It seems like you are forgetting that they can already monitize the service, as most of these image services also force a page load, which means some sort of ad revenue. Your way is not the only way to make a buck...
And you're forgetting that most (successful) companies like to have more than one revenue stream. Advertising is one stream; direct sales of content could be another. There may be good reasons for a company to ignore direct sales of content (e.g., because the user base is getting more and more pissed off at the very thought), but altruism sure ain't one of them.
This annoys me: The legal balance that needs to be struck, he says, is that "a bad Google ranking can be the kiss of death for an online business. . .."
First of all, any online business worth its salt shouldn't be relying on page rankings by Google, but should be buying ads from Google. Second, and much more importantly, Google doesn't owe these online businesses anything. Just because you hang a digital shingle out doesnt entitle you to success. If you enter a crowded niche or design a crappy site or otherwise piss off Google's bots, you deserve to fail.
Just like you would fail if you opened up the hundredth newspaper stand on your block with nothing to distinguish yourself, or never swept your store out, or forgot to advertise.
There's a huge sense of entitlement in this country, and its largely undeserved. It's far too easy to blame Google than to blame your own lousy business model.
One of the real problems here is the Bayh-Doyle Act of 1980, which allowed publicly funded researchers (including universities) to patent or otherwise own the intellectual property rights of inventions funded by your tax dollars and mine.
Before 1980, companies had to do all the research work themselves. If they were assisted by a university's research lab, and if that lab were funded by the Federal government, then intellectual property rights would be held by the government. If Whatsamatta U discovered how to synthesize an enzyme, for instance, no one could ever patent that process. The fruits of publicly funded research were public.
After Bayh-Doyle, everything changed. Universities could patent their publicly funded discoveris, so they were free to enter into partnerships with corporations - the universities, funded by the government, do the lion's share of research. The corporations figure out how to turn discoveries into marketable goods. Everyone wins - except for the people who actually paid for the research in the first place: US taxpayers.
Ex post facto (Latin for "after the fact") means that a person cannot be prosecuted for violating laws passed after he/she committed an act. So if I were to call Congress a bunch of asshats, and 3 days later Congress were to pass a law banning all mockery of that very august body, I still could not be prosecuted. (And all of that could happen, because most members of Congress are, as we all know, asshats.)
But ex post facto says nothing about being granted immunity after the fact. Basically, there is nothing in the constitution that prevents the government from selling out to corporations, even retrospectively. Damned asshats.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like you are forgetting that they can already monitize the service, as most of these image services also force a page load, which means some sort of ad revenue. Your way is not the only way to make a buck...
And you're forgetting that most (successful) companies like to have more than one revenue stream. Advertising is one stream; direct sales of content could be another. There may be good reasons for a company to ignore direct sales of content (e.g., because the user base is getting more and more pissed off at the very thought), but altruism sure ain't one of them.
This annoys me: The legal balance that needs to be struck, he says, is that "a bad Google ranking can be the kiss of death for an online business. . . ."
First of all, any online business worth its salt shouldn't be relying on page rankings by Google, but should be buying ads from Google. Second, and much more importantly, Google doesn't owe these online businesses anything. Just because you hang a digital shingle out doesnt entitle you to success. If you enter a crowded niche or design a crappy site or otherwise piss off Google's bots, you deserve to fail.
Just like you would fail if you opened up the hundredth newspaper stand on your block with nothing to distinguish yourself, or never swept your store out, or forgot to advertise.
There's a huge sense of entitlement in this country, and its largely undeserved. It's far too easy to blame Google than to blame your own lousy business model.
One of the real problems here is the Bayh-Doyle Act of 1980, which allowed publicly funded researchers (including universities) to patent or otherwise own the intellectual property rights of inventions funded by your tax dollars and mine.
Before 1980, companies had to do all the research work themselves. If they were assisted by a university's research lab, and if that lab were funded by the Federal government, then intellectual property rights would be held by the government. If Whatsamatta U discovered how to synthesize an enzyme, for instance, no one could ever patent that process. The fruits of publicly funded research were public.
After Bayh-Doyle, everything changed. Universities could patent their publicly funded discoveris, so they were free to enter into partnerships with corporations - the universities, funded by the government, do the lion's share of research. The corporations figure out how to turn discoveries into marketable goods. Everyone wins - except for the people who actually paid for the research in the first place: US taxpayers.
Ex post facto (Latin for "after the fact") means that a person cannot be prosecuted for violating laws passed after he/she committed an act. So if I were to call Congress a bunch of asshats, and 3 days later Congress were to pass a law banning all mockery of that very august body, I still could not be prosecuted. (And all of that could happen, because most members of Congress are, as we all know, asshats.) But ex post facto says nothing about being granted immunity after the fact. Basically, there is nothing in the constitution that prevents the government from selling out to corporations, even retrospectively. Damned asshats.