3 ms·

To clarify, I'm asking about why "media companies in Europe have been crying for help against Google News".

tuukkah 9y ago
They want to get monetary compensation from Google News for something that is free, namely aggregation of news. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-copyright-news/eu-explores-whether-google-yahoo-should-pay-for-showing-online-news-snippets-idUSKBN0TS2D920151209 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-copyright-news/eu-expl...
- Certhas 9y ago
  Why should it be free?
  - tuukkah 9y ago
    Because it's currently free and the proposed alternative would undermine CC licensing. EDIT: full picture here: https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra-copyright-for-news-sites/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra-copyright-for...
  - icebraining 9y ago
    It's not that it should be free; it's that this proposal prevents the author from choosing to give it away for free. Essentially, the media companies are trying to create a legally-enforced cartel, since the last time some defected.
  - michaelmrose 9y ago
    Because traditionally the idea was that sharing the fact that Bob wrote a story entitled Hippos are horrible along with 17000 other hippo related news items wasn't a copyrightable thing. Copyright has traditionally ensured that authors and those they designate are the sole source of their content while allowing everyone to discuss, share, and talk about the content freely so long as we don't share the meat of the content itself. The fact that the article exists and it's title does not stand in for the articles content so we haven't deprived the author of any right to profit from such. If Bob wants to be paid he can run ads within the article or even charge money and put up a paywall. Making anyone who wants to talk about Bob's article and share a link pay for the privilege of promoting Bob's work is quite frankly stupid even if narrowly construed. A website discussing all the articles about Hippos is a different work than Bob's article and Bob doesn't need a cut further this could easily be misused to say shut down criticism by charging undue revenue for anyone who wants to talk about and link to your work if they have anything unflattering to say. Im already dubious about the current applications of copyright. Giving authors the right to own all discussion of their work seems monumentally stupid.
  - njharman 9y ago
    In addition to all the other valid reasons. The agreegatr is doing the work of collecting, displaying, possibly curating, possibly organising, rankng, sorting, etc. If anyone should get paid t should be the agregator. If the original content publishers are unhappy that can stop publishing they can stop publishing their content for FREE. They want all the benefits of near zero cost distributing to acrue to them. On top they want those proving exposure and increasing the value of their product to pay them! And since that is uttely one sided, ridiculous deal no one has taken them up on it. So, they are trying to use the law to enforce it.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  So, if a EU based news organization publishes an RSS feed, and I have a web page that consumes that RSS feed and displays a link to the original page and the blurb/headline from the RSS feed (as RSS aggregators do), I would now have to pay them?
  - Joeri 9y ago
    Yes. The claim is that you’re profiting from their publishing activity without compensating them. In essence, the feed is a data stream and you must obtain a license for it. I’m not saying I agree, but that’s how I understand the argument.
    - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
      Thanks for clarifying. Wow, that just seems like co opting RSS and then rentseeking from it. It completely bypasses the spirit of RSS and what it means.
- xenomachina 9y ago
  > in Germany, Axel Springer SE, the country’s top publisher, had to scrap a move to block Google from running snippets of articles from its newspapers because traffic to its sites plunged. I think that says it all. They are getting paid: in traffic. If they aren't okay with that there are already means at their disposal, like the robot exclusion protocol, or even putting their content behind a paywall where robots can't get at it.

They want to get monetary compensation from Google News for something that is free, namely aggregation of news. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-copyright-news/eu-explores-whether-google-yahoo-should-pay-for-showing-online-news-snippets-idUSKBN0TS2D920151209 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-copyright-news/eu-expl...

Certhas 9y ago
Why should it be free?
- tuukkah 9y ago
  Because it's currently free and the proposed alternative would undermine CC licensing. EDIT: full picture here: https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra-copyright-for-news-sites/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra-copyright-for...
- icebraining 9y ago
  It's not that it should be free; it's that this proposal prevents the author from choosing to give it away for free. Essentially, the media companies are trying to create a legally-enforced cartel, since the last time some defected.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  Because traditionally the idea was that sharing the fact that Bob wrote a story entitled Hippos are horrible along with 17000 other hippo related news items wasn't a copyrightable thing. Copyright has traditionally ensured that authors and those they designate are the sole source of their content while allowing everyone to discuss, share, and talk about the content freely so long as we don't share the meat of the content itself. The fact that the article exists and it's title does not stand in for the articles content so we haven't deprived the author of any right to profit from such. If Bob wants to be paid he can run ads within the article or even charge money and put up a paywall. Making anyone who wants to talk about Bob's article and share a link pay for the privilege of promoting Bob's work is quite frankly stupid even if narrowly construed. A website discussing all the articles about Hippos is a different work than Bob's article and Bob doesn't need a cut further this could easily be misused to say shut down criticism by charging undue revenue for anyone who wants to talk about and link to your work if they have anything unflattering to say. Im already dubious about the current applications of copyright. Giving authors the right to own all discussion of their work seems monumentally stupid.
- njharman 9y ago
  In addition to all the other valid reasons. The agreegatr is doing the work of collecting, displaying, possibly curating, possibly organising, rankng, sorting, etc. If anyone should get paid t should be the agregator. If the original content publishers are unhappy that can stop publishing they can stop publishing their content for FREE. They want all the benefits of near zero cost distributing to acrue to them. On top they want those proving exposure and increasing the value of their product to pay them! And since that is uttely one sided, ridiculous deal no one has taken them up on it. So, they are trying to use the law to enforce it.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
So, if a EU based news organization publishes an RSS feed, and I have a web page that consumes that RSS feed and displays a link to the original page and the blurb/headline from the RSS feed (as RSS aggregators do), I would now have to pay them?
- Joeri 9y ago
  Yes. The claim is that you’re profiting from their publishing activity without compensating them. In essence, the feed is a data stream and you must obtain a license for it. I’m not saying I agree, but that’s how I understand the argument.
  - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
    Thanks for clarifying. Wow, that just seems like co opting RSS and then rentseeking from it. It completely bypasses the spirit of RSS and what it means.
xenomachina 9y ago
> in Germany, Axel Springer SE, the country’s top publisher, had to scrap a move to block Google from running snippets of articles from its newspapers because traffic to its sites plunged. I think that says it all. They are getting paid: in traffic. If they aren't okay with that there are already means at their disposal, like the robot exclusion protocol, or even putting their content behind a paywall where robots can't get at it.