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Thinking that 'content is king' is how newspapers got into this situation. If you have large distribution (Facebook), even if it is pictures of cats, you can ma

Thinking that 'content is king' is how newspapers got into this situation. If you have large distribution (Facebook), even if it is pictures of cats, you can make money and then buy "quality" content, which is a niche. If you lose control of distribution (Legacy news) you can't make money and you can't make any content, no matter how good it is. >The problem is that Google and Facebook are more than willing to steal that content Really? While Facebook was letting people copy video content from Facebook with no penalty (freebooting), this was never an issue for the news companies. As for the Spanish situation, the news companies gave in because they realised that without Google they had even less distribution than before.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
That's the whole reason news companies are asking for an antitrust consideration: Google can hurt them massively by simply walking away from the negotiating table. Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse. Obviously for the news agencies, their hope would be that Google be somehow forced to pay them for access and not be allowed to shut down the service. Of course, it's hard to imagine how the government could require Google News to operate as a service. The thing that's broken here is that in any other content situation like movies or music, the content is unique and copyrighted. If you want Katy Perry or Star Wars, you have to deal with the companies with rights to those, and the MPAA and RIAA are formidable industry associations which can swing a lot of weight and force a negotiation. If you want any "music" at all, really, you have to sit down with the RIAA. News, however, can't really be copyrighted that way, since fact can be restated by anyone. It's fair use. In a traditional situation, all the affected corporations (like every major news org) would band together and set the bar for negotiation. Someone like Google would have to comply or lose out on a lot of information to base their services on. However, in the case of news, Google has an infinite amount of blogspam to feed off of that is cannibalizing and resharing the news from journalists. Google wouldn't be hurt enough by news agencies blocking them, at least, compared to how much it would hurt news agencies to not be distributed by them.
- sparkzilla 9y ago
  >Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse. They haven't give up their content to Google/Facebook; they give up their distribution. Links to news sites on Google and Facebook are a form of distribution that link back to the original article. As for antitrust, that's somewhat difficult to argue when a new entrant (Facebook) is currently taking a massive amount of distribution and ad revenue away from Google. Who's to say that another new entrant, funded by the legacy news industry, couldn't do the same? The legacy news media should have, and still should, focus on making or buying new distribution channels. Instead of whining to the government, they should compete in the market.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Arguably, between AMP and Instant Articles, the original articles don't really count as "in play" anymore. I doubt news is as easy to enter as you imagine. Google and Facebook are in it due to their dominance in search and social respectively. Both are arguably monopolies in their respective fields, and news distribution runs secondary to that. I see where they're coming from, but it's also hard to imagine a legal framework that supports what they'd like to have here in the US.
- fixermark 9y ago
  Are NPR or any of the affiliated stations backing the News Media Alliance collective-bargaining initiative? NPR seems to exist in its own ecosystem where its consumers know that they have to pay for the content, but since they haven't tied their product to exclusivity, they don't seem harmed by the shift from the old "pay-to-read" model to the new model. And I'm unaware of their reputation being called into question in any serious way.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

That's the whole reason news companies are asking for an antitrust consideration: Google can hurt them massively by simply walking away from the negotiating table. Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse. Obviously for the news agencies, their hope would be that Google be somehow forced to pay them for access and not be allowed to shut down the service. Of course, it's hard to imagine how the government could require Google News to operate as a service. The thing that's broken here is that in any other content situation like movies or music, the content is unique and copyrighted. If you want Katy Perry or Star Wars, you have to deal with the companies with rights to those, and the MPAA and RIAA are formidable industry associations which can swing a lot of weight and force a negotiation. If you want any "music" at all, really, you have to sit down with the RIAA. News, however, can't really be copyrighted that way, since fact can be restated by anyone. It's fair use. In a traditional situation, all the affected corporations (like every major news org) would band together and set the bar for negotiation. Someone like Google would have to comply or lose out on a lot of information to base their services on. However, in the case of news, Google has an infinite amount of blogspam to feed off of that is cannibalizing and resharing the news from journalists. Google wouldn't be hurt enough by news agencies blocking them, at least, compared to how much it would hurt news agencies to not be distributed by them.

sparkzilla 9y ago
>Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse. They haven't give up their content to Google/Facebook; they give up their distribution. Links to news sites on Google and Facebook are a form of distribution that link back to the original article. As for antitrust, that's somewhat difficult to argue when a new entrant (Facebook) is currently taking a massive amount of distribution and ad revenue away from Google. Who's to say that another new entrant, funded by the legacy news industry, couldn't do the same? The legacy news media should have, and still should, focus on making or buying new distribution channels. Instead of whining to the government, they should compete in the market.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Arguably, between AMP and Instant Articles, the original articles don't really count as "in play" anymore. I doubt news is as easy to enter as you imagine. Google and Facebook are in it due to their dominance in search and social respectively. Both are arguably monopolies in their respective fields, and news distribution runs secondary to that. I see where they're coming from, but it's also hard to imagine a legal framework that supports what they'd like to have here in the US.
fixermark 9y ago
Are NPR or any of the affiliated stations backing the News Media Alliance collective-bargaining initiative? NPR seems to exist in its own ecosystem where its consumers know that they have to pay for the content, but since they haven't tied their product to exclusivity, they don't seem harmed by the shift from the old "pay-to-read" model to the new model. And I'm unaware of their reputation being called into question in any serious way.