6 ms·

Google launches “Defend Your Net” campaign in Germany against copyright plans

89 points by iProject 14y ago

dexen 14y ago
GET /news.html HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) HTTP/1.1 200 OK vs. GET /news.html HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
- dbaupp 14y ago
  I'm probably just missing the context of the discussion, but what does this mean & what's its significance?
  - fijal 14y ago
    it's a technical way to prevent google from reaching your site. You easily can do it right now (even better, use robots.txt instead of obscure hacks), but the publishers don't want it. They don't want google to stop showing their content, they want money for it and google is unwilling to pay.
  - sek 14y ago
    If they don't want to be crawled, they could just change the robots.txt. But nobody does.
    - dagw 14y ago
      Almost nobody: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/oct/22/google-brazil http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/oct/22/googl... I'm looking forward to see in a years time what the result of this little experiment is.
jacquesm 14y ago
The day that google allows its search results to be scraped is the day that I'll be rooting for them in battles like this. There is quite a bit of hypocrisy in demanding access to the product of a large number of individuals and corporations in an automated way while denying others access to the derivative of those products. > http http://www.google.com/robots.txt User-agent: * Disallow: /search
- Xylakant 14y ago
  The issue is a different one. Google does not demand access to news portals, the publishers grant it. If they would not like to appear in the google search, a single entry in the robots.txt would take care of that. However, since google does send them a lot of traffic, publishers actually want to appear as far up in the listing as possible and spend ridiculous amounts of money on SEO. However, now that newspaper publishers have problems monetizing, they turn to the state, point to google and cry "they are making money with our content, we want a share." while forgetting that google provides a service of its own: Google does compile and serve the index, and for that, they take money. They do not serve newspaper pages to the reader or create content. I have no special feelings for google, but making a law that requires search engine providers to strike a separate contract with any publishing entity whose contents they want to list would hardly be beneficial to any side. It's just that most german publishing houses are too blind to see. They're like a wounded elephant in a porcelain store: Unable to clearly see what damage they're causing to the surrounding world.
  - fijal 14y ago
    It's not completely true. Google news does host all the content for some pages (I have no idea if they have the agreement or not). This might depend on the country though as I can't see anything right now that looks like that.
    - Xylakant 14y ago
      Not in germany. German google news only hosts the first sentences, looks like the cutoff is at about 250 characters. And the proposed law is not about google news, but about google search.
flyinglizard 14y ago
I'm quite amused at Google showing the bureaucrats the limits of power. In the long term, we may be replacing one devil with another; but for the time being, Google has done good.
rickmb 14y ago
I don't like this legislation, or any other legislation that increases copyright restrictions (especially in favor of clueless dinosaurs), but I also resent the hypocritical way in which Google pretends it's protesting this as a public service. Google is only interested in what makes money for Google, and it has lost any credibility when it comes to looking out for the public's interest (or "do no evil" in general) a long time ago. Their campaign should be called "Defend our profit margins", Google is no better than the publishers pushing in favor of this legislation, their interest just accidentally happen to coincide with ours.
- Goronmon 14y ago
  Their campaign should be called "Defend our profit margins", Google is no better than the publishers pushing in favor of this legislation, their interest just accidentally happen to coincide with ours. So is your argument that it's not in the public's best interest to oppose this legislation, thus why they shouldn't use the slogan "Defend Your Net"?
- mseebach 14y ago
  That's how you get stuff done. You build a coalition of people whose goals, if not necessarily pure motivations, align with yours. It's not like you're going to get "I support everything Google does, now and forever" tattooed on your forehead because you align with them on this issue. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
  - meric 14y ago
    Or not even goals. Two parties vote against a tax-reform package - one voted against because it disagreed with increased mining taxes and the other voted against because the increased mining taxes was too low. http://www.news.com.au/top-stories/greens-and-coalition-dump-tax-break/story-e6frfkp9-1226298667219 http://www.news.com.au/top-stories/greens-and-coalition-dump...
    - mseebach 14y ago
      It's really splitting hairs, but I'd argue that's a commonality of goal (rejecting tax increase), but difference of motivation (too much/not enough). Love the example, though. Politics makes strange bed fellows.
aszantu 14y ago
there's no e-petition for that. If there's one and I didn't find it please add a link
- schabernakk 14y ago
  https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/petitionen/_2012/_08/_16/Petition_35009.$$$.a.u.html https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/petitionen/_2012/_08/_16/Pe... the petition is currently pending but it seems they didnt reach enough people.
piokoch 14y ago
I can't stand "professional journalism" like that. First sentence "For Google, what is happening in Germany right now is a very big issue. If the German Bundestag (government) gets its way". Budnestag is German parliament, not government. This would be clear, if the author made an effort and read article's snippet, which is cited in his/her own article: "Later this month a proposed new section to the German Copyright Act is due to be discussed in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. " Comming back to merit. I am not specialist, but this legislation is not that stupid as it may sound. It gives content providers a chance to earn money in other way then putting ads on their websites - ads are good for Google, but not for us because of privacy violation, user tracking and similar practices. Collected data are available on request for FBI, CIA and similar agencies in other countries. Right now "content aggregators" take for free what they want, as a result those, who provide valuable content are loosing money. This hits society, since professional journalism is in the decline. We get mostly gossips, unchecked revelation, stupid interpretation of scientific results or advertisers-driven content. If nobody is able to finance investigative journalism, then it is clear danger for freedom. On the other hand this regulation does not hit education, general access to knowladge, since content is protected only for a year.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  With 'government' this is an issue of regional dialect, not a mistake in the article. I only learned very recently that there are two interpretations of the term. It looks like to you 'government' means the executive body that enforces laws. But to the writer of this article, and I think to most of the US, 'government' includes the entirety of executive, legislative, and judicial. (At least I think that's your complaint, and not a nitpick of how they explained that Bundestag is an official body.) Back to the merit of the legislation. Google is only using headlines and tiny snippets. They aren't copying articles. They aren't doing any harm to investigative journalism. All they do is point people at what they were searching for. It's not their responsibility to help the newspapers if the newspapers are having trouble. Google's already linking to them.
Ntrails 14y ago
What stops google from simply refusing to crawl sites that want money for appearing in search results?
groby_b 14y ago
Somebody remind me again why either robots.txt or serving a 402/Payment required to crawler UAs doesn't work?
- fforw 14y ago
  Because the publishers want their cake and eat it. They want to be found by Google, but Google should pay them for it. Because they're awesome and the protectors of culture and everything good and right.
yaix 14y ago
Could somebody explain why those news publishers don't just deny the Googlebot access to their content? Why create another vague law, as if we don't already have enough of those in Germany.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Because then those publishers wouldn't be on Google! ...it's silly, but this is what happens when publishers don't understand the Internet.

89 points by iProject 14y ago

dexen 14y ago

GET /news.html HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) HTTP/1.1 200 OK vs. GET /news.html HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden

dbaupp 14y ago
I'm probably just missing the context of the discussion, but what does this mean & what's its significance?
- fijal 14y ago
  it's a technical way to prevent google from reaching your site. You easily can do it right now (even better, use robots.txt instead of obscure hacks), but the publishers don't want it. They don't want google to stop showing their content, they want money for it and google is unwilling to pay.
- sek 14y ago
  If they don't want to be crawled, they could just change the robots.txt. But nobody does.
  - dagw 14y ago
    Almost nobody: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/oct/22/google-brazil http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/oct/22/googl... I'm looking forward to see in a years time what the result of this little experiment is.

jacquesm 14y ago

The day that google allows its search results to be scraped is the day that I'll be rooting for them in battles like this. There is quite a bit of hypocrisy in demanding access to the product of a large number of individuals and corporations in an automated way while denying others access to the derivative of those products. > http http://www.google.com/robots.txt User-agent: * Disallow: /search

Xylakant 14y ago
The issue is a different one. Google does not demand access to news portals, the publishers grant it. If they would not like to appear in the google search, a single entry in the robots.txt would take care of that. However, since google does send them a lot of traffic, publishers actually want to appear as far up in the listing as possible and spend ridiculous amounts of money on SEO. However, now that newspaper publishers have problems monetizing, they turn to the state, point to google and cry "they are making money with our content, we want a share." while forgetting that google provides a service of its own: Google does compile and serve the index, and for that, they take money. They do not serve newspaper pages to the reader or create content. I have no special feelings for google, but making a law that requires search engine providers to strike a separate contract with any publishing entity whose contents they want to list would hardly be beneficial to any side. It's just that most german publishing houses are too blind to see. They're like a wounded elephant in a porcelain store: Unable to clearly see what damage they're causing to the surrounding world.
- fijal 14y ago
  It's not completely true. Google news does host all the content for some pages (I have no idea if they have the agreement or not). This might depend on the country though as I can't see anything right now that looks like that.
  - Xylakant 14y ago
    Not in germany. German google news only hosts the first sentences, looks like the cutoff is at about 250 characters. And the proposed law is not about google news, but about google search.

flyinglizard 14y ago

I'm quite amused at Google showing the bureaucrats the limits of power. In the long term, we may be replacing one devil with another; but for the time being, Google has done good.

rickmb 14y ago

I don't like this legislation, or any other legislation that increases copyright restrictions (especially in favor of clueless dinosaurs), but I also resent the hypocritical way in which Google pretends it's protesting this as a public service. Google is only interested in what makes money for Google, and it has lost any credibility when it comes to looking out for the public's interest (or "do no evil" in general) a long time ago. Their campaign should be called "Defend our profit margins", Google is no better than the publishers pushing in favor of this legislation, their interest just accidentally happen to coincide with ours.

Goronmon 14y ago
Their campaign should be called "Defend our profit margins", Google is no better than the publishers pushing in favor of this legislation, their interest just accidentally happen to coincide with ours. So is your argument that it's not in the public's best interest to oppose this legislation, thus why they shouldn't use the slogan "Defend Your Net"?
mseebach 14y ago
That's how you get stuff done. You build a coalition of people whose goals, if not necessarily pure motivations, align with yours. It's not like you're going to get "I support everything Google does, now and forever" tattooed on your forehead because you align with them on this issue. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
- meric 14y ago
  Or not even goals. Two parties vote against a tax-reform package - one voted against because it disagreed with increased mining taxes and the other voted against because the increased mining taxes was too low. http://www.news.com.au/top-stories/greens-and-coalition-dump-tax-break/story-e6frfkp9-1226298667219 http://www.news.com.au/top-stories/greens-and-coalition-dump...
  - mseebach 14y ago
    It's really splitting hairs, but I'd argue that's a commonality of goal (rejecting tax increase), but difference of motivation (too much/not enough). Love the example, though. Politics makes strange bed fellows.

aszantu 14y ago

there's no e-petition for that. If there's one and I didn't find it please add a link

schabernakk 14y ago
https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/petitionen/_2012/_08/_16/Petition_35009.$$$.a.u.html https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/petitionen/_2012/_08/_16/Pe... the petition is currently pending but it seems they didnt reach enough people.

piokoch 14y ago

I can't stand "professional journalism" like that. First sentence "For Google, what is happening in Germany right now is a very big issue. If the German Bundestag (government) gets its way". Budnestag is German parliament, not government. This would be clear, if the author made an effort and read article's snippet, which is cited in his/her own article: "Later this month a proposed new section to the German Copyright Act is due to be discussed in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. " Comming back to merit. I am not specialist, but this legislation is not that stupid as it may sound. It gives content providers a chance to earn money in other way then putting ads on their websites - ads are good for Google, but not for us because of privacy violation, user tracking and similar practices. Collected data are available on request for FBI, CIA and similar agencies in other countries. Right now "content aggregators" take for free what they want, as a result those, who provide valuable content are loosing money. This hits society, since professional journalism is in the decline. We get mostly gossips, unchecked revelation, stupid interpretation of scientific results or advertisers-driven content. If nobody is able to finance investigative journalism, then it is clear danger for freedom. On the other hand this regulation does not hit education, general access to knowladge, since content is protected only for a year.

Dylan16807 14y ago
With 'government' this is an issue of regional dialect, not a mistake in the article. I only learned very recently that there are two interpretations of the term. It looks like to you 'government' means the executive body that enforces laws. But to the writer of this article, and I think to most of the US, 'government' includes the entirety of executive, legislative, and judicial. (At least I think that's your complaint, and not a nitpick of how they explained that Bundestag is an official body.) Back to the merit of the legislation. Google is only using headlines and tiny snippets. They aren't copying articles. They aren't doing any harm to investigative journalism. All they do is point people at what they were searching for. It's not their responsibility to help the newspapers if the newspapers are having trouble. Google's already linking to them.

Ntrails 14y ago

What stops google from simply refusing to crawl sites that want money for appearing in search results?

groby_b 14y ago

Somebody remind me again why either robots.txt or serving a 402/Payment required to crawler UAs doesn't work?

fforw 14y ago
Because the publishers want their cake and eat it. They want to be found by Google, but Google should pay them for it. Because they're awesome and the protectors of culture and everything good and right.

yaix 14y ago

Could somebody explain why those news publishers don't just deny the Googlebot access to their content? Why create another vague law, as if we don't already have enough of those in Germany.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
Because then those publishers wouldn't be on Google! ...it's silly, but this is what happens when publishers don't understand the Internet.