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No it really doesn't. > providing little value while extracting virtually all the profits This is a wildly inaccurate statement. Users have every opportunity

No it really doesn't. > providing little value while extracting virtually all the profits This is a wildly inaccurate statement. Users have every opportunity to visit the news sites directly and yet they choose not to. So clearly search and social media sites are providing value. > They are constantly moving the goal posts, which can ruin businesses overnight We're only talking about news businesses for the purposes of this law. If a news outlet is entirely dependent on google search traffic for their revenue then they don't have a stable business to begin with. This whole law makes the assumption that Google and Facebook are the reason new outlets are losing revenue, but I have yet to see any evidence of that.

acct776 6y ago
> Users have every opportunity "But that's how I get to the website, I type it into the Google!"
- danShumway 6y ago
  If you want to ban Google, then just ban Google. You don't need to set this kind of awful precedent while you're doing it. This weird, "we hate Google, so we're going to pass this massive indirect law that reinterprets fair use, but only applies to them" is pointless and counterproductive. If you don't believe that Google is providing any value, then ban search engines and see how the people of Australia react. But I don't actually believe that the problem people have here is that they think users are forced to look up websites through Google. If that was the problem, then people on both sides would be encouraging Google to pull out of Australia. It's nonsensical to say that indexing websites isn't a valuable service.
  - nwienert 6y ago
    Do you think Google has any strong competition? I think a lot of what’s not being discussed in this thread is that in a competitive market consumers could vote with feet, and the resulting competitive pressure would naturally drive better behaviors, but because that’s lacking governments are now poorly attempting to “fight back”. In a sense, with enough kludgy regulation, eventually there may be enough daylight for a competitor to pop up, and until then people will argue passionately past each other, one libertarian side worried about libertarian things, and the other populist side worried about populist things, etc.
    - danShumway 6y ago
      > Do you think Google has any strong competition? I think that link taxes are not a good substitute for antitrust law. My take on this thread is that a lot of people want to break up Google, and they're picking one of the worst possible ways to do it. Australia is codifying into law an idea that will fundamentally change the way it looks at how the Internet works. Other countries have figured out ways to target Google without breaking the Internet. I'm also (mostly because of the general wild arguments I've seen under the main article about what is and isn't fair about links) mildly skeptical about what people actually mean when they say that they want to "drive better behaviors." Indexing information is a better behavior. People having the freedom to build and share indexes of information without anybody else's permission, including news organizations, is a better behavior. There are criticisms I have Google, including of Google's algorithms. I would like to see antitrust brought up. But I'm not honestly sure the criticisms I have of Google are the same ones that Australia has. I'm seeing people argue that summarizing an article is stealing. It's not, that's not what copyright is. > In a sense, with enough kludgy regulation, eventually there may be enough daylight for a competitor to pop up This is the worst possible way to make a competitor pop up. Why doesn't Australia just pass a law banning Google search if that's what it wants to do? I'm completely serious, a law banning Google would have less harmful effects on the Internet than the rules they're proposing. My very cynical take on this that I am tempted to slip into is that for a lot people proposing this kind of legislation, it's not about banning Google or increasing competition, it's about "Google has money and what if established media sources had some of it." I'm pulling back from that take and assuming that most of the people on this thread actually believe this will increase competition. But even with that more charitable viewpoint, this is such a pointlessly clumsy, harmful way to accomplish that goal. If you want Google to pull out of Australia, just be honest about it. Don't this song and dance about how repressing fair use is somehow good for small businesses and the general public. This is a law that says that Google has to pay to do something it's required to do. There's no consistent thread of logic running through the legislation. It's stealing for Google to link to websites, but it's abuse for them not to link to websites. Snippets provide no value to websites, but removing snippets is playing unfair. Facts aren't copyrightable unless you have a bunch of them from a bunch of different sources in one place. It's just a nonsensically bad law. And the alternative isn't "let Google own the entire world"; there are other pieces of legislation that Australia could pass that wouldn't be so toxic.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  If you actually type the website into google, it will almost certainly send you there. But websites are free to compete with that, by offering better ways to access the content, such as emails tailored to your interests. I know CNN had that option back in the day.
mattmanser 6y ago
News stories are written to give a summary first, then more detail, then more detail, if you didn't know. That's how it's worked for a long time. Hence google simply steal the most valuable bit, the headline and the summary, and users can get away with merely browsing the free content, which Google has stolen. It's as if google owns a newspaper store, that they allow any person to just browse for free. In a real world newsagents you'd be told to buy or GTFO because the newsagent makes money from selling the papers. But because google already made their money, they sell the land, they gleefully give it away for free. Don't forget, Google is worthless without the content, if everyone banned Google from scraping content tomorrow it would go bust overnight. But almost every site would make more money without search engines. Reflecting on this, it's actually in every governments interest to make it as hard as possible for Google/Facebook/etc. to do business in their territory. If google just "give up" on Australia, it means all that advertising money will probably go to an Australian search engine, and be taxable.
- shakna 6y ago
  > Hence google simply steal the most valuable bit, the headline and the summary, and users can get away with merely browsing the free content, which Google has stolen. Google is hardly "stealing" this. The news sites are offering it directly to Google, and asking for them to make use of it. They could ask Google not to index them, or they could stop asking to appear the carousel, at any point. Google actually prepared to stop listing news sites to Australians at all, in preparation for this law, and so the law was changed to force them to continue listing the sites. If Google is stealing the content, they are also being required to steal the content. They're not allowed to opt out of showing the data that the news sites are offering. They're not allowed to decline showing news at all.
  - graeme 6y ago
    Indeed. You can set a search result not to display the snippet, and google will respect that choice. News articles are choosing to display the snippets.
    - 6y ago

acct776 6y ago

> Users have every opportunity "But that's how I get to the website, I type it into the Google!"

danShumway 6y ago
If you want to ban Google, then just ban Google. You don't need to set this kind of awful precedent while you're doing it. This weird, "we hate Google, so we're going to pass this massive indirect law that reinterprets fair use, but only applies to them" is pointless and counterproductive. If you don't believe that Google is providing any value, then ban search engines and see how the people of Australia react. But I don't actually believe that the problem people have here is that they think users are forced to look up websites through Google. If that was the problem, then people on both sides would be encouraging Google to pull out of Australia. It's nonsensical to say that indexing websites isn't a valuable service.
- nwienert 6y ago
  Do you think Google has any strong competition? I think a lot of what’s not being discussed in this thread is that in a competitive market consumers could vote with feet, and the resulting competitive pressure would naturally drive better behaviors, but because that’s lacking governments are now poorly attempting to “fight back”. In a sense, with enough kludgy regulation, eventually there may be enough daylight for a competitor to pop up, and until then people will argue passionately past each other, one libertarian side worried about libertarian things, and the other populist side worried about populist things, etc.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > Do you think Google has any strong competition? I think that link taxes are not a good substitute for antitrust law. My take on this thread is that a lot of people want to break up Google, and they're picking one of the worst possible ways to do it. Australia is codifying into law an idea that will fundamentally change the way it looks at how the Internet works. Other countries have figured out ways to target Google without breaking the Internet. I'm also (mostly because of the general wild arguments I've seen under the main article about what is and isn't fair about links) mildly skeptical about what people actually mean when they say that they want to "drive better behaviors." Indexing information is a better behavior. People having the freedom to build and share indexes of information without anybody else's permission, including news organizations, is a better behavior. There are criticisms I have Google, including of Google's algorithms. I would like to see antitrust brought up. But I'm not honestly sure the criticisms I have of Google are the same ones that Australia has. I'm seeing people argue that summarizing an article is stealing. It's not, that's not what copyright is. > In a sense, with enough kludgy regulation, eventually there may be enough daylight for a competitor to pop up This is the worst possible way to make a competitor pop up. Why doesn't Australia just pass a law banning Google search if that's what it wants to do? I'm completely serious, a law banning Google would have less harmful effects on the Internet than the rules they're proposing. My very cynical take on this that I am tempted to slip into is that for a lot people proposing this kind of legislation, it's not about banning Google or increasing competition, it's about "Google has money and what if established media sources had some of it." I'm pulling back from that take and assuming that most of the people on this thread actually believe this will increase competition. But even with that more charitable viewpoint, this is such a pointlessly clumsy, harmful way to accomplish that goal. If you want Google to pull out of Australia, just be honest about it. Don't this song and dance about how repressing fair use is somehow good for small businesses and the general public. This is a law that says that Google has to pay to do something it's required to do. There's no consistent thread of logic running through the legislation. It's stealing for Google to link to websites, but it's abuse for them not to link to websites. Snippets provide no value to websites, but removing snippets is playing unfair. Facts aren't copyrightable unless you have a bunch of them from a bunch of different sources in one place. It's just a nonsensically bad law. And the alternative isn't "let Google own the entire world"; there are other pieces of legislation that Australia could pass that wouldn't be so toxic.
tomjen3 6y ago
If you actually type the website into google, it will almost certainly send you there. But websites are free to compete with that, by offering better ways to access the content, such as emails tailored to your interests. I know CNN had that option back in the day.

mattmanser 6y ago

News stories are written to give a summary first, then more detail, then more detail, if you didn't know. That's how it's worked for a long time. Hence google simply steal the most valuable bit, the headline and the summary, and users can get away with merely browsing the free content, which Google has stolen. It's as if google owns a newspaper store, that they allow any person to just browse for free. In a real world newsagents you'd be told to buy or GTFO because the newsagent makes money from selling the papers. But because google already made their money, they sell the land, they gleefully give it away for free. Don't forget, Google is worthless without the content, if everyone banned Google from scraping content tomorrow it would go bust overnight. But almost every site would make more money without search engines. Reflecting on this, it's actually in every governments interest to make it as hard as possible for Google/Facebook/etc. to do business in their territory. If google just "give up" on Australia, it means all that advertising money will probably go to an Australian search engine, and be taxable.

shakna 6y ago
> Hence google simply steal the most valuable bit, the headline and the summary, and users can get away with merely browsing the free content, which Google has stolen. Google is hardly "stealing" this. The news sites are offering it directly to Google, and asking for them to make use of it. They could ask Google not to index them, or they could stop asking to appear the carousel, at any point. Google actually prepared to stop listing news sites to Australians at all, in preparation for this law, and so the law was changed to force them to continue listing the sites. If Google is stealing the content, they are also being required to steal the content. They're not allowed to opt out of showing the data that the news sites are offering. They're not allowed to decline showing news at all.
- graeme 6y ago
  Indeed. You can set a search result not to display the snippet, and google will respect that choice. News articles are choosing to display the snippets.
  - 6y ago