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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 Bundest

by 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.

by piokoch 14y ago

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.