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.

Comments

Goolag Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Goolag Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confused on many levels. This law has nothing to do with censorship, it would only block content that has already been published. The problem with it is not censorship but that it is an ill-conceived attempt to protect copyright holders from web-scrapers and news aggregation sites. Now these sites do not contribute anything useful to society, in fact they are one of the major sources of reality distortion and misleading information but unfortunately this EU law proposal would likely have way worse consequences than what it is trying to fix and it is based on misunderstanding of how the Internet works - and, like with similar laws in the past, places the burden and costs on innocent parties rather than the actual copyright infringers.

By misrepresenting the law as one about "censorship" you're actually aiding the stupid morons who come up with such proposals, as an agent provocateur would.

How can Google possibly be truthful?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

GDPR is the greatest of all time

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:GDPR is the greatest of all time

[thegarbz]

Google should be shut out of the EU completely and forever.

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.

Google should stand up against retarded legislation (like this link tax). Google should be forced to follow non retarded legislation (like the GDPR). And above all, Google will not leave the EU (profit centre) and should not be forced to (because despite what angry nerd rage dictates they actually provide a large number of damn useful services).

Re:... and ...

[jawtheshark]

It may be easy, but this is clearly risk just assessment. You see, if you have a website outside of the EU, and even if it's easy to comply, you still have to do the work and if you fail staying compliant, or misjudged the compliance criteria, you are liable. So, the thing these companies have to evaluate is "lose a likely small non-target audience" vs "being -even slightly- at risk of financial penalties".

Depending, on your evaluation the choice is easily made: "lose a likely small non-target audience".

I understand the rationale. I am not angry at them, it is a consequence of a business decision related to GDPR. I also know how to get around these blocks.

Re: Why should we believe Google?

[fazig]

If you see SJW shit everywhere, maybe the problem is you.