8 ms·

Things are going very badly for a global internet if we are discussing a web site "shutting down in spain". Of course we all know what that means and it seems

by rsync 12y ago

Things are going very badly for a global internet if we are discussing a web site "shutting down in spain". Of course we all know what that means and it seems very sensible in 2014, but remember - if someone had told you in 1998 that a certain website would not be operating in country X, you would have laughed and explained to them (like a child) that the Internet was a single global network and that if one had Internet access at all they would have access to the site in question. All of that simplicity and innocence has slipped away.

chetanahuja 12y ago
Completely agree with the sad trend. Though to be fair, the scourge of geolocation based blocking started with media companies (mostly American, but also bbc and others) in a bid to recreate the DVD region encoding bullshit on the internet. Add to that the NSA merrily slurping up data from the global firehose... there's no innocence left to corrupt at this point.
- dyadic 12y ago
  There are two sides to the scourge. WRT the BBC, they produce quality content, partly funded by us Brits and partly funded by exporting the content to other countries. With the internet they have limited choices: * Keep things off the internet and disappoint everyone * Put things on the global internet and lose export value * Put things on the internet but geolocate to the UK and retain export value Clearly for them, the quality of their shows, and for the British public, the last option is the best. It's a strange system because the BBC is considered public broadcasting but is still funded (i.e. paid) by us citizens. You have to take the UK only as a subscription that we have implicitly paid. Of course, it would be great if they offered an outsider subscription, but there are undoubtedly internal political reasons why they haven't.
  - sounds 12y ago
    So your dilemma could be a false dichotomy if (and I realize it's a big if): * BBC puts things on the global internet * Global users can discover it more readily * BBC becomes well-known as a provider of quality content * Demand for BBC content increases because of the online content already available * BBC can charge more for future content (which it can export first to high-profit-margin channels, then publish online later)
    - chetanahuja 12y ago
      And in any case, the public funding argument never hindered the excellent BBC worldwide radio service.
      - eru 12y ago
        It's under assault, though.
      - sidharth_k 12y ago
        Its a combination of profit and political influence which is what makes BBC and interesting animal. The BBC world service radio gets Britain a lot of global coverage and political mindspace. Showing sherlock homes free?? Maybe not.
      - walshemj 12y ago
        Funded by the FO to promote British interests
    - dyadic 12y ago
      For sure. Point 3, I think they already have covered. I think it's pretty safe to say that the BBC is a well known and established brand, and also a producer of high quality content. The best way to look at it now is that they're stuck in a local maxima, they could definitely gain by broadcasting online to the world but it might take some time and will most definitely hit them financially in the short run. There's also a political aspect wrt the BBC too. They are, as per their mandate, completely politically neutral†. But generally the left side of politics supports continuing the license fee we pay where the right side doesn't. If they should suddenly take a significant drop in revenue and it subsequently does affect what they produce then it also puts them at risk. And the last thing us Brits want to see is our BBC channels filling up with adverts. Now is an interesting time. For a long time they were a plain old tv broadcaster. Now they're on the internet and broadcasting things there there are people questioning whether they should even be doing that. Eventually I think things will stabilize into some condition, I don't know what but I don't think we are there yet. † of course, with politics, there are many debates about this
  - visarga 12y ago
    > Put things on the global internet and lose export value If they don't feel like sharing, we can find other sources that will, there's no lack of quality content. It's a pity that BBC sits on a million hours of TV and radio archived shows, that are collecting dust instead of being cited, posted, commented on, tagged, submitted, etc. Their loss. The web keeps growing and the BBC archives are offline. It's a kind of 'Encyclopedia Brittanica thinking' in an age of Wikipedia - trying to monetize at the expense of global accessibility.
jzwinck 12y ago
This case is less "Google News is not accessible to people in Spain" and more "Google News can no longer publish content originated in Spain." The effect may be similar because Spaniards often want Spanish content, but what's happening seems different to your characterization.
- deeviant 12y ago
  Well, they are not just removing all Spanish news sources from the Spanish Google news site, they are removing the Spanish Google news site, which seems pretty consistent with his characterization.
  - KobaQ 12y ago
    This is remarkable, as we could conclude that Google News can't or don't want to create content on their own, but only copy from other sources.
    - batiudrami 12y ago
      Of course they don't want to create their own content. They're a search company! Their entire business is aggregating and linking to other sources.
      - KobaQ 12y ago
        I think in this case it's a blurred line. In the case of Youtube even more. True, they don't want to create their own content, but when they republish it and making money by doing so, we're in the middle of the copyright discussion. The question to answer in each of Googles (or others) businesses is, when is Google presenting it's own work (search results, etc.) or the work of others.
        eru 12y ago
        There's also always robots.txt, if you don't want your contents indexed.
rgbrenner 12y ago
Just to be clear, Google is subject to this law because Google operates and has offices in Spain. It seems reasonable that Google should comply with the laws of where they do business.
- RA_Fisher 12y ago
  Right, and they are not going to be doing business in Spain.
  - rgbrenner 12y ago
    What? Where did you get that. Google news is shutting down. Google is not, and I've heard of no plans to close their Madrid office.
- wtbob 12y ago
  But the law itself does not seem reasonable. It's a violation of fair use. Lest we forget, Google News links to the articles themselves. It provides a service to news organisations, for—as far as I'm aware—free.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - beberlei 12y ago
    Fair use is an american thing. Spain cannot violate US copyright law
    - icebraining 12y ago
      Not exactly; the concept of fair use exists in the Berne convention, it's not just an American thing. Unfortunately, the convention only allows countries to establish fair use, it doesn't mandate it.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
throwawaytiger 12y ago
I'm not sure how this totally nonsensical and erroneous reading of the post and subsequent comments have hijacked this thread, so at the risk of being patronizing allow me to explain this as simply as I can: Spain passed a law that "forces" news publishers to collect a levy from online news aggregators. Online news aggregators will be fined if they aren't paying the copyright levy (yeah it's that ridiculous). Nor publishers or aggregators can optout of this arrangement. Google is stopping the Google News aggregation in Spain. They are NOT GEO-BLOCKING IT.
- vorg 12y ago
  Do you have any info on why Spain passed that law, such as white papers proposing the law or debates given in their version of parliament? Was it specifically to force companies like Google to shut down, or was that an unintended side effect? It's common for businesses in a supply chain to each pay a proportion of sales tax (e.g. GST in Australia, and in NZ), so it doesn't seem all that ridiculous for a country to do the same with a "copyright levy" in the media/search industry.
  - throwawaytiger 12y ago
    Best overview I could find: https://medium.com/@JulioAlonso/the-story-of-spains-google-tax-5434d746df48 https://medium.com/@JulioAlonso/the-story-of-spains-google-t...
- fpgeek 12y ago
  > They are NOT GEO-BLOCKING IT. FOR NOW. As we all know, Google's reaction isn't the result the people pushing for the law intended. Do you think they will just give up? They've already gone through several rounds in several countries on this issue, so I don't. Considering that past experience, I'd say there's a substantial chance the law will be amended to be stricter and more far-reaching and/or it will be interpreted that way by the courts.
- rancur 12y ago
  so, what about hacker news, reddit, etc?
kyllo 12y ago
The way I read it, Google didn't say they were blocking IP addresses from Spain, so users in Spain will still be able to access news.google.com, the change is that Google is forced to no longer aggregate news content from Spanish media sites due to the law forcing said media to charge Google for aggregating their content. And Google is taking down their Google News Spain site which specifically aggregates Spanish news. In other words, it's a completely orthogonal concern to what you are talking about.
KobaQ 12y ago
It is a long long time ago when Google could be considered innocent (acting ethically). Actually, they're acting the opposite way for ages by ignoring copyright, privacy and by manipulating. Generally I agree, however. The ethic mostly seems to be gone. And it has to be taken care of by enforcing copyright and privacy protection laws. I had my wake-up moment when Facebook started copying whole Wikipedia articles instead of linking.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Wikipedia content is CC licensed, it's perfectly legal to copy their articles.
raldi 12y ago
You've misinterpreted the story as, "Google News won't be accessible to browsers in Spain." The actual story is, "The 'Spain' version of Google News won't be accessible to anyone."
- diminoten 12y ago
  What if I post a Spanish story to HN (or Reddit) and use the title of the article as the submission title? Will the company hosting the site have to pay up?
  - rgbrenner 12y ago
    NO, because neither Reddit nor HN operate in Spain, and therefore are not subject to Spannish law.
    - ogig 12y ago
      That's not so clear. I don't know the in an outs of this specific law, but for example a gambling site has to comply with Spanish law if it serves to spaniards. No matter where it's legally located. That's why most gambling .coms geo blacklist spanish or redirect them to the spanish law compliant version of their service. Same with consumer laws, those apply if I buy a product in other country. For example Spanish law says I can get a refund 7 days after the purchase, no reason required. Yea, doesn't make sense and probably they can't enforce many of these, but that's how they are redacted. I would set the legal team on alert mode if I were Reddit/Twitter/Facebook/Menéame.
      - kokey 12y ago
        The gambling thing is a bit different, normally it's the sites that cooperate like that so that they have a chance to be able to become a licensed provider in that country in the future. It's a strange trend in that industry that also goes counter to various trade agreements, but that's just how it goes. That said countries can also take action locally against foreign entities they believe are breaking their local laws, and go after their local assets, e.g. they could seize their .es domain names or take action against any local office or other assets that they have.
ww520 12y ago
I think you have misinterpreted the news. It's not Google News is shutting down in Spain. It's just Google can't no longer link to news stories in Spanish news publishers without paying. Google News can still run fine in Spain, just without the local stories. Presumably global news or Spanish news from other sources can still be viewed in Google News if Google chose not to shut it down.
hrktb 12y ago
I am not sure about that. Were any of the AOL sites available in Russia or Japan in 1998? Also didn't compuserve do the same and block their services from non paying users (which means if your country's credit card is not accepted you are SOL)? I am under the impression that walled gardens and splitting by countries or networks were also pretty common.
blueskin_ 12y ago
Chances are, people in spain can still go to news.google.com, but news.google.es won't have any content.

by rsync 12y ago

chetanahuja 12y ago

Completely agree with the sad trend. Though to be fair, the scourge of geolocation based blocking started with media companies (mostly American, but also bbc and others) in a bid to recreate the DVD region encoding bullshit on the internet. Add to that the NSA merrily slurping up data from the global firehose... there's no innocence left to corrupt at this point.

dyadic 12y ago
There are two sides to the scourge. WRT the BBC, they produce quality content, partly funded by us Brits and partly funded by exporting the content to other countries. With the internet they have limited choices: * Keep things off the internet and disappoint everyone * Put things on the global internet and lose export value * Put things on the internet but geolocate to the UK and retain export value Clearly for them, the quality of their shows, and for the British public, the last option is the best. It's a strange system because the BBC is considered public broadcasting but is still funded (i.e. paid) by us citizens. You have to take the UK only as a subscription that we have implicitly paid. Of course, it would be great if they offered an outsider subscription, but there are undoubtedly internal political reasons why they haven't.
- sounds 12y ago
  So your dilemma could be a false dichotomy if (and I realize it's a big if): * BBC puts things on the global internet * Global users can discover it more readily * BBC becomes well-known as a provider of quality content * Demand for BBC content increases because of the online content already available * BBC can charge more for future content (which it can export first to high-profit-margin channels, then publish online later)
  - chetanahuja 12y ago
    And in any case, the public funding argument never hindered the excellent BBC worldwide radio service.
    - eru 12y ago
      It's under assault, though.
    - sidharth_k 12y ago
      Its a combination of profit and political influence which is what makes BBC and interesting animal. The BBC world service radio gets Britain a lot of global coverage and political mindspace. Showing sherlock homes free?? Maybe not.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      Funded by the FO to promote British interests
  - dyadic 12y ago
    For sure. Point 3, I think they already have covered. I think it's pretty safe to say that the BBC is a well known and established brand, and also a producer of high quality content. The best way to look at it now is that they're stuck in a local maxima, they could definitely gain by broadcasting online to the world but it might take some time and will most definitely hit them financially in the short run. There's also a political aspect wrt the BBC too. They are, as per their mandate, completely politically neutral†. But generally the left side of politics supports continuing the license fee we pay where the right side doesn't. If they should suddenly take a significant drop in revenue and it subsequently does affect what they produce then it also puts them at risk. And the last thing us Brits want to see is our BBC channels filling up with adverts. Now is an interesting time. For a long time they were a plain old tv broadcaster. Now they're on the internet and broadcasting things there there are people questioning whether they should even be doing that. Eventually I think things will stabilize into some condition, I don't know what but I don't think we are there yet. † of course, with politics, there are many debates about this
- visarga 12y ago
  > Put things on the global internet and lose export value If they don't feel like sharing, we can find other sources that will, there's no lack of quality content. It's a pity that BBC sits on a million hours of TV and radio archived shows, that are collecting dust instead of being cited, posted, commented on, tagged, submitted, etc. Their loss. The web keeps growing and the BBC archives are offline. It's a kind of 'Encyclopedia Brittanica thinking' in an age of Wikipedia - trying to monetize at the expense of global accessibility.

jzwinck 12y ago

This case is less "Google News is not accessible to people in Spain" and more "Google News can no longer publish content originated in Spain." The effect may be similar because Spaniards often want Spanish content, but what's happening seems different to your characterization.

deeviant 12y ago
Well, they are not just removing all Spanish news sources from the Spanish Google news site, they are removing the Spanish Google news site, which seems pretty consistent with his characterization.
- KobaQ 12y ago
  This is remarkable, as we could conclude that Google News can't or don't want to create content on their own, but only copy from other sources.
  - batiudrami 12y ago
    Of course they don't want to create their own content. They're a search company! Their entire business is aggregating and linking to other sources.
    - KobaQ 12y ago
      I think in this case it's a blurred line. In the case of Youtube even more. True, they don't want to create their own content, but when they republish it and making money by doing so, we're in the middle of the copyright discussion. The question to answer in each of Googles (or others) businesses is, when is Google presenting it's own work (search results, etc.) or the work of others.
      - eru 12y ago
        There's also always robots.txt, if you don't want your contents indexed.

rgbrenner 12y ago

Just to be clear, Google is subject to this law because Google operates and has offices in Spain. It seems reasonable that Google should comply with the laws of where they do business.

RA_Fisher 12y ago
Right, and they are not going to be doing business in Spain.
- rgbrenner 12y ago
  What? Where did you get that. Google news is shutting down. Google is not, and I've heard of no plans to close their Madrid office.
wtbob 12y ago
But the law itself does not seem reasonable. It's a violation of fair use. Lest we forget, Google News links to the articles themselves. It provides a service to news organisations, for—as far as I'm aware—free.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- beberlei 12y ago
  Fair use is an american thing. Spain cannot violate US copyright law
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Not exactly; the concept of fair use exists in the Berne convention, it's not just an American thing. Unfortunately, the convention only allows countries to establish fair use, it doesn't mandate it.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]

throwawaytiger 12y ago

I'm not sure how this totally nonsensical and erroneous reading of the post and subsequent comments have hijacked this thread, so at the risk of being patronizing allow me to explain this as simply as I can: Spain passed a law that "forces" news publishers to collect a levy from online news aggregators. Online news aggregators will be fined if they aren't paying the copyright levy (yeah it's that ridiculous). Nor publishers or aggregators can optout of this arrangement. Google is stopping the Google News aggregation in Spain. They are NOT GEO-BLOCKING IT.

vorg 12y ago
Do you have any info on why Spain passed that law, such as white papers proposing the law or debates given in their version of parliament? Was it specifically to force companies like Google to shut down, or was that an unintended side effect? It's common for businesses in a supply chain to each pay a proportion of sales tax (e.g. GST in Australia, and in NZ), so it doesn't seem all that ridiculous for a country to do the same with a "copyright levy" in the media/search industry.
- throwawaytiger 12y ago
  Best overview I could find: https://medium.com/@JulioAlonso/the-story-of-spains-google-tax-5434d746df48 https://medium.com/@JulioAlonso/the-story-of-spains-google-t...
fpgeek 12y ago
> They are NOT GEO-BLOCKING IT. FOR NOW. As we all know, Google's reaction isn't the result the people pushing for the law intended. Do you think they will just give up? They've already gone through several rounds in several countries on this issue, so I don't. Considering that past experience, I'd say there's a substantial chance the law will be amended to be stricter and more far-reaching and/or it will be interpreted that way by the courts.
rancur 12y ago
so, what about hacker news, reddit, etc?

kyllo 12y ago

The way I read it, Google didn't say they were blocking IP addresses from Spain, so users in Spain will still be able to access news.google.com, the change is that Google is forced to no longer aggregate news content from Spanish media sites due to the law forcing said media to charge Google for aggregating their content. And Google is taking down their Google News Spain site which specifically aggregates Spanish news. In other words, it's a completely orthogonal concern to what you are talking about.

KobaQ 12y ago

It is a long long time ago when Google could be considered innocent (acting ethically). Actually, they're acting the opposite way for ages by ignoring copyright, privacy and by manipulating. Generally I agree, however. The ethic mostly seems to be gone. And it has to be taken care of by enforcing copyright and privacy protection laws. I had my wake-up moment when Facebook started copying whole Wikipedia articles instead of linking.

icebraining 12y ago
Wikipedia content is CC licensed, it's perfectly legal to copy their articles.

raldi 12y ago

You've misinterpreted the story as, "Google News won't be accessible to browsers in Spain." The actual story is, "The 'Spain' version of Google News won't be accessible to anyone."

diminoten 12y ago
What if I post a Spanish story to HN (or Reddit) and use the title of the article as the submission title? Will the company hosting the site have to pay up?
- rgbrenner 12y ago
  NO, because neither Reddit nor HN operate in Spain, and therefore are not subject to Spannish law.
  - ogig 12y ago
    That's not so clear. I don't know the in an outs of this specific law, but for example a gambling site has to comply with Spanish law if it serves to spaniards. No matter where it's legally located. That's why most gambling .coms geo blacklist spanish or redirect them to the spanish law compliant version of their service. Same with consumer laws, those apply if I buy a product in other country. For example Spanish law says I can get a refund 7 days after the purchase, no reason required. Yea, doesn't make sense and probably they can't enforce many of these, but that's how they are redacted. I would set the legal team on alert mode if I were Reddit/Twitter/Facebook/Menéame.
    - kokey 12y ago
      The gambling thing is a bit different, normally it's the sites that cooperate like that so that they have a chance to be able to become a licensed provider in that country in the future. It's a strange trend in that industry that also goes counter to various trade agreements, but that's just how it goes. That said countries can also take action locally against foreign entities they believe are breaking their local laws, and go after their local assets, e.g. they could seize their .es domain names or take action against any local office or other assets that they have.

ww520 12y ago

I think you have misinterpreted the news. It's not Google News is shutting down in Spain. It's just Google can't no longer link to news stories in Spanish news publishers without paying. Google News can still run fine in Spain, just without the local stories. Presumably global news or Spanish news from other sources can still be viewed in Google News if Google chose not to shut it down.

hrktb 12y ago

I am not sure about that. Were any of the AOL sites available in Russia or Japan in 1998? Also didn't compuserve do the same and block their services from non paying users (which means if your country's credit card is not accepted you are SOL)? I am under the impression that walled gardens and splitting by countries or networks were also pretty common.

blueskin_ 12y ago

Chances are, people in spain can still go to news.google.com, but news.google.es won't have any content.