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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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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).