4 ms·

The stronger they push ridiculous laws like this the more it will force perfectly legitimate business to go underground. We will end up with all the problems o

The stronger they push ridiculous laws like this the more it will force perfectly legitimate business to go underground. We will end up with all the problems of prohibition all over again. > is intended to give publishers and papers a way to make money when companies like Google link to their stories So Google should pay you when they send you more traffic? More traffic = more money. Most companies would be overjoyed if someone sends them free business. Google and countless others even provide tools like Adwords so you can monetize your site if you can't figure out how to do it yourself. I wonder how long until companies outside of Europe decide it's easier just to block all traffic from Europe in protest. This is a weakening of safe harbor provisions. This law makes it extremely difficult to have a platform with any kind of user generated content. As long as a company is taking reasonable measures to combat piracy, hate speech, etc, they need to be granted indemnity from the actions of rogue users.

imbur 8y ago
Why should Google be able to profit off of others content without compensating them? Compulsory licenses are standard in the music industry, and in theory the same could work well for journalism. But the devil is in the details.
- visarga 8y ago
  By that logic, should the phonebook have to pay people to include them? Should the travel pamphlet pay the restaurants it sends people to? Using snippets of the content to send people to the source is essential for online dialogue, not just for Google. Should we all have to pay for referring to an article in a forum? Mark my words: if this were enforced, people and most companies would simply stop linking these sites. What I think will happen instead is that many websites would not want this kind of situation, so we will add a new clause to the robots.txt permitting linking and small snippets, and most websites would enable it rather than lose the link and search traffic. Then we'd be back where we started. By the way, what happens when an European newspaper is hosted in US? What laws apply?
  - JAlexoid 8y ago
    Your name is a matter of fact, thus not subject to copyright. It seems that you can't grasp the concept of copyrightable content.
- hnmcQIOoQUDv 8y ago
  Why should Google continue to refer traffic to these sites for free without compensation?
  - GijsjanB 8y ago
    Euh... Google makes billions of dollars referring traffic...
    - sgift 8y ago
      As do the pages. All this has been tested before in Germany with the Leistungsschutzrecht. Even before it was struck down by the courts it was more or less not active anymore. Google just stopped sending traffic to the pages of the German publishers. It took only a few days until Axel Springer & Co. came crawling back and made a deal with Google that they are allowed to link without compensation.
- harimau777 8y ago
  If a website doesn't want its content to be summarized by Google couldn't they just block it in their robots.txt? From what I've seen that results in Google listing the page's title but with no description. Maybe search engines could adopt some sort of standard that would allow pages to provide their desired description using meta tags if they don't want an automated summary. I could see a problem with pages using dishonest summaries, but perhaps that could be addressed by penalizing the page rank if the provided summary is too different than the summary that Google would have generated.
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
Fuck it, block Europe entirely. See how quickly the politicians there crawl back on their knees when they cant use Facebook to see their grandkids pictures.
- joering2 8y ago
  Honestly I think the point they are trying to make is that they don’t need US-based behemots to control internet in Europe. Take Russia for example - they have vkontakte (if i spell it correctly) and politicians are all fine watching grandkids there; some probably dont even know what “facebook” is, as even POR doesnt speak English and constantly uses translators. Whats happening in real i think is that EU realized it will never be able to chop Google or Facebook in pieces so they make it harder for these companies to exist on local market. At the end of the day free market still rules in Europe - if Facebook disappears their hole will be quickly filled in with 20 other social networks “made in European Union”.
  - incompatible 8y ago
    Won't these “made in European Union” social networks have exactly the same problems as the Americans in complying with the regulations? In Russia and China, I believe they just openly discriminate against foreign companies.
    - joering2 8y ago
      We don't know how enforcement will look just yet, but at the end of the day, court-related decisions are made by humans and its hard to argue that Facebook version made in France will be less or equally looked upon in European court than Facebook made in Silicon Valley, U.S.A.
    - JAlexoid 8y ago
      You are aware that it's pretty much only American companies that are bitching about GPDR, right? EU laws already cover EU companies as a matter of domicile. GPDR only applies the rules of service delivery already present in EU. EU service delivery rules say that a service is delivery point is considered the place where the service consumer is, not where the provider is domiciled.
6ue7nNMEEbHcM 8y ago
> I wonder how long until companies outside of Europe decide it's easier just to block all traffic from Europe in protest. Exactly this. I already hit error 451 when trying to read some local news in US when browsing from Europe (I don't remember name of the page now). This happened after GPDR came into effect. I can totally relate with companies who don't want to deal with legal mess related with GPDR and other nonsense from EU an prefer to just show the user error 451 page. I'm pretty sure VPN providers and huge companies like Google will benefit from this legislation.
- AndyMcConachie 8y ago
  European here. I can't view some major newspapers in the US such as the LA Times. Smallers ones like the Virginia Gazette and Daily Press are also verboten for me. Many US newspapers now redirect to tronc.com for a standard disclaimer. For example, the LA Times redirects to http://www.tronc.com/gdpr/latimes.com/ http://www.tronc.com/gdpr/latimes.com/, which says this. Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
  - Grangar 8y ago
    I just use outline.com/[url]. Also helps to circumvent paywalls.
  - mike10010100 8y ago
    This also happens to me. Evidently my FiOS IP looks European despite the fact that I live near NYC...
- crististm 8y ago
  An universal ban like this is exactly the needed cure
- swebs 8y ago
  > I already hit error 451 when trying to read some local news in US when browsing from Europe The Frederick News Post of Frederick, Maryland does this. https://www.fredericknewspost.com/ https://www.fredericknewspost.com/
bryanrasmussen 8y ago
what kind of perfectly legitimate business going underground do you foresee? I mean with prohibition the thing that went underground was addictive. I guess the argument has been made that facebook is addictive but I don't see them going underground - and frankly I don't see the next facebook competitor going 'underground' either (I just don't foresee one springing up)
bryanrasmussen 8y ago
I foresee a change to the adwords/google analytics contract foregoing link tax etc. for your content to be used by google.

imbur 8y ago

Why should Google be able to profit off of others content without compensating them? Compulsory licenses are standard in the music industry, and in theory the same could work well for journalism. But the devil is in the details.

visarga 8y ago
By that logic, should the phonebook have to pay people to include them? Should the travel pamphlet pay the restaurants it sends people to? Using snippets of the content to send people to the source is essential for online dialogue, not just for Google. Should we all have to pay for referring to an article in a forum? Mark my words: if this were enforced, people and most companies would simply stop linking these sites. What I think will happen instead is that many websites would not want this kind of situation, so we will add a new clause to the robots.txt permitting linking and small snippets, and most websites would enable it rather than lose the link and search traffic. Then we'd be back where we started. By the way, what happens when an European newspaper is hosted in US? What laws apply?
- JAlexoid 8y ago
  Your name is a matter of fact, thus not subject to copyright. It seems that you can't grasp the concept of copyrightable content.
hnmcQIOoQUDv 8y ago
Why should Google continue to refer traffic to these sites for free without compensation?
- GijsjanB 8y ago
  Euh... Google makes billions of dollars referring traffic...
  - sgift 8y ago
    As do the pages. All this has been tested before in Germany with the Leistungsschutzrecht. Even before it was struck down by the courts it was more or less not active anymore. Google just stopped sending traffic to the pages of the German publishers. It took only a few days until Axel Springer & Co. came crawling back and made a deal with Google that they are allowed to link without compensation.
harimau777 8y ago
If a website doesn't want its content to be summarized by Google couldn't they just block it in their robots.txt? From what I've seen that results in Google listing the page's title but with no description. Maybe search engines could adopt some sort of standard that would allow pages to provide their desired description using meta tags if they don't want an automated summary. I could see a problem with pages using dishonest summaries, but perhaps that could be addressed by penalizing the page rank if the provided summary is too different than the summary that Google would have generated.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago

Fuck it, block Europe entirely. See how quickly the politicians there crawl back on their knees when they cant use Facebook to see their grandkids pictures.

joering2 8y ago
Honestly I think the point they are trying to make is that they don’t need US-based behemots to control internet in Europe. Take Russia for example - they have vkontakte (if i spell it correctly) and politicians are all fine watching grandkids there; some probably dont even know what “facebook” is, as even POR doesnt speak English and constantly uses translators. Whats happening in real i think is that EU realized it will never be able to chop Google or Facebook in pieces so they make it harder for these companies to exist on local market. At the end of the day free market still rules in Europe - if Facebook disappears their hole will be quickly filled in with 20 other social networks “made in European Union”.
- incompatible 8y ago
  Won't these “made in European Union” social networks have exactly the same problems as the Americans in complying with the regulations? In Russia and China, I believe they just openly discriminate against foreign companies.
  - joering2 8y ago
    We don't know how enforcement will look just yet, but at the end of the day, court-related decisions are made by humans and its hard to argue that Facebook version made in France will be less or equally looked upon in European court than Facebook made in Silicon Valley, U.S.A.
  - JAlexoid 8y ago
    You are aware that it's pretty much only American companies that are bitching about GPDR, right? EU laws already cover EU companies as a matter of domicile. GPDR only applies the rules of service delivery already present in EU. EU service delivery rules say that a service is delivery point is considered the place where the service consumer is, not where the provider is domiciled.

6ue7nNMEEbHcM 8y ago

> I wonder how long until companies outside of Europe decide it's easier just to block all traffic from Europe in protest. Exactly this. I already hit error 451 when trying to read some local news in US when browsing from Europe (I don't remember name of the page now). This happened after GPDR came into effect. I can totally relate with companies who don't want to deal with legal mess related with GPDR and other nonsense from EU an prefer to just show the user error 451 page. I'm pretty sure VPN providers and huge companies like Google will benefit from this legislation.

AndyMcConachie 8y ago
European here. I can't view some major newspapers in the US such as the LA Times. Smallers ones like the Virginia Gazette and Daily Press are also verboten for me. Many US newspapers now redirect to tronc.com for a standard disclaimer. For example, the LA Times redirects to http://www.tronc.com/gdpr/latimes.com/ http://www.tronc.com/gdpr/latimes.com/, which says this. Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
- Grangar 8y ago
  I just use outline.com/[url]. Also helps to circumvent paywalls.
- mike10010100 8y ago
  This also happens to me. Evidently my FiOS IP looks European despite the fact that I live near NYC...
crististm 8y ago
An universal ban like this is exactly the needed cure
swebs 8y ago
> I already hit error 451 when trying to read some local news in US when browsing from Europe The Frederick News Post of Frederick, Maryland does this. https://www.fredericknewspost.com/ https://www.fredericknewspost.com/

bryanrasmussen 8y ago

what kind of perfectly legitimate business going underground do you foresee? I mean with prohibition the thing that went underground was addictive. I guess the argument has been made that facebook is addictive but I don't see them going underground - and frankly I don't see the next facebook competitor going 'underground' either (I just don't foresee one springing up)

bryanrasmussen 8y ago

I foresee a change to the adwords/google analytics contract foregoing link tax etc. for your content to be used by google.