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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.
Have we reached the point where what's bad for Google should be viewed as good for the rest of the universe?
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.
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)
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.
Until the last bit of freedom has been destroyed and all EU citizens are enslaved to live at the command of the likes of Junker and Tusk.
Good the UK is getting out.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Save yourselves!
has steadily First, 7ou have to
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?
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.
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.
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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.
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 ]
... use a different business model that does not rely upon google's egregious practices.
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?)
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.
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.
... it would affect Google's bottom line.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Because it's just teh G00g13 upset their cash cow is going bye bye
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
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.