11 ms·

The law was basically made at the publisher’s behest to get Google to pay them. So far, it has spectularly backfired. In Germany, Google started to delist news

by hesk 8y ago

The law was basically made at the publisher’s behest to get Google to pay them. So far, it has spectularly backfired. In Germany, Google started to delist news sites from their index. After traffic dropped, the publishers gave Google a license to link freely. Law defeated. In Spain, they went a bit further and wrote into the law that Google had to list news sites in their index. So Google News shut down in Spain. Law defeated. I guess, third time’s the charm?

sampo 8y ago
So Google gets licenses to link to new sites for free, but smaller companies and private people's website cannot link to news sites?
- sebst 8y ago
  Yes. Exactly.
  - rdlecler1 8y ago
    And the whole law was enacted because of Google.... Let's have regulation for regulation's sake!
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    But it's just not link, it's show a snippet (and potentially a title) (or you can link and replace every snippet with 'censored by the EU' or something - might be a good strategy for raising awareness)
    - Filligree 8y ago
      Showing the snippet makes people more likely to click through, not less. If you aren't a copyright maximalist, how is that not good for both aggregator and news site? A better question is whether it's good for the user. Filter bubble, and all.
      - raverbashing 8y ago
        > Showing the snippet makes people more likely to click through, not less. If you aren't a copyright maximalist, how is that not good for both aggregator and news site? Exactly. But publishers still think they're in the 20th century
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        This isn't true if you realize what sort of "snippets" they are trying to deal with. Google has been scraping content for Knowledge Graph, and offering up "the answers" so that users don't click through any links. So Google rips off other companies' content, and has basically said "if you don't like it, feel free to block Google with robots.txt and get delisted from search". So Google has left the option that sites either give Google their content for free, and go out of business, or get delisted from search entirely, and go out of business. https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynetworth-com?zd=1&zi=dyskv4zt https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynet... is a pretty good example of why this is happening.
        detaro 8y ago
        I've literally never seen one of those knowledge-graph snippets relating to current news? Google News now has stopped showing teaser texts for news for some publishers after a similar German law was passed, but "surprisingly" the majority of publishers preferred to allow Google to show teasers... (Which is why there's now talk of forbidding publishers to grant that permission for free)
- tomp 8y ago
  I thought the newest reincarnation prevents such licences (i.e. it makes it impossible to waive the right to linking fee)?
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    ...what stops Google from just buying a newspaper, then?
  - mattnewton 8y ago
    For Spain that just got local news delisted with no legal recourse.
- phicoh 8y ago
  Note the text 'and an inalienable right to obtain an fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses' The idea is to make it impossible to give Google a free license. The best outcome would be if Google would refuse to link to any content of European publishers.
  - jerf 8y ago
    "The best outcome would be if Google would refuse to link to any content of European publishers." Not so much sure that's the "best" outcome as the only possible one. As rich as Google looks, when you start dividing their income by multiple multiplicative factors it doesn't last long; the log of Google's income isn't all that large. On the other hand, Google definitely has a lot of cash to weather what to them will be at most a partial disruption of their money making system (as this is back in the linear domain rather than the log domain), whereas the online publications that get delisted from Google will be devastated. I would predict with some confidence that if this does pass all the way into law in the EU that it would be unlikely to last very long as law. But it can cause a lot of damage in the meantime.
    - phicoh 8y ago
      There are quite a few similar rights. One example is that radio stations don't have enter agreements with individual rights owners to license songs. There is blanket fee. Similar payments are for playing music in bars, restaurants and other public spaces, for copying machines, blank CDs (and video and cassette tape), etc. All of those fees are set to collect money, not to kill of that use. The difference this time, is that contracts with individual rights owners are specifically excluded. So the fee is likely going to be an amount that Google can afford. But for the good of the Internet, it would be best if Google refuses and shows EU citizens that copyright has gone way beyond reasonable.
      - Buge 8y ago
        >One example is that radio stations don't have enter agreements with individual rights owners to license songs. Isn't that because the music creator already entered an agreement with a rights organization? If the music creator didn't enter an agreement with a rights organization, the station would have to directly enter an agreement with the musician. The musician has the power to decide whether to sign with the organization or not.
- oldcynic 8y ago
  Simple really: "BigMedia" want me to pay to link to this, so here's the same topic on SmallMediaSite. or I wanted to link this, but "BigMedia" want me to pay, so now I'm not even mentioning their title of the topic.
  - ajross 8y ago
    > Simple really: "BigMedia" want me to pay to link to this, so here's the same topic on SmallMediaSite. It's actually more damaging than that from the perspective of EU regulators: "I can't link to that Le Monde article, so here's a WaPo piece about the same subject". Internet content delivery spans borders, by design. All this does is disadvantage the local producers and force their customer's eyeballs offshore.
    - vageli 8y ago
      > Internet content delivery spans borders, by design. All this does is disadvantage the local producers and force their customer's eyeballs offshore. Coupled with GDPR and many websites around the world shutting down or closing their doors to European users, there won't be many places to go. The overarching trend of artificial borders on the internet is terrifying.
      - oldcynic 8y ago
        I don't understand trying to conflate GDPR and this copyright proposal. GDPR is a reasonably written attempt to preserve some measure of citizen privacy (i.e. you and me). It's an extension and continuation of Data Protection that's been there 20 years. Companies coped with no ill effect. The copyright proposal is entirely for the benefit of large media companies, and the smell of lobbyists is overpowering. (i.e. not you and me)
      - josteink 8y ago
        > Coupled with GDPR and many websites around the world shutting down or closing their doors to European users, That’s hyperbole. Most websites provenly don’t. The GDPR is reasonable. This is not. No need to conflate them.
CloudNetworking 8y ago
Google News is still shut in Spain: https://support.google.com/news/answer/6140047?hl=es https://support.google.com/news/answer/6140047?hl=es
dekrg 8y ago
Laws don't work like that. It you think any law was defeated you very mistaken about how laws and government bureaucracy works. The law still applies and all that happened is that Google gets a free license and everyone who is not Google has to pay licensing fees.
- laumars 8y ago
  While your point is true, the GP was talking from the perspective of Google vs the publishers. I guess "defeated" probably wasn't a wise description but I think his / her general point is still valid.
gpvos 8y ago
Belgium, too (only Walloon publishers sued); I'm not sure if that was before or after Germany, but the result was the same.
wiz21c 8y ago
>>> In Germany, Google started to delist news sites from their index. After traffic dropped, the publishers gave Google a license to link freely. Law defeated. I don't know the detail but the way you put it seems very fair to me. Law protect publishers against Google, so they can say to Google "no", except that their interest is to say "yes". So they say "yes". Looks to me that even if the end result is the same, the publishers had a say. Without the law, Google takes whatever it wants without asking. Now, it has to ask. Looks fair to me.
- izzydata 8y ago
  I agree. Even though the end result is back where they started.
- Asooka 8y ago
  Except you always have a say in whether or not Google takes any part of your site. Google have always respected robots.txt and it's trivial to block your site, or parts of it, from being indexed and shown in searches.
  - anilakar 8y ago
    Except you won't be able to delist content without first allowing their crawler to rummage your site and returning 404 to Googlebot. Happened to me - I wanted to delist a single URL because it was generating unwanted traffic but still keep it accessible to those who have a direct link.
- delecti 8y ago
  The fundamental mechanics of the internet are such that there's no sensible justification around having to ask. It inherently makes no sense to have to ask to link to something online, especially for a news site. If they don't want someone linking to them then there are ways to avoid being linked to (requiring accounts, one-time links, requiring specific referral metadata), but by putting something on the internet you are implicitly enabling and encouraging links.
- benjaminl 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pergadad 8y ago
No Law is not defeated. It means that Google, due to its market power, got the clips for free. Everyone else might be asked to pay. It's actually anticompetitive. I totally understand the intention behind it - you see what the death of good media and rise of clickbait/shill articles did to US and UK. The other EU governments are terrified their own information landscape might go similarly downhill - and all you have left is spam, lies, propaganda and corporate ads hidden as articles. It's just that the approach taken here is the wrong one. They are trying to fix something but shoot at the symptoms, not the cause. It's also true that Google is exploitative in how it uses its ad + News Power (Look at the content preloader discussion) so clearly it's not aiming at the innocent. It's just not the right tool for the job. Probably because so far no one has figured out how to fix this...

by hesk 8y ago

sampo 8y ago

So Google gets licenses to link to new sites for free, but smaller companies and private people's website cannot link to news sites?

sebst 8y ago
Yes. Exactly.
- rdlecler1 8y ago
  And the whole law was enacted because of Google.... Let's have regulation for regulation's sake!
- raverbashing 8y ago
  But it's just not link, it's show a snippet (and potentially a title) (or you can link and replace every snippet with 'censored by the EU' or something - might be a good strategy for raising awareness)
  - Filligree 8y ago
    Showing the snippet makes people more likely to click through, not less. If you aren't a copyright maximalist, how is that not good for both aggregator and news site? A better question is whether it's good for the user. Filter bubble, and all.
    - raverbashing 8y ago
      > Showing the snippet makes people more likely to click through, not less. If you aren't a copyright maximalist, how is that not good for both aggregator and news site? Exactly. But publishers still think they're in the 20th century
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      This isn't true if you realize what sort of "snippets" they are trying to deal with. Google has been scraping content for Knowledge Graph, and offering up "the answers" so that users don't click through any links. So Google rips off other companies' content, and has basically said "if you don't like it, feel free to block Google with robots.txt and get delisted from search". So Google has left the option that sites either give Google their content for free, and go out of business, or get delisted from search entirely, and go out of business. https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynetworth-com?zd=1&zi=dyskv4zt https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynet... is a pretty good example of why this is happening.
      - detaro 8y ago
        I've literally never seen one of those knowledge-graph snippets relating to current news? Google News now has stopped showing teaser texts for news for some publishers after a similar German law was passed, but "surprisingly" the majority of publishers preferred to allow Google to show teasers... (Which is why there's now talk of forbidding publishers to grant that permission for free)
tomp 8y ago
I thought the newest reincarnation prevents such licences (i.e. it makes it impossible to waive the right to linking fee)?
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  ...what stops Google from just buying a newspaper, then?
- mattnewton 8y ago
  For Spain that just got local news delisted with no legal recourse.
phicoh 8y ago
Note the text 'and an inalienable right to obtain an fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses' The idea is to make it impossible to give Google a free license. The best outcome would be if Google would refuse to link to any content of European publishers.
- jerf 8y ago
  "The best outcome would be if Google would refuse to link to any content of European publishers." Not so much sure that's the "best" outcome as the only possible one. As rich as Google looks, when you start dividing their income by multiple multiplicative factors it doesn't last long; the log of Google's income isn't all that large. On the other hand, Google definitely has a lot of cash to weather what to them will be at most a partial disruption of their money making system (as this is back in the linear domain rather than the log domain), whereas the online publications that get delisted from Google will be devastated. I would predict with some confidence that if this does pass all the way into law in the EU that it would be unlikely to last very long as law. But it can cause a lot of damage in the meantime.
  - phicoh 8y ago
    There are quite a few similar rights. One example is that radio stations don't have enter agreements with individual rights owners to license songs. There is blanket fee. Similar payments are for playing music in bars, restaurants and other public spaces, for copying machines, blank CDs (and video and cassette tape), etc. All of those fees are set to collect money, not to kill of that use. The difference this time, is that contracts with individual rights owners are specifically excluded. So the fee is likely going to be an amount that Google can afford. But for the good of the Internet, it would be best if Google refuses and shows EU citizens that copyright has gone way beyond reasonable.
    - Buge 8y ago
      >One example is that radio stations don't have enter agreements with individual rights owners to license songs. Isn't that because the music creator already entered an agreement with a rights organization? If the music creator didn't enter an agreement with a rights organization, the station would have to directly enter an agreement with the musician. The musician has the power to decide whether to sign with the organization or not.
oldcynic 8y ago
Simple really: "BigMedia" want me to pay to link to this, so here's the same topic on SmallMediaSite. or I wanted to link this, but "BigMedia" want me to pay, so now I'm not even mentioning their title of the topic.
- ajross 8y ago
  > Simple really: "BigMedia" want me to pay to link to this, so here's the same topic on SmallMediaSite. It's actually more damaging than that from the perspective of EU regulators: "I can't link to that Le Monde article, so here's a WaPo piece about the same subject". Internet content delivery spans borders, by design. All this does is disadvantage the local producers and force their customer's eyeballs offshore.
  - vageli 8y ago
    > Internet content delivery spans borders, by design. All this does is disadvantage the local producers and force their customer's eyeballs offshore. Coupled with GDPR and many websites around the world shutting down or closing their doors to European users, there won't be many places to go. The overarching trend of artificial borders on the internet is terrifying.
    - oldcynic 8y ago
      I don't understand trying to conflate GDPR and this copyright proposal. GDPR is a reasonably written attempt to preserve some measure of citizen privacy (i.e. you and me). It's an extension and continuation of Data Protection that's been there 20 years. Companies coped with no ill effect. The copyright proposal is entirely for the benefit of large media companies, and the smell of lobbyists is overpowering. (i.e. not you and me)
    - josteink 8y ago
      > Coupled with GDPR and many websites around the world shutting down or closing their doors to European users, That’s hyperbole. Most websites provenly don’t. The GDPR is reasonable. This is not. No need to conflate them.

CloudNetworking 8y ago

Google News is still shut in Spain: https://support.google.com/news/answer/6140047?hl=es https://support.google.com/news/answer/6140047?hl=es

dekrg 8y ago

Laws don't work like that. It you think any law was defeated you very mistaken about how laws and government bureaucracy works. The law still applies and all that happened is that Google gets a free license and everyone who is not Google has to pay licensing fees.

laumars 8y ago
While your point is true, the GP was talking from the perspective of Google vs the publishers. I guess "defeated" probably wasn't a wise description but I think his / her general point is still valid.

gpvos 8y ago

Belgium, too (only Walloon publishers sued); I'm not sure if that was before or after Germany, but the result was the same.

wiz21c 8y ago

>>> In Germany, Google started to delist news sites from their index. After traffic dropped, the publishers gave Google a license to link freely. Law defeated. I don't know the detail but the way you put it seems very fair to me. Law protect publishers against Google, so they can say to Google "no", except that their interest is to say "yes". So they say "yes". Looks to me that even if the end result is the same, the publishers had a say. Without the law, Google takes whatever it wants without asking. Now, it has to ask. Looks fair to me.

izzydata 8y ago
I agree. Even though the end result is back where they started.
Asooka 8y ago
Except you always have a say in whether or not Google takes any part of your site. Google have always respected robots.txt and it's trivial to block your site, or parts of it, from being indexed and shown in searches.
- anilakar 8y ago
  Except you won't be able to delist content without first allowing their crawler to rummage your site and returning 404 to Googlebot. Happened to me - I wanted to delist a single URL because it was generating unwanted traffic but still keep it accessible to those who have a direct link.
delecti 8y ago
The fundamental mechanics of the internet are such that there's no sensible justification around having to ask. It inherently makes no sense to have to ask to link to something online, especially for a news site. If they don't want someone linking to them then there are ways to avoid being linked to (requiring accounts, one-time links, requiring specific referral metadata), but by putting something on the internet you are implicitly enabling and encouraging links.
benjaminl 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

pergadad 8y ago

No Law is not defeated. It means that Google, due to its market power, got the clips for free. Everyone else might be asked to pay. It's actually anticompetitive. I totally understand the intention behind it - you see what the death of good media and rise of clickbait/shill articles did to US and UK. The other EU governments are terrified their own information landscape might go similarly downhill - and all you have left is spam, lies, propaganda and corporate ads hidden as articles. It's just that the approach taken here is the wrong one. They are trying to fix something but shoot at the symptoms, not the cause. It's also true that Google is exploitative in how it uses its ad + News Power (Look at the content preloader discussion) so clearly it's not aiming at the innocent. It's just not the right tool for the job. Probably because so far no one has figured out how to fix this...