14 ms·

France fines Google €500M over copyright row

137 points by the-dude 5y ago

chrisseaton 5y ago
Can countries like France just fine Google for something they come up with whenever they want some more money? Seems like they’re being taxed.
- Bayart 5y ago
  That might be the only way to extract money from Google and others short of leaving the EU, yes, considering they don't pay any taxes while extracting massive amounts of value from the country.
  - tpush 5y ago
    > [...] considering they don't pay any taxes while extracting massive amounts of value from the country. The EU should talk to Ireland then. EU countries are the anti-social tax havens here that encourage international companies to not pay taxes.
    - josefx 5y ago
      You know the world would be a weird place if three people robbed a bank and you only prosecute one while the other two loudly argue over finding a new fall guy for the next robbery.
      - tpush 5y ago
        That analogy obviously doesn't work at all. Here's the thing: On one hand you have companies trying to minimize taxes any (legal) way they can, and on the other you have countries saying "Here you can (legally) minimize your taxes!". Any rational thought process is going to conclude that curbing #2 is the only realistic option to tackle that problem; see the global 15% minimum corp tax. That's why your analogy doesn't work: Here 'prosecuting one the 3 bank robbers' actually prevents further robberies, and is also the only practical way to prevent any further robberies.
        josefx 5y ago
        > Here's the thing: On one hand you have companies trying to minimize taxes any (legal) way they can, and on the other you have countries saying "Here you can (legally) minimize your taxes!". Problem is at least with the Ireland case was that there were backroom deals that no one else could be aware of when taxes should be applied equally to everyone. In fact that last part is kinda required by various trade agreements which is the reason most European countries could get so pissed of at Ireland, not the low taxes, but the secrecy in how it applied tax laws to specific heavyweights. Ireland: Nothing wrong here, the plans where publicly available in a disused lavatory labeled beware of the leopard. Everyone with a direct line to our finance minister could have asked and we would have told them how to apply. Totally nothing illegal going on here.
    - Bayart 5y ago
      >The EU should talk to Ireland then. The problem with the way the EU is structured, is that it's very easy for one or two countries to put their foot down and keep the status quo. See what's happened with Poland and Hungary. But you can also see things like Germany quietly sabotaging any defense program and anything happening outside of NATO or turning energy transition programs into a joke. I think it led us in an absolutely dreadful situation strategically, economics included. Britain might have the last word on this one.
- fmajid 5y ago
  They had passed a special tax law to go after Big Tech’s dodgy tax avoidance schemes. It was suspended after Joe Biden’s worldwide minimum corporate tax law, which achieves the same ends (and is not myopically fixated on tech, when IKEA or Starbucks have been doing the same for decades). This is different, it’s rent-seeking news conglomerates like Murdoch successfully lobbying the EU to extend copyright to cover news snippets. Sadly France was one of the countries that pushed the most for this to happen at the EU level, so it is not surprising it would be the first to use the new law as a cudgel.
- CJefferson 5y ago
  Yes, countries are soverign, and can (in many cases) do what they like. You can in principle go to a group like the WTO. Google could of course also just stop operating in France.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    So what stops countries like France just stripping all the assets of Google that they can access from France? If they can fine 500m why not fine a billion? What limits them if they don’t care? It’s mostly Americans’ money - not their citizens. I don’t understand why Google doesn’t just take their ball and go home if the French are going to treat them like this. Why operate in a market where they'll bleed you whenever they want?
    - Zababa 5y ago
      Google doesn't pay much taxes in France, the fine is probably lower than what they should have paid is they weren't cheating the system already. This is fair game.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
the-dude 5y ago
If have nothing to comment on this specific case, but the amount is substantial for a single country. This is about as much as the EU has fined Google and Microsoft before.
- nom 5y ago
  Now imagine 20 other countries had the balls to do the same, then we might get somewhere. 500 mil stings a little, but not enough.
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    Not enough? Why do you think showing news excerpts is so bad that they need to be fined 10B for it?
    - 988747 5y ago
      It's not about "how bad it is", it's about how much money Google makes from it. The fine needs to be in the same order of magnitude in order to discourage Google from doing this.
      - joshuaissac 5y ago
        > it's about how much money Google makes from it How much money does Google make from showing French news headlines? And why should Google be discouraged from showing those headlines?
      - jmeister 5y ago
        This is unhinged zero-sum thinking that would have kept us living in grass huts or driven us to extinction.
        Jochim 5y ago
        If the purpose of a fine is to disincentivise certain behaviour then the degree to which it does so should be of the same magnitude for everyone it applies to. If the magnitude is not equal then all you're doing is discriminating against everyone else. A $50 parking/speeding fine means something very different to the people working in the cafeteria at Google and the SWEs at Google.
programmer_dude 5y ago
Hmm, time to exit France?
- tonmoy 5y ago
  > The U.S. tech group must now come up with proposals within the next two months on how it would compensate news agencies and other publishers for the use of their news. If it does not do that, the company would face additional fines of up to 900,000 euros per day. > Google said it was very disappointed with the decision but would comply.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dopidopHN 5y ago
  Yes please, that would be fun and stimulating. But alas I doubt it gonna happen.
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    Bing, Baidu and Yandex getting ride of the extremely dominant search market leader in one of the world richest country for the cost of a small agreement with newspapers. That would indeed be fun and stimulating.
sharken 5y ago
This is on top of the 220 mln euros fine for antitrust abuse in advertising: https://www.ft.com/content/41266f56-01af-432f-b13f-d03216f82e10 https://www.ft.com/content/41266f56-01af-432f-b13f-d03216f82... Still, it's not quite at the same level as the UBS fine: https://m.dw.com/en/french-court-hands-swiss-bank-ubs-multi-billion-fine-for-tax-evasion/a-47602049 https://m.dw.com/en/french-court-hands-swiss-bank-ubs-multi-...
ill0gicity 5y ago
Does this mean Paris will be sending me the $126k they were ordered to pay me? https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/city-of-paris-ordered-to-pay-for-reverse-92391/ https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/city-of-paris-ordered-to-p...
- berkes 5y ago
  What has this got to do with the article we are discussing here, other than that both "have something to do with France"?
- joshuaissac 5y ago
  The fine is not enforceable as long as Paris does not do any business within the ordering court's jurisdiction (or any other jurisdiction that recognises the award). It is the same for Google. They can avoid the fine by leaving all jurisdictions that recognise the fine.
Y_Y 5y ago
> A Google spokesperson added: "We have acted in good faith throughout the entire process. The fine ignores our efforts to reach an agreement, and the reality of how news works on our platforms." If only everyone would just accept our reality! (Honestly I don't really believe in copyrighting news facts, but at this point it's just nice to see Google get fined.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jlangenauer 5y ago
  Astonishing that a mere corporation thinks they have the right to negotiate with a nation-state and "come to an agreement." Would that I could negotiate having to comply with laws that affect me.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    Plea bargains are pretty much negotiation with the state for individuals...
    - cycomanic 5y ago
      Plea bargains are in fact not a universal thing and illegal in quite a few countries.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    People and companies have a right to make representations when they’re subject to things like fines yes. So would you if you were fined.
  - Google234 5y ago
    Have you heard of the legal system?
  - 5y ago
Google234 5y ago
This seems like a fine that an appeal can successfully overturn.
- e12e 5y ago
  How so?
  - Google234 5y ago
    This looks like a fine punishing Google for not agreeing to pay a large amount of money for snippets. I’m guessing good faith to the regulators would mean giving in to the news agencies demands.
    - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
      > I’m guessing good faith to the regulators would mean giving in to the news agencies demands. No, it's about including all market players and not only some segments, actually releasing proper revenue data and agreeing to negociate on neighbouring rights rather than just Google Showcase. Google is intentionaly stalling negociations on neighbouring rights because they don't agree with their existence. Last time, they took a slap on the wrist. As they didn't get it, the regulator is now less kindly reminding them that they don't get to choose which laws apply to them.
tpush 5y ago
So, what actually happened? How did Google not act in good faith in these talks? The article doesn't present any details whatsoever. Is there a document by the French authorities actually detailing what happened?
- sharken 5y ago
  There are more details in the link below. It seems to be related to the "neighboring rights" EU directive, whatever that is. https://m.dw.com/en/france-fines-google-500-million-in-news-copyright-row/a-58248794 https://m.dw.com/en/france-fines-google-500-million-in-news-...
- londons_explore 5y ago
  The high level seems to be "Our newspapers are struggling because of the rise of the internet. Google isn't French, is a big internet player and nobody likes them, so we're holding them responsible". The detail has been 'found' to match that high level sentiment.
  - jsbdk 5y ago
    And with this the government makes sure those media conglomerates have a positive opinion of the ruling party. It's basically corruption no matter how you see it.
    - Bayart 5y ago
      >And with this the government makes sure those media conglomerates have a positive opinion of the ruling party. That probably got a hearty laugh, or at the very least a chuckle, from anybody familiar with French media.
      - topicseed 5y ago
        They do adulate the ruling party/President.
  - Vinnl 5y ago
jsbdk 5y ago
The hate of Google blinds some to the point that we have to see people happy that Google is getting fined for showing news excerpts.
- simion314 5y ago
  So why the f** Google can screw youtubers with the Disney laws but it should not also apply to Google Search. On Youtube if Google thinks you have a snippet that is similar to something claimed they will punish you , so they decided that using snippets from others and making money is BAD , then the other arm of Google is extracting snippets from others and they make money and this is good now?
  - fmajid 5y ago
    That’s Disney’s doing, not Google’s. Sonny Bono used to be known as “the Congressman from Disney”.
    - simion314 5y ago
      So is it fair that Google only respects Dsney(american) laws ? From what I understand if your video has some claimed stuffgoogle can take your money and give it to the big companies, would be fair that also Google search money to go to newspapers too. Or Google can defend Youtubers rights for fair use too, but we all know they will do whatever makes more money so the a few billionaires will buy a new jet or yacht
  - KingMachiavelli 5y ago
    You can use parts of copyrighted content for certain kinds of videos including commentary. Google previously brought up that the newspapers can use robots.txt to prevent the scraping of there site. If you check the robots.txt of the major French newspapers, both allow Googlebot on the main content areas. The French news paper's both want to be listed on Google yet don't want Google to show previews/snippets. It looks like beggars can be choosers if they cry to the French government.
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
spoonjim 5y ago
Why not? Any government with a sufficiently large market has the giant corporations by the short and curlies. Just keep fining them, it’s free money and what are they going to do? Exit the French market? Lol. Just an import tariff by another name.
gpm 5y ago
Does anyone know why the anti-trust authority is involved in what appears to be some form of copyright dispute over the performance of news headlines?
- josefx 5y ago
  Because the talks about copyright involve Google saying: either share your content for free or we will black list you from our global search monopoly, good luck getting any customers that way.
  - oytis 5y ago
    > either share your content for free or we will black list you from our global search monopoly How can Google stop showing news headlines without blacklisting news websites from the search engine? Show a stub like "This website has something relevant to your search, but we can't show you what exactly"?
    - josefx 5y ago
      As far as I can tell the switch to headlines only was an attempt by Google to skirt a court order after they had already violated copyright for years. Imagine you are a notorious drunk, end up in curt and the judge collects your drivers license and tells you exactly how to get it back, do you a) catch the next bus home or b) step into your over priced luxury car like a Google exec and drive away because you are above the law? Google did b).
      - oytis 5y ago
        They didn't violate copyright for years, news were never copyrightable in the first place. They violated a recently introduced EU directive which they agreed to stop violating by not showing snippets from French news websites anymore, but French court had explicitly forbidden them that and said they have no other choice than to buy their services. That doesn't sound like anything compatible with the rule of law to me.
intricatedetail 5y ago
That's like cost of doing business rather that a fine. The fine should cause this company to restructure at very least and ideally to split. 500 min is a spare change.
ecmascript 5y ago
I don't feel any love for main stream media, but it's super nice to see a big fine to the IMO crappy company Google that clearly deserves it. Google is bad for business in Europe.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Google is bad for business in Europe. If they really think that why not just ask it to leave entirely? Or might as well keep fining until they go and then you’ll get their money and get them to leave.
  - ecmascript 5y ago
    > If they really think that why not just ask it to leave entirely? I don't think that the french authorities think that, it is just my personal opinion. But it is good that at least some european authorities starts to kick back on their anti-competitive behavior.
  - jeltz 5y ago
    Because the EU is pro free trade? They just want everyone to follow the same laws which US tech giants often refuse to do.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      > Because the EU is pro free trade? I thought the EU was famously protectionist? Let's be honest - part of the reason France doesn't like Google is because it's American. There's a jealous and xenophobic aspect to this story.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Bayart 5y ago
        "Americanophobia", or whatever you'd call it, isn't real in France. It doesn't exist. People hate Google because it's arrogant, sleazy, utterly contemptuous of the law - not because it's American. It's still behind companies like Über or Amazon, though.
pantulis 5y ago
Facts cannot be copyrighted, but the content describing the facts is. I have no issue with that but, what if Google deployed some Copilot-like technology to generate its own news feed content?
- keithnoizu 5y ago
  print some spoof news articles periodically and sue them when they duplicate your "parody content" like the yellow books used to do to prevent duplication of phone numbers.
- yodelshady 5y ago
  > what if Google deployed some Copilot-like technology to generate its own news feed content? Would depend on its feed, surely. Taking the fast-but-insane firehose of Twitter and turning it into an accurate and sensible report is value-adding and fair use, prepending a copied article with "<X> reports..." isn't. Same as creative work really, so I suppose we'll see the same shenanigans.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    I don't know how copyright in France works, but in Germany there is no such thing as Fair Use.
    - tpush 5y ago
      Germany doesn't have a 'Fair Use' doctrine, but its Copyright law has analogous restrictions.
- josefx 5y ago
  copilot has already ended up reproducing longer snippets of its input perfectly, at least for code that appeared multiple times in its training set. Given that a lot of news papers and sites source some of their articles from the same agencies they would probably end up repeating quite a bit of their input word for word.
kockic 5y ago
Fine!
dt3ft 5y ago
This is peanuts for Google.
bosswipe 5y ago
Why not stop showing news snippets?
- jefftk 5y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/french-regulator-says-google-must-pay-news-sites-to-send-them-traffic https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/french-regulator...
qwertox 5y ago
Is it just me or do others also believe that news snippets which lead to a paywalled article must be marked as an ad? That article is a product which I need to pay for to get access to it, isn't it?
- jeltz 5y ago
  I use a Swedish news aggregator, Omni, which marks all their paywalled articles as paywalled. I love it
jasode 5y ago
From a previous article[1] with some more context: >In 2019, Google announced it was going to stop displaying "snippets" from French news articles in search results. Google believed that showing only news story headlines, not brief excerpts from articles, would bring it into compliance with the new law. So even just linking the headlines _without_ the snippets was still not in compliance. We have 30+ years of the world wide web being built on referred url links (with no snippets) without monetary payment but now French news organizations want compensation for it. I don't understand that logic. They get extra visibility + traffic clicks from Google -- but also want to be paid for it?!? If after a Apple WWDC event, the front page of HN is filled with url links to Apple press releases and announcements, it doesn't mean HN should pay money to Apple Inc to send eyeballs to "apple.com". Linking to other urls and showing the text between "<title>...</title>" (for free) is how the web works. IMO, removing the embedded snippets should have been enough. This feels more like a shakedown from French newspapers with backing from the France government rather than fair business compensation. Right now, on the HN frontpage is this headline "France fines Google €500M over copyright row (reuters.com)" -- with no snippet -- but according to logic of French newspapers, HN still needs to pay Reuters in Canada a license fee. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/google-agrees-to-pay-french-news-sites-to-send-them-traffic/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/google-agrees-to...
- Causality1 5y ago
  If you can't innovate, litigate.
  - Annatar 5y ago
    That's not the case here at all, it's about Google taking revenue away from newspapers, and when one messes with another's source of income, things come to a head. Looks like you're in the wrong part of the town. Are you lost? Would you like directions?
  - nickpp 5y ago
    Sadly, it's becoming EU's business model.
freediver 5y ago
Anyone running a business knows that fines at ~day's revenue of the business are at best nuisance (this fine represents ~1.2 days of Google revenue). Google should be able to afford order of magnitude large fines if it helps them buy time and find a "way" to relieve the pressure from news orgs of one country and come up with a more comprehensive answer to this 'threat' in general. Giving the French what they want would add to the streak of precedents that are much more dangerous for Google's bottom line. Imagine if Google needed to have a revenue share agreement with every website it uses snippets from, anywhere in the world, proportional to appearances/clicks in results? This could be possible because there is nothing special in the laws about news sites as such, they are just more organized in their demands. This would be search 2.0, sustainable for the web, but would 'bad' for the search giant as we know it today.
- jeltz 5y ago
  Sure, but fines stops Google from ignoring the court ruling forever because if they do France will keep finding them umäntil they comply which will cost more than it is worth. Yes, it is often a good deal to intentionally risk fines to delay but not even Google can afford doing it forever.
  - freediver 5y ago
    $500M fine every few months? Google can definitely afford doing it forever. It probably won't and my argument is they were just buying time to come up a with a strong answer to this, which is IMO a serious threat to their business.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Revenue is not profit...
  - freediver 5y ago
    For high margin tech businesses it almost is. Google does not need 150,000 people to operate search&ads. There is a lever it can pull, but doing so would turn it into a different kind of business. Thiel has a great line for this phenomena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q26XIKtwXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q26XIKtwXQ
LightG 5y ago
Maybe this would be a good interim way to address global tax. 1) BigCo acts in a way which attracts significant local fine. 2) Country/ies in question fines them a representative amount of local tax for a company earning £X revenue in that country/ies
randomperson_24 5y ago
This is just increasing competition in the search space. Any new search engine who is growing big will also have to pay to just "link" another website. And in most cases not be able to afford it. This is not how I imagine the internet to work :( This was just lobbying done by newspapers who are dying to social media and better news channels.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > This was just lobbying done by newspapers who are dying to social media and better news channels. Said newspapers are already heavily subsidized by the French government anyway.., They should just nationalize them and make France an official Soviet State instead of pretending to be a Democracy.
benjaminwootton 5y ago
This just reads like a shakedown to me. This type of thing makes France seems like a terrible place to do business. Obviously a big market for tech giants, but they are so anti-business and beuracratic. I wouldn’t consider doing anything there.
- tasubotadas 5y ago
  It is. Not that much innovative businesses start or stay there.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > This type of thing makes France seems like a terrible place to do business. The forced unionization when you reach 50 employees is one of the main reason no new big company grows locally. Not worth the trouble.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    There are plenty of big French companies. The issue is with medium and small companies more than anything. Also the law you're talking about is far from unique to France.
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      notice I said NEW big companies. good luck finding ones that grew in recent years.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
greatgib 5y ago
It has to be noted that most media in France are belonging to a very reduced number of Persons, that are, for most of them billionaires. (They also avoid paying some wealth taxes by owning shares of media companies...) And, surprisedly, most of them have personal relationship with the president or top officials of the government...
- hulitu 5y ago
  > It has to be noted that most media in France (and US and Germany and UK and practicly every country) are belonging to a very reduced number of Persons, that are, for most of them billionaires. I fixed it for you. > (They also avoid paying some wealth taxes by owning shares of media companies...) Like every company > And, surprisedly, most of them have personal relationship with the president or top officials of the government... Just like google and other companies. It's called lobbying and it is the most popular sport in governments around the globe.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  All true. However 2 wrongs don't make a right. Just because the mass media in France is basically an oligopoly, it changes nothing to Google doing something illegal.
  - greatgib 5y ago
    If you look at the whole thing, it does not make any sense at all. Except the media seeing google generating a shit load of money and wanting to take a part of it. If you think about it, if the article might be interesting, you will go to the website of the media anyway. But now, most media here are really crappy and are just formatting news from AFP (french Reuter equivalent) or from gov or corp press releases without doing real journalism. And so, logically from their point of view, just showing the title steal the only worthing thing from them. And that does not entitle them to get traffic from Google, but just to receive whatever biggest amount possible from Google without doing anything. Usually, I'm complaining more about Google bad actions and its monopoly abuses. But in this specific case, I would more likely be on their side, with the impression that they are bullied by the media that are really politically powerful in France. Imagine, if all the websites referenced in hacker news were starting to ask HN to pay them for the right to list their articles... And the bad thing is that, once they will win with Google, it will create a precedent and they can legitimately start pursuing the little fishes. Think about all the corporate assholes around the world that really would like to have the right to decide who link to their website and impose some fees for that!
nickpp 5y ago
It’s not a fine, it’s a tax disguised as a fine. A protectionist tax France selectively imposes on a successful company from a successful industry based in a foreign country to prop up a dying industry from their own country. Makes me wish companies had some balls and actually quit markets that treat them like this. But companies are business organizations, not political ones. The actual solution here is in politics: USA should respond symmetrically, by fining/taxing some large French conglomerate doing business in US.
- Renaud 5y ago
  If Google wanted to quit that market, then Godspeed. It would be a tremendous opportunity for someone new to step in (no, I'm, not looking at you Bing). But alas, I'll bet good money that recalcitrant France is still a market too juicy for Google to abandon.
  - dontblink 5y ago
    Wouldn't they have to quit the entire EU? How does that work?
ekianjo 5y ago
Let Google drop completely the Google news service in France and let them all suffer by the lack of visibility. When you can't get to a Win-Win proposition, aim for the nuclear Lose-Lose.
- glimmung 5y ago
  Agreed. This link tax crap sets a disturbing precedent. It would be to the benefit of the web in general, Google in particular, and most specifically to the thinking skills of the EU if Google pulled news, as I think they did in Spain under similar circs.
  - Shadonototro 5y ago
    > It would be to the benefit of the web in general how come? it forces the birth of BUZZFEED type "news agency" who make money only by providing fake news with clickbait titles the content makes the article and the actual news solid and trustable thinking "titles" is everything is the reason why the western civilization is dead
- Shadonototro 5y ago
  lack of visibility? lol that's not knowing how local news outlets gain their audience how long until people stop defending X big company like google only because they own some of their shares? it's no wonder China already outpaced NASA in their space missions people in the west are defending the companies who hold them back only just to seek more profits google has everything to loose here, they are not a news agency, they want to profit from other people's work USA is a terrible place to grow a civilization, everything went downhill over there, China is a much better place
  - oytis 5y ago
    > it's no wonder China already outpaced NASA in their space missions So with this legislation France is going to outpace NASA too? So far European space projects were not doing nearly as well as American ones.
juanani 5y ago
The sheep flock to defend their wolf. Color me surprised, Investor News. Fuck Google. Where are the fines for the rest of FAMA?
hortense 5y ago
Can fines given in a country be deducted from profit in an other country?
WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
Were I Google, I’d just stop giving French news sources in any search results at all, and make them pay to even appear in the index. Let them whine a bit about Google “having” to do anything for, you know, public good or something. Because I think that internet news portals need Google more than Google needs them, in the current state of the world. Don’t get me wrong. Google is an atrocious corporation, so are greedy media conglomerates, but watching them fight is mildly entertaining.
- topicseed 5y ago
  I believe the French government forbid Google from removing newspapers from the platform.[0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/french-regulator-says-google-must-pay-news-sites-to-send-them-traffic/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/french-regulator...
  - WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
    Then it looks like France is pure liability at this point.
eitland 5y ago
Hi Googlers! I loudly criticize you all the time but this time I think you are on the right side. Just leave the French alone until their citizens hound their politicians into learning internet history ;-)

137 points by the-dude 5y ago

Can countries like France just fine Google for something they come up with whenever they want some more money? Seems like they’re being taxed.

Bayart 5y ago
That might be the only way to extract money from Google and others short of leaving the EU, yes, considering they don't pay any taxes while extracting massive amounts of value from the country.
- tpush 5y ago
  > [...] considering they don't pay any taxes while extracting massive amounts of value from the country. The EU should talk to Ireland then. EU countries are the anti-social tax havens here that encourage international companies to not pay taxes.
  - josefx 5y ago
    You know the world would be a weird place if three people robbed a bank and you only prosecute one while the other two loudly argue over finding a new fall guy for the next robbery.
    - tpush 5y ago
      That analogy obviously doesn't work at all. Here's the thing: On one hand you have companies trying to minimize taxes any (legal) way they can, and on the other you have countries saying "Here you can (legally) minimize your taxes!". Any rational thought process is going to conclude that curbing #2 is the only realistic option to tackle that problem; see the global 15% minimum corp tax. That's why your analogy doesn't work: Here 'prosecuting one the 3 bank robbers' actually prevents further robberies, and is also the only practical way to prevent any further robberies.
      - josefx 5y ago
        > Here's the thing: On one hand you have companies trying to minimize taxes any (legal) way they can, and on the other you have countries saying "Here you can (legally) minimize your taxes!". Problem is at least with the Ireland case was that there were backroom deals that no one else could be aware of when taxes should be applied equally to everyone. In fact that last part is kinda required by various trade agreements which is the reason most European countries could get so pissed of at Ireland, not the low taxes, but the secrecy in how it applied tax laws to specific heavyweights. Ireland: Nothing wrong here, the plans where publicly available in a disused lavatory labeled beware of the leopard. Everyone with a direct line to our finance minister could have asked and we would have told them how to apply. Totally nothing illegal going on here.
  - Bayart 5y ago
    >The EU should talk to Ireland then. The problem with the way the EU is structured, is that it's very easy for one or two countries to put their foot down and keep the status quo. See what's happened with Poland and Hungary. But you can also see things like Germany quietly sabotaging any defense program and anything happening outside of NATO or turning energy transition programs into a joke. I think it led us in an absolutely dreadful situation strategically, economics included. Britain might have the last word on this one.
fmajid 5y ago
They had passed a special tax law to go after Big Tech’s dodgy tax avoidance schemes. It was suspended after Joe Biden’s worldwide minimum corporate tax law, which achieves the same ends (and is not myopically fixated on tech, when IKEA or Starbucks have been doing the same for decades). This is different, it’s rent-seeking news conglomerates like Murdoch successfully lobbying the EU to extend copyright to cover news snippets. Sadly France was one of the countries that pushed the most for this to happen at the EU level, so it is not surprising it would be the first to use the new law as a cudgel.
CJefferson 5y ago
Yes, countries are soverign, and can (in many cases) do what they like. You can in principle go to a group like the WTO. Google could of course also just stop operating in France.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  So what stops countries like France just stripping all the assets of Google that they can access from France? If they can fine 500m why not fine a billion? What limits them if they don’t care? It’s mostly Americans’ money - not their citizens. I don’t understand why Google doesn’t just take their ball and go home if the French are going to treat them like this. Why operate in a market where they'll bleed you whenever they want?
  - Zababa 5y ago
    Google doesn't pay much taxes in France, the fine is probably lower than what they should have paid is they weren't cheating the system already. This is fair game.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

the-dude 5y ago

If have nothing to comment on this specific case, but the amount is substantial for a single country. This is about as much as the EU has fined Google and Microsoft before.

nom 5y ago
Now imagine 20 other countries had the balls to do the same, then we might get somewhere. 500 mil stings a little, but not enough.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Not enough? Why do you think showing news excerpts is so bad that they need to be fined 10B for it?
  - 988747 5y ago
    It's not about "how bad it is", it's about how much money Google makes from it. The fine needs to be in the same order of magnitude in order to discourage Google from doing this.
    - joshuaissac 5y ago
      > it's about how much money Google makes from it How much money does Google make from showing French news headlines? And why should Google be discouraged from showing those headlines?
    - jmeister 5y ago
      This is unhinged zero-sum thinking that would have kept us living in grass huts or driven us to extinction.
      - Jochim 5y ago
        If the purpose of a fine is to disincentivise certain behaviour then the degree to which it does so should be of the same magnitude for everyone it applies to. If the magnitude is not equal then all you're doing is discriminating against everyone else. A $50 parking/speeding fine means something very different to the people working in the cafeteria at Google and the SWEs at Google.

programmer_dude 5y ago

Hmm, time to exit France?

tonmoy 5y ago
> The U.S. tech group must now come up with proposals within the next two months on how it would compensate news agencies and other publishers for the use of their news. If it does not do that, the company would face additional fines of up to 900,000 euros per day. > Google said it was very disappointed with the decision but would comply.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dopidopHN 5y ago
Yes please, that would be fun and stimulating. But alas I doubt it gonna happen.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  Bing, Baidu and Yandex getting ride of the extremely dominant search market leader in one of the world richest country for the cost of a small agreement with newspapers. That would indeed be fun and stimulating.

sharken 5y ago

This is on top of the 220 mln euros fine for antitrust abuse in advertising: https://www.ft.com/content/41266f56-01af-432f-b13f-d03216f82e10 https://www.ft.com/content/41266f56-01af-432f-b13f-d03216f82... Still, it's not quite at the same level as the UBS fine: https://m.dw.com/en/french-court-hands-swiss-bank-ubs-multi-billion-fine-for-tax-evasion/a-47602049 https://m.dw.com/en/french-court-hands-swiss-bank-ubs-multi-...

ill0gicity 5y ago

Does this mean Paris will be sending me the $126k they were ordered to pay me? https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/city-of-paris-ordered-to-pay-for-reverse-92391/ https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/city-of-paris-ordered-to-p...

berkes 5y ago
What has this got to do with the article we are discussing here, other than that both "have something to do with France"?
joshuaissac 5y ago
The fine is not enforceable as long as Paris does not do any business within the ordering court's jurisdiction (or any other jurisdiction that recognises the award). It is the same for Google. They can avoid the fine by leaving all jurisdictions that recognise the fine.

Y_Y 5y ago

> A Google spokesperson added: "We have acted in good faith throughout the entire process. The fine ignores our efforts to reach an agreement, and the reality of how news works on our platforms." If only everyone would just accept our reality! (Honestly I don't really believe in copyrighting news facts, but at this point it's just nice to see Google get fined.)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jlangenauer 5y ago
Astonishing that a mere corporation thinks they have the right to negotiate with a nation-state and "come to an agreement." Would that I could negotiate having to comply with laws that affect me.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Plea bargains are pretty much negotiation with the state for individuals...
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    Plea bargains are in fact not a universal thing and illegal in quite a few countries.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  People and companies have a right to make representations when they’re subject to things like fines yes. So would you if you were fined.
- Google234 5y ago
  Have you heard of the legal system?
- 5y ago

Google234 5y ago

This seems like a fine that an appeal can successfully overturn.

e12e 5y ago
How so?
- Google234 5y ago
  This looks like a fine punishing Google for not agreeing to pay a large amount of money for snippets. I’m guessing good faith to the regulators would mean giving in to the news agencies demands.
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    > I’m guessing good faith to the regulators would mean giving in to the news agencies demands. No, it's about including all market players and not only some segments, actually releasing proper revenue data and agreeing to negociate on neighbouring rights rather than just Google Showcase. Google is intentionaly stalling negociations on neighbouring rights because they don't agree with their existence. Last time, they took a slap on the wrist. As they didn't get it, the regulator is now less kindly reminding them that they don't get to choose which laws apply to them.

tpush 5y ago

So, what actually happened? How did Google not act in good faith in these talks? The article doesn't present any details whatsoever. Is there a document by the French authorities actually detailing what happened?

sharken 5y ago
There are more details in the link below. It seems to be related to the "neighboring rights" EU directive, whatever that is. https://m.dw.com/en/france-fines-google-500-million-in-news-copyright-row/a-58248794 https://m.dw.com/en/france-fines-google-500-million-in-news-...
londons_explore 5y ago
The high level seems to be "Our newspapers are struggling because of the rise of the internet. Google isn't French, is a big internet player and nobody likes them, so we're holding them responsible". The detail has been 'found' to match that high level sentiment.
- jsbdk 5y ago
  And with this the government makes sure those media conglomerates have a positive opinion of the ruling party. It's basically corruption no matter how you see it.
  - Bayart 5y ago
    >And with this the government makes sure those media conglomerates have a positive opinion of the ruling party. That probably got a hearty laugh, or at the very least a chuckle, from anybody familiar with French media.
    - topicseed 5y ago
      They do adulate the ruling party/President.
- Vinnl 5y ago

jsbdk 5y ago

The hate of Google blinds some to the point that we have to see people happy that Google is getting fined for showing news excerpts.

simion314 5y ago
So why the f** Google can screw youtubers with the Disney laws but it should not also apply to Google Search. On Youtube if Google thinks you have a snippet that is similar to something claimed they will punish you , so they decided that using snippets from others and making money is BAD , then the other arm of Google is extracting snippets from others and they make money and this is good now?
- fmajid 5y ago
  That’s Disney’s doing, not Google’s. Sonny Bono used to be known as “the Congressman from Disney”.
  - simion314 5y ago
    So is it fair that Google only respects Dsney(american) laws ? From what I understand if your video has some claimed stuffgoogle can take your money and give it to the big companies, would be fair that also Google search money to go to newspapers too. Or Google can defend Youtubers rights for fair use too, but we all know they will do whatever makes more money so the a few billionaires will buy a new jet or yacht
- KingMachiavelli 5y ago
  You can use parts of copyrighted content for certain kinds of videos including commentary. Google previously brought up that the newspapers can use robots.txt to prevent the scraping of there site. If you check the robots.txt of the major French newspapers, both allow Googlebot on the main content areas. The French news paper's both want to be listed on Google yet don't want Google to show previews/snippets. It looks like beggars can be choosers if they cry to the French government.
mytailorisrich 5y ago

spoonjim 5y ago

Why not? Any government with a sufficiently large market has the giant corporations by the short and curlies. Just keep fining them, it’s free money and what are they going to do? Exit the French market? Lol. Just an import tariff by another name.

gpm 5y ago

Does anyone know why the anti-trust authority is involved in what appears to be some form of copyright dispute over the performance of news headlines?

josefx 5y ago
Because the talks about copyright involve Google saying: either share your content for free or we will black list you from our global search monopoly, good luck getting any customers that way.
- oytis 5y ago
  > either share your content for free or we will black list you from our global search monopoly How can Google stop showing news headlines without blacklisting news websites from the search engine? Show a stub like "This website has something relevant to your search, but we can't show you what exactly"?
  - josefx 5y ago
    As far as I can tell the switch to headlines only was an attempt by Google to skirt a court order after they had already violated copyright for years. Imagine you are a notorious drunk, end up in curt and the judge collects your drivers license and tells you exactly how to get it back, do you a) catch the next bus home or b) step into your over priced luxury car like a Google exec and drive away because you are above the law? Google did b).
    - oytis 5y ago
      They didn't violate copyright for years, news were never copyrightable in the first place. They violated a recently introduced EU directive which they agreed to stop violating by not showing snippets from French news websites anymore, but French court had explicitly forbidden them that and said they have no other choice than to buy their services. That doesn't sound like anything compatible with the rule of law to me.

intricatedetail 5y ago

That's like cost of doing business rather that a fine. The fine should cause this company to restructure at very least and ideally to split. 500 min is a spare change.

ecmascript 5y ago

I don't feel any love for main stream media, but it's super nice to see a big fine to the IMO crappy company Google that clearly deserves it. Google is bad for business in Europe.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> Google is bad for business in Europe. If they really think that why not just ask it to leave entirely? Or might as well keep fining until they go and then you’ll get their money and get them to leave.
- ecmascript 5y ago
  > If they really think that why not just ask it to leave entirely? I don't think that the french authorities think that, it is just my personal opinion. But it is good that at least some european authorities starts to kick back on their anti-competitive behavior.
- jeltz 5y ago
  Because the EU is pro free trade? They just want everyone to follow the same laws which US tech giants often refuse to do.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Because the EU is pro free trade? I thought the EU was famously protectionist? Let's be honest - part of the reason France doesn't like Google is because it's American. There's a jealous and xenophobic aspect to this story.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Bayart 5y ago
      "Americanophobia", or whatever you'd call it, isn't real in France. It doesn't exist. People hate Google because it's arrogant, sleazy, utterly contemptuous of the law - not because it's American. It's still behind companies like Über or Amazon, though.

pantulis 5y ago

Facts cannot be copyrighted, but the content describing the facts is. I have no issue with that but, what if Google deployed some Copilot-like technology to generate its own news feed content?

keithnoizu 5y ago
print some spoof news articles periodically and sue them when they duplicate your "parody content" like the yellow books used to do to prevent duplication of phone numbers.
yodelshady 5y ago
> what if Google deployed some Copilot-like technology to generate its own news feed content? Would depend on its feed, surely. Taking the fast-but-insane firehose of Twitter and turning it into an accurate and sensible report is value-adding and fair use, prepending a copied article with "<X> reports..." isn't. Same as creative work really, so I suppose we'll see the same shenanigans.
- adrianN 5y ago
  I don't know how copyright in France works, but in Germany there is no such thing as Fair Use.
  - tpush 5y ago
    Germany doesn't have a 'Fair Use' doctrine, but its Copyright law has analogous restrictions.
josefx 5y ago
copilot has already ended up reproducing longer snippets of its input perfectly, at least for code that appeared multiple times in its training set. Given that a lot of news papers and sites source some of their articles from the same agencies they would probably end up repeating quite a bit of their input word for word.

kockic 5y ago

Fine!

dt3ft 5y ago

This is peanuts for Google.

bosswipe 5y ago

Why not stop showing news snippets?

jefftk 5y ago
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/french-regulator-says-google-must-pay-news-sites-to-send-them-traffic https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/french-regulator...

qwertox 5y ago

Is it just me or do others also believe that news snippets which lead to a paywalled article must be marked as an ad? That article is a product which I need to pay for to get access to it, isn't it?

jeltz 5y ago
I use a Swedish news aggregator, Omni, which marks all their paywalled articles as paywalled. I love it

jasode 5y ago

From a previous article[1] with some more context: >In 2019, Google announced it was going to stop displaying "snippets" from French news articles in search results. Google believed that showing only news story headlines, not brief excerpts from articles, would bring it into compliance with the new law. So even just linking the headlines _without_ the snippets was still not in compliance. We have 30+ years of the world wide web being built on referred url links (with no snippets) without monetary payment but now French news organizations want compensation for it. I don't understand that logic. They get extra visibility + traffic clicks from Google -- but also want to be paid for it?!? If after a Apple WWDC event, the front page of HN is filled with url links to Apple press releases and announcements, it doesn't mean HN should pay money to Apple Inc to send eyeballs to "apple.com". Linking to other urls and showing the text between "<title>...</title>" (for free) is how the web works. IMO, removing the embedded snippets should have been enough. This feels more like a shakedown from French newspapers with backing from the France government rather than fair business compensation. Right now, on the HN frontpage is this headline "France fines Google €500M over copyright row (reuters.com)" -- with no snippet -- but according to logic of French newspapers, HN still needs to pay Reuters in Canada a license fee. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/google-agrees-to-pay-french-news-sites-to-send-them-traffic/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/google-agrees-to...

Causality1 5y ago
If you can't innovate, litigate.
- Annatar 5y ago
  That's not the case here at all, it's about Google taking revenue away from newspapers, and when one messes with another's source of income, things come to a head. Looks like you're in the wrong part of the town. Are you lost? Would you like directions?
- nickpp 5y ago
  Sadly, it's becoming EU's business model.

freediver 5y ago

Anyone running a business knows that fines at ~day's revenue of the business are at best nuisance (this fine represents ~1.2 days of Google revenue). Google should be able to afford order of magnitude large fines if it helps them buy time and find a "way" to relieve the pressure from news orgs of one country and come up with a more comprehensive answer to this 'threat' in general. Giving the French what they want would add to the streak of precedents that are much more dangerous for Google's bottom line. Imagine if Google needed to have a revenue share agreement with every website it uses snippets from, anywhere in the world, proportional to appearances/clicks in results? This could be possible because there is nothing special in the laws about news sites as such, they are just more organized in their demands. This would be search 2.0, sustainable for the web, but would 'bad' for the search giant as we know it today.

jeltz 5y ago
Sure, but fines stops Google from ignoring the court ruling forever because if they do France will keep finding them umäntil they comply which will cost more than it is worth. Yes, it is often a good deal to intentionally risk fines to delay but not even Google can afford doing it forever.
- freediver 5y ago
  $500M fine every few months? Google can definitely afford doing it forever. It probably won't and my argument is they were just buying time to come up a with a strong answer to this, which is IMO a serious threat to their business.
ekianjo 5y ago
Revenue is not profit...
- freediver 5y ago
  For high margin tech businesses it almost is. Google does not need 150,000 people to operate search&ads. There is a lever it can pull, but doing so would turn it into a different kind of business. Thiel has a great line for this phenomena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q26XIKtwXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q26XIKtwXQ

LightG 5y ago

Maybe this would be a good interim way to address global tax. 1) BigCo acts in a way which attracts significant local fine. 2) Country/ies in question fines them a representative amount of local tax for a company earning £X revenue in that country/ies

randomperson_24 5y ago

This is just increasing competition in the search space. Any new search engine who is growing big will also have to pay to just "link" another website. And in most cases not be able to afford it. This is not how I imagine the internet to work :( This was just lobbying done by newspapers who are dying to social media and better news channels.

ekianjo 5y ago
> This was just lobbying done by newspapers who are dying to social media and better news channels. Said newspapers are already heavily subsidized by the French government anyway.., They should just nationalize them and make France an official Soviet State instead of pretending to be a Democracy.

benjaminwootton 5y ago

This just reads like a shakedown to me. This type of thing makes France seems like a terrible place to do business. Obviously a big market for tech giants, but they are so anti-business and beuracratic. I wouldn’t consider doing anything there.

tasubotadas 5y ago
It is. Not that much innovative businesses start or stay there.
ekianjo 5y ago
> This type of thing makes France seems like a terrible place to do business. The forced unionization when you reach 50 employees is one of the main reason no new big company grows locally. Not worth the trouble.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  There are plenty of big French companies. The issue is with medium and small companies more than anything. Also the law you're talking about is far from unique to France.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    notice I said NEW big companies. good luck finding ones that grew in recent years.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

greatgib 5y ago

It has to be noted that most media in France are belonging to a very reduced number of Persons, that are, for most of them billionaires. (They also avoid paying some wealth taxes by owning shares of media companies...) And, surprisedly, most of them have personal relationship with the president or top officials of the government...

hulitu 5y ago
> It has to be noted that most media in France (and US and Germany and UK and practicly every country) are belonging to a very reduced number of Persons, that are, for most of them billionaires. I fixed it for you. > (They also avoid paying some wealth taxes by owning shares of media companies...) Like every company > And, surprisedly, most of them have personal relationship with the president or top officials of the government... Just like google and other companies. It's called lobbying and it is the most popular sport in governments around the globe.
throw_m239339 5y ago
All true. However 2 wrongs don't make a right. Just because the mass media in France is basically an oligopoly, it changes nothing to Google doing something illegal.
- greatgib 5y ago
  If you look at the whole thing, it does not make any sense at all. Except the media seeing google generating a shit load of money and wanting to take a part of it. If you think about it, if the article might be interesting, you will go to the website of the media anyway. But now, most media here are really crappy and are just formatting news from AFP (french Reuter equivalent) or from gov or corp press releases without doing real journalism. And so, logically from their point of view, just showing the title steal the only worthing thing from them. And that does not entitle them to get traffic from Google, but just to receive whatever biggest amount possible from Google without doing anything. Usually, I'm complaining more about Google bad actions and its monopoly abuses. But in this specific case, I would more likely be on their side, with the impression that they are bullied by the media that are really politically powerful in France. Imagine, if all the websites referenced in hacker news were starting to ask HN to pay them for the right to list their articles... And the bad thing is that, once they will win with Google, it will create a precedent and they can legitimately start pursuing the little fishes. Think about all the corporate assholes around the world that really would like to have the right to decide who link to their website and impose some fees for that!

nickpp 5y ago

It’s not a fine, it’s a tax disguised as a fine. A protectionist tax France selectively imposes on a successful company from a successful industry based in a foreign country to prop up a dying industry from their own country. Makes me wish companies had some balls and actually quit markets that treat them like this. But companies are business organizations, not political ones. The actual solution here is in politics: USA should respond symmetrically, by fining/taxing some large French conglomerate doing business in US.

Renaud 5y ago
If Google wanted to quit that market, then Godspeed. It would be a tremendous opportunity for someone new to step in (no, I'm, not looking at you Bing). But alas, I'll bet good money that recalcitrant France is still a market too juicy for Google to abandon.
- dontblink 5y ago
  Wouldn't they have to quit the entire EU? How does that work?

ekianjo 5y ago

Let Google drop completely the Google news service in France and let them all suffer by the lack of visibility. When you can't get to a Win-Win proposition, aim for the nuclear Lose-Lose.

glimmung 5y ago
Agreed. This link tax crap sets a disturbing precedent. It would be to the benefit of the web in general, Google in particular, and most specifically to the thinking skills of the EU if Google pulled news, as I think they did in Spain under similar circs.
- Shadonototro 5y ago
  > It would be to the benefit of the web in general how come? it forces the birth of BUZZFEED type "news agency" who make money only by providing fake news with clickbait titles the content makes the article and the actual news solid and trustable thinking "titles" is everything is the reason why the western civilization is dead
Shadonototro 5y ago
lack of visibility? lol that's not knowing how local news outlets gain their audience how long until people stop defending X big company like google only because they own some of their shares? it's no wonder China already outpaced NASA in their space missions people in the west are defending the companies who hold them back only just to seek more profits google has everything to loose here, they are not a news agency, they want to profit from other people's work USA is a terrible place to grow a civilization, everything went downhill over there, China is a much better place
- oytis 5y ago
  > it's no wonder China already outpaced NASA in their space missions So with this legislation France is going to outpace NASA too? So far European space projects were not doing nearly as well as American ones.

juanani 5y ago

The sheep flock to defend their wolf. Color me surprised, Investor News. Fuck Google. Where are the fines for the rest of FAMA?

hortense 5y ago

Can fines given in a country be deducted from profit in an other country?

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago

Were I Google, I’d just stop giving French news sources in any search results at all, and make them pay to even appear in the index. Let them whine a bit about Google “having” to do anything for, you know, public good or something. Because I think that internet news portals need Google more than Google needs them, in the current state of the world. Don’t get me wrong. Google is an atrocious corporation, so are greedy media conglomerates, but watching them fight is mildly entertaining.

topicseed 5y ago
I believe the French government forbid Google from removing newspapers from the platform.[0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/french-regulator-says-google-must-pay-news-sites-to-send-them-traffic/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/french-regulator...
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  Then it looks like France is pure liability at this point.

eitland 5y ago

Hi Googlers! I loudly criticize you all the time but this time I think you are on the right side. Just leave the French alone until their citizens hound their politicians into learning internet history ;-)