be okay to have an overview of what's going on, in which case I won't visit the creator's website (so I won't click on those ads that I'm blocking anyway, but other people might like, likely causing loss of revenue for the content creator).
In this case, yeah, website A and iApp B creators will loose the ability to profile my habits and it would be bad for them.
[citation needed] Show the data or GTFO.
Google know full well how badly the news sites need them to drive traffic in their direction via search, so I fully expec them to just pull the plug as they did with Spain, wait for the publishers to start screaming and shouting about the lost traffic/revenue, and only then open negotiations on exemptions and workarounds. At that point they'll be doing so from a much stronger position and with an industry that's desperate for a quick solution, so a deal more favourable to Google is much more likely.
This seems an unwise strategy.
For comparison, it took the EU four years to do anything about the VAT mess on digital services. During that time some smaller businesses went under or stopped supplying the EU. That was a problem that was only recognised at a very late stage in the original legislative process, because by the admission of various senior officials involved, the EU basically didn't even realise that millions of very small businesses existed, so had made no effort to inform or consult with them earlier, when helpful changes might still have been possible. By the time the danger was starting to be understood, it was too late to stop the process or add extra safeguards. And being EU-based rules, the national governments who also recognised the danger too late couldn't then act at national level to mitigate the damage.
In this case, the potential damage has been clear from the start, and campaigners have been objecting to articles 11 and 13 throughout. If the EU passes them anyway, that's essentially game over. Adversely affected online businesses are going to be hurt, and there won't be much that either they or the sites that previously cited them can do about it.
This foolishness has to be stopped before it gets onto the EU statute books.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I just want stupid google to remove all political and SJW shit news. It is on by default, always at the top of news, and no way to turn it off.
There are those who echo your sentiments on other sites.
Sites you use. Sites with green stripes.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Stupid MRA stuff pops up all the time, even on Slashdot.
Save yourselves!
The problem here is that, just like it happened in Spain, the EU fully expects that Google will be the one "adversely affected", paying to the news cartels so they can get that juicy free money.
But, again like Spain, those cartels will be the ones actually "adversely affected", when Google will just cuts the cord and leaves them bumbmling "bu..but, where is our money now?"
Any other victims in the crossfire are just collateral damages and they never cared at all about them.
A search engine should have stayed in the EU. .com US site.
The had people in the EU come to a
Search the web from the USA and enjoy the full freedom to get the results found.
Dont become part of EU laws.
EU nations laws are about tax, censorship and who is allowed to publish.
Did a France, Germany, Spain give that ability to control the publication of links and news about history, art, faith. politics? No.
The EU laws, taxes on publication and gov control stayed and are now enforced for the world to enjoy.
Want the freedom of speech and the freedom to publish? Publish in the USA.
Want the freedom to comment on and link to a publication? Use a US network that respects freedom of speech.
All the EU nations can offer is laws about what can be published, taxes and extra gov censorship.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Of course this is bad for those who have become dependent of the parasitic business model that advertising industry has become more and more (it has been always, at the mushy border between informing and influencing people -- but the collateral damage is exploding during the last years).
But adaptations have to happen from time to time, as e.g. (paper) newspaper know well.
I'm for trying this experiment. The collateral damages by Google, Facebook et al are just too big to not try.
How did the parent get modded to +5 insightful? It's flamebait, but apparently pro-EU flamebait gets modded up.
The GDPR has no jurisdiction for websites based solely in the US, no matter how much the EU wishes otherwise. The GDPR isn't protecting anyone from those "americunt" (grow up) websites. It's also not at all clear to me that websites based in the EU are more likely to respect users' privacy except that the law requires them to do so. So the GDPR is probably having more impact by protecting EU residents from EU websites, where there's actually jurisdiction to enforce it. And of course it matters for companies with a business presence in Europe, like Google.
As for the EU copyright directive, it's truly awful. EU regulation is somewhat hit-and-miss, with the GDPR being good but the copyright directive being a terrible idea. Showing a headline and a snippet of the article text can reasonably be considered fair use. I can't imagine why restricting fair use would be considered a good idea, but that's exactly what's going on.
As for those "americunt" websites, why are you on Slashdot? Plenty of Slashdot stories copy snippets of text from articles, generally longer than what Google News does. Slashdot would appear to be in violation of the EU copyright reform, too. So if these "americunt" websites are so bad because they won't comply with EU laws, why are you here posting flamebait?
Can't we judge things by their merits instead of pretending that everything the EU does is good and everything the US does is bad?
Mad Republican Asshats?
We're not running, we're doing what we do best: dithering, vacillating and blustering until the expiry date arrives and we leave without a deal. That way no one has to do the deeply un-British thing of actually making a decision.
Definitely the preferred option. I've been following Julia Reda's site for updates on this and writing to my MEP at key points like votes, etc., but it looks like the EU has finally decided that Brexit isn't worth any more of their time and is looking to its own business, including trying to get at least some bits of EU legislation through in the current session, this included. That they're trying again with Articles 11 and 13, despite heavy opposition to those specific clauses on previous attempts, indicates that this is probably one of those they really want to pass for some reason (e.g. someone has already been paid), so we can probably expect *something* to get through somehow.
Here's the thing though; the EU isn't listening here, and the implications of this for the average citizen are going to be even more visible than all those cookie consent popups. Having a good chunk of the web go dark because the EU wasn't prepared to listen (regardless of how the EU media spins the coverage so it's not the media's fault) might just make more people aware of the growing disconnect between the MEPs in the EU parliament and the voters and businesses that they're meant to be representing. That disconnect has already got them the train wreck of Brexit, several other EU countries in varying levels of turmoil, and a general rise in extremism and nationalism right across the union. They *need* a wake up call, and if a few media conglomerates have to go to the wall that might actually be a smaller price to pay than a few more xxExits, or a collective swing to the far right (by EU standards) rather than the current level of diversity.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
So YOU are the person still pulling an RSS feed. I wondered who that was.
You can certainly make an argument why RSS is better than Google and Betamax Is better than VHS, but it's a bit too late for those arguments to matter.
If the EU wants to destroy their own economy then that's their prerogative is all I have to say. Old news media, the ones who pushed for these laws, are dying anyways. This will merely speed up the process.
the EU basically didn't even realise that millions of very small businesses existed
This time the EU knows they exist and they EXCPLICITELY LOWERED the protections for small businesses in article 13 a couple of days ago.
I'm wondering why Google objects so much. If this shit passes they'll be handed a EU-wide monopoly because nobody else can possible afford to do business here.
It also highlights an unreasonable dependence on Google - how is it than one provider making a small change can cause a 45% drop in traffic?
The 45% figure also presumably assumes that everything else stays the same. What if, for example, Bing (or whoever) decide they will license news content because it drives worthwhile ad revenue for them, and so can provide higher-quality search results for news than Google does?
I expect the EU will take an approach that quality news is a public good and either arrange for providers to be compensated in some way (probably by something crappy like a broadband tax), or fund public media (BBC etc) directly. Or, the news business will adopt a model like the music business, where a single body collects royalties for use of content.
> And being EU-based rules, the national governments who also recognised the danger too late couldn't then act at national level to mitigate the damage
Which is why Brexit is the best thing that the UK has done for a long time !
Run the consequences of Art 11 on day A. Art 13 on Day B and both on day C.
Then let folks see what the consequences of thee rules will be.
Kind of a neat experiment. You don't usually get to see the consequences of a law before it happens.
Just for fun, Day A could be Feb 11 and B the 13th.
The bigger issue it the isp's must filter and block infringing content ?
I doubt if it is even possible.
If you see SJW shit everywhere, maybe the problem is you.
Google needs to be spanked into next Tursday, I hope it's twice that, and that it spreads throughout every similar valley company that has made its fortune on our backs over the past fifteen years. There are good alternatives now, this matters only to Google and their ilk due to the fact that ethical business looms, and that is anathema to their greed, control, and paranoia. If there were complete justice, Schmidt et.al. would be behind bars, to top it all off.
The thing is, this is an *EU* law and most of these jurisdictions have local laws that more or less grant authorization of some limited form of copies.
The "link tax" is bad for Google
Yes, for *google* because it might prevent them from slurping the *whole web* and republishing it.
(Though even then, some countries are extremely lax. Switzerland, though not exactly EU member, but merely partner state signing bilateral agreement, has the "technical ground" exemption. And Google could argue that indexing the web must include making local copies of everything on technical grounds).
and other news aggregators,
You'll have to check every country for the local details, but nearly all country would allow keeping and citing a small excerpt on the grounds of citation.
The only difference being what local laws consider a reasonable short excerpt. Germany has much stricter and precise definition, but republishing only the abstract/first paragraph is definitely within limits.
Any news aggregator physically based in EU would have no problems.
bad for consumers, and likely bad for news sites as well. It is an erosion of the public's right to fair use of information.
...except in countries where there are strong rules in place already to protect the fair use of information.
(which is the case of most european jurisdiction already).
So, although I tend to be against copyright laws, and would certainly have voted against this law if I had the opportunity (haha... direct democracy in EU. One can dream...), I have to admit that the complaints of Google are pretty much groundless on this one.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Here in Germany I already see an ever increasing number of pay-walled news articles popping up from major newspapers. You'll find these listed on google only with their head- and subheadline.
That is also where most the investigative journalism, where you can find original information, has moved to. Of course besides of being available in print. There's also some freemium articles on newspapers like Zeit.de, where free users can read a certain number in a given time interval, but would have to sign up to get access to more. All while the aggregated news that you can find everywhere are free to anyone.
I have no reliable data (except some anecdotal one) on how popular these pay-walled articles are among the public. My hypothesis is that the aggregated news trash which is usually geared towards this current outrage culture generates a lot more clicks and therefore revenue than most balanced investigative story can do.
Therefore I'm not sure if this will work out for them. But it appears that this is the direction we're going for now.
... use a different business model that does not rely upon google's egregious practices.
But how would one know if this is not what Google wants? Whatever agreement they deal, will likely be good for Google, and bad for other search engines. e.g. Will the agreement hamper new development and new ideas and just keep lining Google's and controlled media outlets?
killing the internet as we know it.
To many governmental bizzy bodies dicking around with it. Trying to impose their particular rules and regulation on everyone.
I think its time to start again... Internet2 ipv6 based. no advertising, no government involvement, no tracking or monitising users.
(Dreams are still free right?)
Does the German Google News still show snippets (e.g. first paragraphs) for non-paywalled articles? Since about a year ago, I see only headlines on Google News, which was a response to pressure from publishers to remove the snippets. That caused me to stop using Google News, and switch to Bing News. Now Bing News has gone the same way.
And yes, Google News includes paywalled articles, and no longer provides notice that they can't be seen without a subscription.
So both Google and Microsoft have already caved to publishers. I suppose they've now drawn the line.
If this gets enacted, Google should simply delist any publication that decides to use their newly acquired "rights".
Also, although not totally on topic, add a filter that hides all paywalled content from search results. And while we're at it, unconditionally hide websites using tricks that hide content after the user has loaded the page.
Yep, Google didn't blink with Spain.
But Google did blink with Chrome.
I've only ever looked at google news on my android phone.
There when I swipe right on the home screen I have not seen snippets for a while whether or not the source is from the EU.
Not mentioned is that Google may loose 45% of its EU revenue. less eyes, less eyecandy = less sales and less market share. If thats the case, something other than Google may fill it. bring it on. PS if you cant use a VPN you deserve it.
Please learn the difference between loose and lose. They are not the same word. And it's fewer eyes and sales, not less.
I expect the EU will take an approach that quality news is a public good and either arrange for providers to be compensated in some way (probably by something crappy like a broadband tax), or fund public media (BBC etc) directly. Or, the news business will adopt a model like the music business, where a single body collects royalties for use of content.
You should understand that it doesn't matter if "quality news" providers are funded by whatever means, if no one is accessing the content they're providing.
... it would affect Google's bottom line.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
For comparison, it took the EU four years to do anything about the VAT mess on digital services. During that time some smaller businesses went under
Good. So let some media companies go under and serve as a lesson to stupid people who think they can get away with rentseeking by screwing around with the legal system.
This foolishness has to be stopped before it gets onto the EU statute books.
This foolishness didn't come from some bored EU bureaucrat, it came from the very people you are defending. Just because Europeans don't list "lobbying" as a line item under OpEx on their quarterly financial reports doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
I for one wouldn't want anybody to use, without an agreement, anything that I've posted online Google make money, big money, out of this; it's time they learned that not everything is allowed. But the real reason behind these new laws is money: the EU wants a chunk of the pile of cash that Google makes using other people's & businesses' data, while avoiding paying taxes. Both this and the tax on total revenue for large corporations seem fair to me.
The EU may be too slow to respond, but the business surely can quickly give Google a free license.
Google pain here is not that news sites lose viewers, but that in turn Google's user tracking and ad revenue (from those news sites) will go down.
Have we reached the point where what's bad for Google should be viewed as good for the rest of the universe?
If you like the way the Internet currently is, then you should side with Google. Their motivation is to maintain the status quo.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Little snowflake doesn't want to see SJW clickbait?
If news sites want to give Googles access to their content for free, then that is fine. If not, Google must share revenue.
Of most oppressive Internet/web nations. EU should be near the top here shortly. Good job guys!! Keep up the good work.
OK, but what about the rest of the Internet? The proposals in question won't just affect Google. They also affect Slashdot, Reddit, and who knows how many other sites that follow a similar format of linking to some primary source with some sort of headline/caption/summary and then providing a forum for related discussion. And for the filtering part, they'll potentially affect any site with user-supplied content, whether or not based on any other primary source. At least there are now some moves to try to limit this to avoid wiping out smaller businesses, but even if those succeed, it's only a damage limitation exercise.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
No reasonable person likes the internet the way it currently is. And this shameless, astroturfing FUD from a dominant entity is symptomatic of what's wrong with it.
That's just sad. Google does feeds you the news they like, not necessarily the news important for you to get.
No they shouldn't. They should be free to do business in the EU while at the same time complying with the laws of the country in which they do business or face fines as a result.
There's an easy technological solution!
Background: News publishers already hold copyright in their works, i.e. they get to decide who can reproduce or make adaptions of them. Google already benefits from "fair use" which allows for extracts/snippets. The proposed EU copyright law says that other people can't reproduce "substantial" extracts but didn't make clear what that means. Google believes that news sources will die without being featured in Google News.
<meta name="licensed-summary" content="The cow jumped over the moon">
<meta name="licensed-picture" content="http://www.myblog.com/pic1.jpg">
<meta name="licensed-autosummary" content="50">
Each HTML page could have some or all of these tags. The "licensed-summary" tag would explicitly grant any news aggregator or anyone the right to reproduce this summary when linking to the article. The "licensed-picture" would explicitly grant them the right to use that picture when linking. The "licensed-autosummary" would explicitly grant them the right to generate their own textual summary of up to (in this case) 50 words.
(It could be accompanied by a legal clarification that every summary consisting of not more than 10 words (?? not sure the exact number) is fair use.)
This way, everyone gets what they want. Google gets to publish summaries from the news publishers that have the wisdom to allow it. Other publishers can decline, up to the limits of fair use.
I'm not sure what you think I was saying, but I suspect you've completely misunderstood my previous comment. In particular, I wasn't defending anyone, and we should be worried about smaller businesses across the EU with this one as well.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
(I assume you mean increased protections for small businesses rather than lowered them.)
This is a step in the right direction, but only if it makes it into the final version. This area is controversial, with a policy of having no exceptions still strongly backed by some of the parties, including big ones like France.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The big problem here isn't killing off old media with obsolete business models. The problem is killing off new media with innovative business models as collateral damage.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
They are hell bent on trying again not because any one was paid but because the news agency lobby has been successful in convincing the majority of the EU members that all opposition are paid Google schills.
I agree with the problem that the EU leadership just doesn't seem to get it when it comes to the tech and creative sectors.
Brexit is an interesting case. I have some businesses in those sectors that are based in the UK, and looking only from a professional standpoint and talking only about those specific businesses, Brexit is almost 100% win and the harder the better. The EU does almost nothing of direct value to any of those businesses, and many things such as these proposals that are/would be directly harmful.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
That's an easy one. Google isn't going to rank news sites that demand payment highly. Every result in the search may mean Google has to pay. So instead, 'free' news sites will be ranked up by default. More badly funded news is worse news, and fake news aggregators are the worst. They don't need to demand payment - they have their own income stream and less expenses. So consumers will get more fake news, and news sites lose clicks and ad revenue.
Another likely option - sites will just charge Google $0. But they may well charge others more. At the very least there'll be legal uncertainty reducing the amount of links from other sites they'll get. This will hamper news dissemination without any benefit to the sites themselves.
Because it's just teh G00g13 upset their cash cow is going bye bye
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Nope, google loses a way to profile (and monetise) user habits.
It is possible to want to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.
This is that whole 'colored' thing again, isn't it? You pick a name, get your actions associated with it, then decide to shed the name to divorce yourself from the resultant prejudice...and declare users of your previous name to be bigots and malicious. At least with the coloured people/people of colour they had a point - their opponents were racist shits. The protoSJWs were proud of their name...until people realised how batshit insane their outspoken members were. Rebrand all you want, a rose's scent doesn't change.
Any news service not wanting Google to display their articles in Google News just needs to add robots.txt file to their website which asks Google not to index their site. Google will then not index the site, and they will not show up in any Google News article or web searches. That these news services don't do this with a simple robots.txt file tells you their true motivations.
The only reason this proposed law exists is because these news services want to force Google to index them, and also pay them. That is, they want the service Google is offering, but instead of paying for a desired service (or accepting it for free, which is what Google currently does) like everyone else does for something they want, they instead want Google to pay them for it.
It's like someone building a road to make it easier for people to reach a shopping mall. Then the stores in the shopping mall demanding the road owner pay them because the road would not get the traffic it does if it weren't for the presence of the stores. The correct base level of comparison here is before the road was built. The road results in increasing traffic to the stores, so it is already a benefit to the stores (the road owner is already "paying" them via increased visitors). It's completely backwards from how an economics is supposed to work. And the misguided belief only exists because these copyright holders have been living in a protected bubble provided by the monopoly copyright law gives them, which shields them from normal economic forces.
Considering how lame the those two parts of the laws are, I would strongly consider blocking EU or putting up a one page site explaining why Europe is blocked. I'm really glad I'm not going to be put into such a crazy situation and I feel for the businesses this will hurt or destroy.
The other part of me just wants to laugh because this will really hurt those news sites. I love these news aggregates and use them often. I generally do click through to the site to read the entire article on the site, then return to the comments sections on either slashdot or yahoo. If these two platforms were not allowed to do that, I would likely end up at one news site, perhaps two but then I wouldn't get to talk about the news.
This really just looks like EU shooting itself in the foot. If I was in Europe, I would definitely get a VPN hosted outside of EU so I could still read the news as I currently do.
Also, making platforms police user content just means platforms stop having user content. How many sites will stop having content because they disallow users from posting it? Definitely sounds like Europe wants to make the Internet a one way street that serves only the few.
No, I actually mean "lowered".
Earlier this week France and Germany had another one of their private meetings and decided they didn't want some sort of "safe harbor" and increased the restrictions on what qualifies for exemption (e.g. not older than 3 years regardless of size). Source: https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/article-13-worse/ There's also a "best effort" clause that applies to anyone but I don't know if that's new.
Oh, I agree the current proposals are still bad, particularly in that they will apply to small sites that have been going a while. Still, even those criteria are better than what was originally proposed, which had no such safeguards or exceptions at all.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Or maybe there's a dearth of mouth-breathing, virtue-signaling, self-hating, sniveling, cuckolded beta numales?
The only men who think "sjw" is problematic are literally fucking morons and faggots.
Welcome to the EU and other socialist shitholes, where magic and dreams juxtapose supply and demand.
They're welcome in America.
Bring your ideas and business here. We'll give you tax credits, infrastructure, and legal protections. The EU will suck you dry, regulate your every move, and side against you in every decision.
Get back to sucking your stupid n1gger husbands cock, retard.
Google traffic is something like 5-25% of total traffic for major European news outlets. So cutting that traffic to half would mean that impact is something like 10% of total traffic. A loss, but not a disaster.
Also, when referral traffic drops, it usually leads to more direct traffic.
And, Google traffic contains lots of flybys - single pageload users with lower value to publishers.
So decrease in traffic would probably be acceptable considering the increase in control over content this gives publishers.
That may be, but crazy copyright legislation is the opposite of progress.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Incels would cease to be? As likely as the actual SJ ideology going away.
These groups, like most groups, have very passionate and vocal people in them. If you nutpick among those you can come up with outrageous statements, which are huge attention grabbers and therefore loved by the media. There they make mountains out of molehills.
I don't see too many smaller businesses being affected by this. Especially given this move is mostly major media outlets battling it out for Google dollars.
Are you sure you're considering the whole set of proposed reforms here? Any business that hosts a blog with visitor comments or a discussion forum and that has been online for more than three years would apparently be required to implement filtering technology that may or may not actually exist under the current proposals. These reforms aren't just about news sites extracting royalties from aggregators for reposting snippets (though any fledgling site with the popular news aggregator plus discussion format would potentially be caught by that aspect as well).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Indeed. It is depressing how often European politicians comment, entirely unironically, about how the importance of boosting the tech sector here in Europe, in practically the next breath after introducing yet another measure that hammers all the small businesses. And then they wonder why the Googles and Facebooks and Apples of the world are all based somewhere else. As the saying goes, every successful large business was once a successful small business.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The criteria are now worse because they added more of them in an AND fashion, not OR.
Previously the parliament wanted 10 million € as a small business exception. Now we have those 10 million AND 3 years AND 5 million visitors.
Any business that hosts a blog with visitor comments
You're implying that businesses now need to be completely responsible for content produced by others? Is that expressly laid out in the legislation?
Yes, that is essentially the concern here. The proposed way to avoid that responsibility in safe-harbour fashion is to implement various precautionary measures, which may or may not rely on technologies that do or do not exist and that may or may not be readily available to small organisations at viable cost or otherwise if they do. This, presumably, is what the politicians mean when they say they have been clear about things.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Those xxExits might just happen in order to get YouTube back.
It will end up with Google demanding 'legitimate' news sites (note, that I did not use double quotes) to pay substantial amounts of money for being displayed on Google's search results and on Google News. After that, EU artists will be forced to pay for being available on YouTube. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and others outside the EU will be in the clear, and will enjoy increased popularity.
You're confusing the issue with some EU-related VAT tax that affected small businesses until it was very late, and the proposed copyright directive's "eases" on small businesses.
It simply means, that small EU-based Internet startups will be frelled.