5 ms·

Very well put. The whole legislation is completely backwards to how the web has always worked. I run a website. I can pay Google, MS, Meta, etc money to make m

Very well put. The whole legislation is completely backwards to how the web has always worked. I run a website. I can pay Google, MS, Meta, etc money to make my site show up higher in search results. Or gain an audience through SEO and organic growth, including on social media. I'm happy when someone shares a link to it, because that means more eyeballs on what I'm putting out. Then I can choose if and how to monetize it. By suggesting that this harms the publisher makes no sense. Why would anyone ever pay for Google sponsored search results if it's harmful to their business? The lobbyists and politicians have framed it as "using" or "stealing" the content, which is an outright lie: reproducing content without permission is already covered by copyright law. Many of these news sites even have abstracts and social cards specifically for preview when shared. The other analogy I like is "journalists drink coffee when writing. Starbucks has lots of money. Let's force Starbucks to give journalists free coffee, and a dollar out of their till whenever a journalist walks in." It's backwards! Offensively so! If these publishers didn't want their content on Facebook or Google, they can use paywalls, robots.txt, or referral blocks to stop it showing up. But none did - they just wanted to bite the hand that feeds for a few bucks, and we see how well that worked out for them.

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seryoiupfurds 2y ago
Yes! The only argument I could ever get out of supporters of this law was "but they're billion-dollar corporations, they should pay their fair share!" Well fine, then adjust the corporate tax rate however you like -- but don't be surprised when the corporations you just described as self-interested and greedy react in the obvious way to a brand new, explicitly created economic disincentive.
- nemothekid 2y ago
  >"but they're billion-dollar corporations, they should pay their fair share!" I don't think this is an invalid argument. This is arguable how YouTube works. One thing that is very interesting about Meta is that they have side-stepped the need to actually invest in content. There's nothing wrong with saying "my content drove eyeballs to your platform, so give me a cut of the ad revenue". I think the bigger issue is, we have decided the marginal cost of journalism is nearly 0
  - Spivak 2y ago
    YouTube pays because they're displaying copyrighted works. I don't think even the worst case— displaying opengraph tags that sites have to opt into, meets the bar for reproduction of a copyrighted work. I mean we're talking about linking here. It's not that the marginal cost of journalism is a pittance, but that the marginal value to a social network of links to a few news sites is actually zero. I would take a bet that if social networks just up and banned all external links period it would be at worst revenue neutral.
    - nemothekid 2y ago
      >YouTube pays because they're displaying copyrighted works. I think this is a distinction without a difference. YouTube paid for content long before they got serious about IP. Similarly, TikTok had to adopt the same mindset with the Creator fund. More seriously, the reason why Google pays for content is not because they are billion dollar content, it's because the marginal cost for video is greater than 0, and if they didn't pay for it, the content simply wouldn't exist. However, news article pretty much spawn out of thin air. It exists despite the tech giants not paying for it.
    - hackerbeat 2y ago
      Pro photos cost a lot of money to use and FB just gets them for free. Why? Also, big news corps have lots of correspondents and offices around the globe, which are expensive too.
throwaway81523 2y ago
> I run a website. I can pay Google, MS, Meta, etc money to make my site show up higher in search results. ... The lobbyists and politicians have framed it as "using" or "stealing" the content Cough, reddit. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/01/1129247/reddit-ceo-says-microsoft-and-others-need-to-pay-to-search-the-site https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/01/1129247/reddit-ceo-... Same mistake? Note that "AI training" has now made an appearance. Ignore that Reddit has no ownership of the user-written content in the first place.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > Ignore that Reddit has no ownership of the user-written content in the first place. I wouldn't be so sure about that. Reddit might not retain sole ownership, but they certainly seem to own a copy: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement Except and solely to the extent such a restriction is impermissible under applicable law, you may not, without our written agreement: license, sell, transfer, assign, distribute, host, or otherwise commercially exploit the Services or Content; [...] By submitting Your Content to the Services, you represent and warrant that you have all rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the rights to Your Content contained within these Terms. When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world.
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    "Own a copy" doesn't mean anything here. They have a non-exclusive sublicensable license to use Your Content. They have no ownership at all of Your Content, and have no standing to do anything if someone commercially exploits it (except for content posted by Reddit itself). The individual comments/posts are copyrighted by the individual posters. To the extent that Reddit does not give you a sublicense to exploit the content, the individual posters would be the ones who could make a claim for copyright infringement. If you don't have an account, then you haven't agreed to the ToS. Indeed, you can visit e.g. https://old.reddit.com/new/.json https://old.reddit.com/new/.json to fetch the latest posts without ever even seeing a link to any terms of service, much less agreeing to any. If someone distributes that scraped data via torrent (they do), then (again, except for posts by Reddit staff) Reddit has nothing to say. They have no claim to that data.

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seryoiupfurds 2y ago

Yes! The only argument I could ever get out of supporters of this law was "but they're billion-dollar corporations, they should pay their fair share!" Well fine, then adjust the corporate tax rate however you like -- but don't be surprised when the corporations you just described as self-interested and greedy react in the obvious way to a brand new, explicitly created economic disincentive.

nemothekid 2y ago
>"but they're billion-dollar corporations, they should pay their fair share!" I don't think this is an invalid argument. This is arguable how YouTube works. One thing that is very interesting about Meta is that they have side-stepped the need to actually invest in content. There's nothing wrong with saying "my content drove eyeballs to your platform, so give me a cut of the ad revenue". I think the bigger issue is, we have decided the marginal cost of journalism is nearly 0
- Spivak 2y ago
  YouTube pays because they're displaying copyrighted works. I don't think even the worst case— displaying opengraph tags that sites have to opt into, meets the bar for reproduction of a copyrighted work. I mean we're talking about linking here. It's not that the marginal cost of journalism is a pittance, but that the marginal value to a social network of links to a few news sites is actually zero. I would take a bet that if social networks just up and banned all external links period it would be at worst revenue neutral.
  - nemothekid 2y ago
    >YouTube pays because they're displaying copyrighted works. I think this is a distinction without a difference. YouTube paid for content long before they got serious about IP. Similarly, TikTok had to adopt the same mindset with the Creator fund. More seriously, the reason why Google pays for content is not because they are billion dollar content, it's because the marginal cost for video is greater than 0, and if they didn't pay for it, the content simply wouldn't exist. However, news article pretty much spawn out of thin air. It exists despite the tech giants not paying for it.
  - hackerbeat 2y ago
    Pro photos cost a lot of money to use and FB just gets them for free. Why? Also, big news corps have lots of correspondents and offices around the globe, which are expensive too.

throwaway81523 2y ago

> I run a website. I can pay Google, MS, Meta, etc money to make my site show up higher in search results. ... The lobbyists and politicians have framed it as "using" or "stealing" the content Cough, reddit. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/01/1129247/reddit-ceo-says-microsoft-and-others-need-to-pay-to-search-the-site https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/01/1129247/reddit-ceo-... Same mistake? Note that "AI training" has now made an appearance. Ignore that Reddit has no ownership of the user-written content in the first place.

talldayo 2y ago
> Ignore that Reddit has no ownership of the user-written content in the first place. I wouldn't be so sure about that. Reddit might not retain sole ownership, but they certainly seem to own a copy: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement https://www.redditinc.com/policies/user-agreement Except and solely to the extent such a restriction is impermissible under applicable law, you may not, without our written agreement: license, sell, transfer, assign, distribute, host, or otherwise commercially exploit the Services or Content; [...] By submitting Your Content to the Services, you represent and warrant that you have all rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the rights to Your Content contained within these Terms. When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  "Own a copy" doesn't mean anything here. They have a non-exclusive sublicensable license to use Your Content. They have no ownership at all of Your Content, and have no standing to do anything if someone commercially exploits it (except for content posted by Reddit itself). The individual comments/posts are copyrighted by the individual posters. To the extent that Reddit does not give you a sublicense to exploit the content, the individual posters would be the ones who could make a claim for copyright infringement. If you don't have an account, then you haven't agreed to the ToS. Indeed, you can visit e.g. https://old.reddit.com/new/.json https://old.reddit.com/new/.json to fetch the latest posts without ever even seeing a link to any terms of service, much less agreeing to any. If someone distributes that scraped data via torrent (they do), then (again, except for posts by Reddit staff) Reddit has nothing to say. They have no claim to that data.