Belgian papers sued Google a few years ago over similar uses of their content. It sort of backfired on them when google stopped crawling their pages. The internet and Google are more powerful than the German print media. http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/07/18/belgian-papers-a...
> AllThingsD reports that Google has now re-indexed newspapers in the Copiepresse group. This is the right move and also a very self-interested one by Google. If it were to “punish” publishers that didn’t want to be included in Google verticals (e.g., News, Places, Shopping) antitrust investigators would use that as evidence against the company.
I wasn't aware of this story, but this is exactly what I would do if I was Google. Hey, you gotta protect yourself cause the next thing you know, the papers will sue for the search results.
I'd take evil to the next step, where I would now charge the papers for listing search results AND news articles.
To be fair, there were a few positive/neutral articles, for example by Frank Rieger, a popular member of the Chaos Computer Club, in the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) but they are in the minority.
Of course, there is the obvious ignorance regarding technical facts like: "robots.txt is from the stone age. On or off for everyone is the only possibility" [1] which reminds me a lot of the discussion we had some time back regarding internet filters. But the one thing I find really dangerous is that they (meaning major newspapers, politicians, etc.) managed to spin the story so that the narrative is now "greedy google" vs hard working journalists. I applaud google for their efforts (and I am fully aware of their commercial interests in this matter) but I slowly begin to think they did their cause a disservice. If a discussion takes place its always about google and their lobbying. The extend of this law which could lead to bloggers being sued (btw: a side effect of the very fuzzy written law which leaves a lot open and almost certainly will need a court to decide on the details) when they link to news articles is almost never mentioned.
One last thing: Recently, two big news newspapers had to shut down and that print sales are declining is nothing new. I cant remember the last time I bought a newspaper and I am also pretty sure that although blogs/twitter/whatever are a good addition they cant replace classical media. There is definately a need for the discussion for new sources of incomes for classical paper based medias as ad sales from their online publication wont cut it. Perhaps something like a "culture/media tax/flatrate" as we currently have with the GEZ (for the financing of the public tv stations)? I dont know, but the #lsr is certainly not the way to go.
"But the one thing I find really dangerous is that they (meaning major newspapers, politicians, etc.) managed to spin the story so that the narrative is now "greedy google" vs hard working journalists."
Isn't there a certain degree of truth in this? Truly, there is a big problem if the rates for borrowing content is too high. But I think what the German public is responding to is how journalism has changed and not in ways that are necessarily positive. There is far less incentive to be a good journalist now since the quality of a given article is likely much lower than in the past -- research is more limited, articles are written in a greater hurry, even some articles these days are largely written by computer or by individuals overseas.
What this law is reasonably trying to address is that content of whatever form -- be it newspaper articles, images, whatever -- has inherent value that should be recognized. Surely enforcing that value with an iron fist like the RIAA is not the right way to go. But allowing free expropriation (even of abstracts) may also be unfair.
I think a good analogy, fifty years ago, would be a newspaper that sends out people to read other newspapers very early in the morning (say at 5 AM) and then produces its own newspaper at 6. Surely such a thing would not have been possible fifty years ago, but something similar is possible today with the advent of the internet. If this behavior had occurred fifty years ago and hadn't been regulated, imagine what would have happened: the overall quality of newspapers would have been diluted and the incentive to produce good articles would have likely declined.
Now, of course, this isn't quite perfect. Again, Google is borrowing very small snippets. And surely -- if anyone remembers this -- the French courts were wrong several years ago when they allowed some newspapers to sue Google for simply posting a few sentences or a link to an article. But what if newspapers could charge a modest fee commensurate to the value an article link is to Google? Over time, the fees could certainly accrue. The question, I think, is how high these fees are and how this sort of regulation is imposed.
> Recently, two big news newspapers had to shut down and that print sales are declining is nothing new. I cant remember the last time I bought a newspaper and I am also pretty sure that although blogs/twitter/whatever are a good addition they cant replace classical media. There is definately a need for the discussion for new sources of incomes for classical paper based medias as ad sales from their online publication wont cut it.
... I like Clay Shirky's comment:
> Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.
and
The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model.
After last few years here in Poland I've stopped believing in good reporting. No matter what you say, press is going to present it the way it wants, and it's impossible to break the glass and say to public what you really want. If there's order to show you're stupid, you will look stupid, no matter what you say. If there's order to show you're great - you will look and sound great.
I wish traditional massmedia fast demise. There's nothing there worth saving at this point.
I'm very disappointed with Europe. There is a trend of idiotic legislation drafted, & voted on by people who don't really understand the implications. They just don't understand the internet & technology enough and/or aren't smart enough. It' embarrassing.
The other recent example was/is the brain-dead UK/EU cookie law. Is our privacy any more protected? No. All we got was some dumb generic "cookie policy" popups that we have to "agree" to and further balkanization of the web. Additional costs to having a website (are there any scaremongering companies offering auditing to make sure your website does not expose you to legal risk?). Disempowering people by raising the barrier to running a site.
All downside. No upside from any perspective. We can't even blame lobbies or interested parties because literally nobody got anything positive from this. Just pure stupidity.
EU had, and perhaps still has, the promise of a strong political body as a counter-balance to US and Chinese interests in the world. IMHO the promise is rapidly fading though, under what appears to be high-level influence and manipulation that demonstrably favours US-friendly outcomes. This is not a new phenomenon.
Tried to integrate results with Wikipedia, contacted the EFF, forwarded to journalists, nobody will write up the results. Trying reputable university-affiliated Wikinews journalists now. :/
Step 3: Google requires payment from German publishers to be included in the search index, exactly offsetting fees incurred in Step 1. It would be quite reasonable, I think.
As this site is nearly down, I add my thoughts as a comment here as well:
Well, some media (FAZ) did a pretty good job, letting Frank Rieger explain the "Leistungsschutzrecht". OK, even there, it was one article of many. And only one.
And what is new, when it comes to the press not publishing anything, that goes against their own agenda. Even across a lot of publishing-houses. Well nothing new under the sun.
What is really, really bad, is the fact, that the law is so fuzzy, that everyone quoting from another source might be potentially liable. This law is so bad, because it just might kill the independent voices. And I think there might be a reason for this.
Because the press oftentimes has no incentive to dig deeper, to ask critical questions, when it comes to the really important questions, this job is left for the independent voices, that do this out of a feeling of necessity. But if these voices are silenced through fear...
... well, I think you get the drift. And I know, this sounds a lot like conspiracy - and I am not saying, my thoughts come anywhere near the truth, but I just wanted to share the thought.
Just one example: The so called "Netzsperren" (blocking sites, because of content with filter-lists - aka censorship) were reported by the big media as being bad, after a lot of independent bloggers had written about it and the discussion just could not be "ignored" any longer.
Some have argued that even just linking to an article might get you sued. After all, most URLs include the title of the article. Obviously, courts will have to decide, but the possibility alone is frightening.
FWIW, I've written to my member of parliament [0], expressed my dissatisfaction and asked him to oppose the law. He wrote back saying hat his parliamentary party is already opposing this law but for slightly different reasons: It won't increase the quality of journalism and will just create a flood of lawsuits. Lastly it is far too vaguely phrased as to not have grave side effects.
The changes of the opposition are slim though as there is a conservative majority the parliament.
Interestingly, he has a personal axe to grind with Axel Springer AG as he was a big part of the student movement of '68 which was so intensely vilified by said company ("Youth in the street - Germany going down the drain ...").
fuck ströbele ! he voted in favor of the war in afghanistan and yet he still participates in all the peace rallies.
He's just another lying corrupted politician
I would really like to like the pirate party but in their current state they are absolutely unvotable for me. This is one of their core topics but I havent heard anything from them yet. What I have heard is that the youth organizations of almost every party (yeah I know, including the young pirates) have voiced their concerns regardings the lsr.
As does Facebook and Google+. If you put a URL into your post it'll download the page and put in the title, a thumbnail picture, and the first sentence or two.
I'm very curious to know how they would determine how much Google should pay, and how to distribute that money to the different publishers.
Anyway, I think that Google, if the law is passed, should refuse to pay and stop publishing news from publishers from Germany (there are always still Austrian and Swiss newspapers for German news).
Interesting and sad. I don't know if it is possible but I am wondering if such a law could include an 'opt out' policy. Something which said to search engines and the like that they are allowed to snippet your articles.
Then have Google turn off indexing of everything that doesn't have opt-out enabled.
My expectation would be that the opt-out publications would flourish and the ones who had opted "in" would quickly die or decide to join the "opt out" group. I can't imagine anyone looking at their referrer links would think this scheme was a "good" idea.
Sure, and I would welcome that. But I think smaller publishers (including bloggers) might have problems, too. The law would apply to their blogs as well, they would have to figure out how to allow Google and others to still quote them. It might be so complicated that it would cause a lot of blogs to shut down.
Other news processors were already mentioned in the article. I just fear that it would make it too costly to experiment and would kill small publishers.
Why is it that every time that something like this happens, Google is the only tech company that comes forward with a message? Doesn't having a free and open internet benefit any other company?
The bigger trend to this story is that information changed from something that was scarce to something that is now abundant.
What the German publishers don't seem to understand is that their once so valuable and scarce goods (information and news) are becoming less and less valuable. Looks like they are trying to defend a dying business model with legislation.
Herbert Simon said in the 70s: “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Google is a major dispenser of attention, and I think the German publishers are doing themselves a huge disservice by making it harder for Google to send attention to the publishers.
The big unresolved issue is: how can we finance good journalism in an era where the value of static information approximates zero very quickly? Maybe the answer is in moving away from static information to an information process as the product... Something that can't be copied easily.
Media companies are in the attention harvesting business NOT in the information delivery business. The marginal value of the information product is virtually zero. The marginal value of attention redirected to ads is some rate greater than zero - some rate greater than the cost of delivering that information product. So profit can be made. But the power is in delivering the attention, not the information.
"What’s wrong with newspapers being paid for the content that they produce? No one has to use their headlines if they don’t want to pay for it."
What about fair use? Does that exist in Germany? I'm a quote geek for example. I love collecting "favourite quotes", giving a source (link if possible). I started out with the general quotes everybody knows, but of course I also copy and paste from the web in general, and sometimes I actually type what I read in a book, and translate it to English. Man, I even love talking about it. I love quotes.
Now, I consider that "fair use", and since I do it mostly in English the noobs left me alone so far. But I don't even know if there is such a thing as fair use in Germany... any ideas?
There is the "Zitatrecht" (quotation right), which allows you to quote short excerpts, provided they accurately represent the original text and you acknowledge the source.
But unlike in the US this is only valid for texts, not for other copyrighted material like movies. ( This means that youtube remixes are most likely illegal in germany.)
Frankly, I can understand the publisher's point, but I'm surprised that they do not seem to see how this could backfire if Google simply stopped crawling their sites.
But what's more: I think if this law became a reality it wouldn't affect my personal web usage at all. News sites are about the only type of website left where I still type in the URL and go to the page directly instead of doing a search.
I think the intuition behind these proposed laws is that Google has become so dominant in providing the information substrate of society that it should be subject to regulation as a monopoly. The argument would be something along the lines that search works best when provided as one comprehensive resource. Therefore, as a natural monopoly it should be regulated for similar reasons that other utilities are (electricity, water). The publishers are trying to make a case that their product has value as a "public good." Classical economic theory says market forces alone will produce a sub-optimal supply of a public good with out regulation.
Something like that. It's not a totally implausible argument. It does seem notable to me that Google is able to extract value from content that the creators can't.
IANAL but trying to read the law, it seems to be a rather blatant lex google.[1] They specifically state "search engine or similar services" should be prohibited from (in an extreme interpretation) linking to newspapers, if they do not pay. ( The rest of the law is probably just redundant, since it seems to reimplement copyright for a small subset of already copyrighted material.)
Google should state a new policy. We're not going to spend our money on servers and bandwidth indexing and linking to German publishers who won't pay - I guarantee you the value of the traffic they get from Google dwarfs what Google gets back from them in terms of marginal revenue directly attributable to their content. That's the thing about Google. They make tons of money - but given that they're a prime mover of traffic around the Internet they make a damn site more money for other folks - including newspapers.
So Google should charge. Then they can do like the phone companies with termination fees and call it a wash.
The proper term for pushing this law is "rent-seeking". You must include our content, and you must pay us for it.
This is a general problem with people and businesses perceiving themselves as working for society. They cannot see the wrongs they cause - because it's all for an even better cause.
German newspapers can use robots.txt and obey the social contract of the web like the rest of us.
If the newspapers could make a profit putting pictures of cats riding unicorns on every page with any text written in swahili, they'd do it every day it worked for them and not give a damn about the societal benefit - they'd cry that they're businesses and they've got to be allowed to make a profit. This is exactly what's happened over the decades as they cut international staff, and investigative staff and focused on lifestyle and entertainment news more and more.
This ultimately comes down to the fact that newspapers are going out of business because not enough people want to buy them any more, and they're lashing out in desperation.
I think there's a simple argument with content and markets that all of these media companies disingenuously ignore. If no-one is prepared to pay for your content then the market rate for your content is, by definition, zero. We pay in two ways - direct purchasing, and delivering surplus attention beyond that required to consume the media, which can be redirected towards various forms of advertising. When you cannot run your business on advertising revenue alone it means that not enough people are giving enough surplus attention of enough value to cover.
This argument about the "inherent value" of one form of content or another - of the need to pay artists or creators, or in this case journalists - doesn't extend to other realms. If I decide I want to be a carpenter, I cannot build a table and demand someone buy that table for $1,000. If the market won't bear that price for the table then the government isn't going to force others to pay me $1,000 because I feel that's what it's "worth".
The market rates for all forms of media have plummeted due to there being more supply of attention-draining media than there is demand either in terms of hard-dollars in direct payment, or surplus attention to be redirected towards paid advertising (and its ilk).
When old media companies had a stranglehold on distribution because paper production and distribution was expensive, or video production costs were prohibitive, only a small elite were able to publish their opinions, and the monopolistic distributors were able to charge a premium for the limited access to information or entertainment they provided. They weren't paid well because they provided an outstanding product (though it often was), they were paid well because they limited supply. Those limits are gone. Many many people produce entertainment and informational content. Many do it just for fun and are happy not to get paid. Many more do it with the hope of getting paid anything without the expectation of the lavish salaries and expense accounts of journalists of old.
This undercuts their economics and doesn't even touch on the fact that the newer voices often offer media that is more attractive to younger audiences. Not to mention declining quality of the product in many cases. Many media companies as they've become bloated monstrosities have undermined their own product quality with short-term-profit-focused decision making which had long term harm.
Is it really the case that piracy accounts for all problems in a record industry where the giants spent the pre-Internet-boom '90s crushing independent labels, monopolizing market channels and creating a modern-day payola system on radio where programming was rigidly sliced and diced to the lowest common denominator? Is none of the loss of popularity of the New York Times down to their abandoning their predominantly liberal subscriber audience during the Bush years and being guilty of mis-leading story after mis-leading story in the build up to the Iraq War, destroying people's confidence in their role as a reliable neutral arbiter?
tl;dr The publishers referenced by the OP aren't happy at the market rate for their product and services and want government to rig the market to pay them a cushy wage. Such subsidies rarely save industries in the long term, and the public should be outraged - because legislation of this sort is a public subsidy on a privileged elite in no uncertain terms.
I think the point that is unnoticed is that medium matters. More specifically, medium & distribution matter.
Mediums beget business models, not content. Game Of Thrones has business model closer to X Factor than to Avatar, because similarity of the medium is more important than similarity of the content.
The best way to see this is by looking at the history of porn, the content industry with negative lobbying power. Adult cinemas had the same business model as (and competed with) live shows. Certain types of content got produced. Then home videos changed it entirely. DDifferent types of content got produced for different people. Then DVD + online sales, changed the industry (growing it again). Then live streaming shrunk it.
Each time the medium & distribution changed the whole industry changed. Different producers, different consumers, different content, different size industry, different business model.
Online consumption of news media is not the same as dead tree. That is reality. All of the characteristics of the industry change when that happens. Douglas Adams said it best "It's like trying to explain to the Amazon River, the Mississippi, the Congo and the Nile how the coming of the Atlantic Ocean will affect them. The first thing to understand is that river rules will no longer apply."
[+] [-] durbin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sliverstorm|13 years ago|reply
Ok, ok, also a little bit of schadenfreude.
[+] [-] jrogers65|13 years ago|reply
> AllThingsD reports that Google has now re-indexed newspapers in the Copiepresse group. This is the right move and also a very self-interested one by Google. If it were to “punish” publishers that didn’t want to be included in Google verticals (e.g., News, Places, Shopping) antitrust investigators would use that as evidence against the company.
http://searchengineland.com/beligian-newspapers-claim-retali...
[+] [-] thewileyone|13 years ago|reply
I'd take evil to the next step, where I would now charge the papers for listing search results AND news articles.
[+] [-] schabernakk|13 years ago|reply
Of course, there is the obvious ignorance regarding technical facts like: "robots.txt is from the stone age. On or off for everyone is the only possibility" [1] which reminds me a lot of the discussion we had some time back regarding internet filters. But the one thing I find really dangerous is that they (meaning major newspapers, politicians, etc.) managed to spin the story so that the narrative is now "greedy google" vs hard working journalists. I applaud google for their efforts (and I am fully aware of their commercial interests in this matter) but I slowly begin to think they did their cause a disservice. If a discussion takes place its always about google and their lobbying. The extend of this law which could lead to bloggers being sued (btw: a side effect of the very fuzzy written law which leaves a lot open and almost certainly will need a court to decide on the details) when they link to news articles is almost never mentioned.
One last thing: Recently, two big news newspapers had to shut down and that print sales are declining is nothing new. I cant remember the last time I bought a newspaper and I am also pretty sure that although blogs/twitter/whatever are a good addition they cant replace classical media. There is definately a need for the discussion for new sources of incomes for classical paper based medias as ad sales from their online publication wont cut it. Perhaps something like a "culture/media tax/flatrate" as we currently have with the GEZ (for the financing of the public tv stations)? I dont know, but the #lsr is certainly not the way to go.
[1]http://www.golem.de/news/leistungsschutzrecht-springer-vergl...
[+] [-] leoh|13 years ago|reply
Isn't there a certain degree of truth in this? Truly, there is a big problem if the rates for borrowing content is too high. But I think what the German public is responding to is how journalism has changed and not in ways that are necessarily positive. There is far less incentive to be a good journalist now since the quality of a given article is likely much lower than in the past -- research is more limited, articles are written in a greater hurry, even some articles these days are largely written by computer or by individuals overseas.
What this law is reasonably trying to address is that content of whatever form -- be it newspaper articles, images, whatever -- has inherent value that should be recognized. Surely enforcing that value with an iron fist like the RIAA is not the right way to go. But allowing free expropriation (even of abstracts) may also be unfair.
I think a good analogy, fifty years ago, would be a newspaper that sends out people to read other newspapers very early in the morning (say at 5 AM) and then produces its own newspaper at 6. Surely such a thing would not have been possible fifty years ago, but something similar is possible today with the advent of the internet. If this behavior had occurred fifty years ago and hadn't been regulated, imagine what would have happened: the overall quality of newspapers would have been diluted and the incentive to produce good articles would have likely declined.
Now, of course, this isn't quite perfect. Again, Google is borrowing very small snippets. And surely -- if anyone remembers this -- the French courts were wrong several years ago when they allowed some newspapers to sue Google for simply posting a few sentences or a link to an article. But what if newspapers could charge a modest fee commensurate to the value an article link is to Google? Over time, the fees could certainly accrue. The question, I think, is how high these fees are and how this sort of regulation is imposed.
[+] [-] summerdown2|13 years ago|reply
... I like Clay Shirky's comment:
> Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.
and
The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model.
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking...
[+] [-] ajuc|13 years ago|reply
I wish traditional massmedia fast demise. There's nothing there worth saving at this point.
[+] [-] netcan|13 years ago|reply
The other recent example was/is the brain-dead UK/EU cookie law. Is our privacy any more protected? No. All we got was some dumb generic "cookie policy" popups that we have to "agree" to and further balkanization of the web. Additional costs to having a website (are there any scaremongering companies offering auditing to make sure your website does not expose you to legal risk?). Disempowering people by raising the barrier to running a site.
All downside. No upside from any perspective. We can't even blame lobbies or interested parties because literally nobody got anything positive from this. Just pure stupidity.
They should have know better than this.
[+] [-] digeridoo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contingencies|13 years ago|reply
EU had, and perhaps still has, the promise of a strong political body as a counter-balance to US and Chinese interests in the world. IMHO the promise is rapidly fading though, under what appears to be high-level influence and manipulation that demonstrably favours US-friendly outcomes. This is not a new phenomenon.
Tried to integrate results with Wikipedia, contacted the EFF, forwarded to journalists, nobody will write up the results. Trying reputable university-affiliated Wikinews journalists now. :/
[+] [-] morsch|13 years ago|reply
Step 2: Force Google to include you by demanding something like search engine neutrality.
[+] [-] zmmmmm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdoering|13 years ago|reply
Well, some media (FAZ) did a pretty good job, letting Frank Rieger explain the "Leistungsschutzrecht". OK, even there, it was one article of many. And only one.
And what is new, when it comes to the press not publishing anything, that goes against their own agenda. Even across a lot of publishing-houses. Well nothing new under the sun.
What is really, really bad, is the fact, that the law is so fuzzy, that everyone quoting from another source might be potentially liable. This law is so bad, because it just might kill the independent voices. And I think there might be a reason for this.
Because the press oftentimes has no incentive to dig deeper, to ask critical questions, when it comes to the really important questions, this job is left for the independent voices, that do this out of a feeling of necessity. But if these voices are silenced through fear...
... well, I think you get the drift. And I know, this sounds a lot like conspiracy - and I am not saying, my thoughts come anywhere near the truth, but I just wanted to share the thought.
Just one example: The so called "Netzsperren" (blocking sites, because of content with filter-lists - aka censorship) were reported by the big media as being bad, after a lot of independent bloggers had written about it and the discussion just could not be "ignored" any longer.
[+] [-] LinXitoW|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lenni|13 years ago|reply
The changes of the opposition are slim though as there is a conservative majority the parliament.
Interestingly, he has a personal axe to grind with Axel Springer AG as he was a big part of the student movement of '68 which was so intensely vilified by said company ("Youth in the street - Germany going down the drain ...").
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Christian_Str%C3%B6bele
[+] [-] bijant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
Oh, and I've noticed Twitter shows snippets from websites, too, now, so this will affect them as well.
[+] [-] schabernakk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Osiris|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VMG|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danmaz74|13 years ago|reply
Anyway, I think that Google, if the law is passed, should refuse to pay and stop publishing news from publishers from Germany (there are always still Austrian and Swiss newspapers for German news).
[+] [-] schabernakk|13 years ago|reply
A german newspaper will always be more detailed and in-depth when it comes to national matters.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
Then have Google turn off indexing of everything that doesn't have opt-out enabled.
My expectation would be that the opt-out publications would flourish and the ones who had opted "in" would quickly die or decide to join the "opt out" group. I can't imagine anyone looking at their referrer links would think this scheme was a "good" idea.
[+] [-] sorich87|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tichy|13 years ago|reply
Other news processors were already mentioned in the article. I just fear that it would make it too costly to experiment and would kill small publishers.
[+] [-] css771|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bowyakka|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhund|13 years ago|reply
What the German publishers don't seem to understand is that their once so valuable and scarce goods (information and news) are becoming less and less valuable. Looks like they are trying to defend a dying business model with legislation.
Herbert Simon said in the 70s: “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Google is a major dispenser of attention, and I think the German publishers are doing themselves a huge disservice by making it harder for Google to send attention to the publishers.
The big unresolved issue is: how can we finance good journalism in an era where the value of static information approximates zero very quickly? Maybe the answer is in moving away from static information to an information process as the product... Something that can't be copied easily.
[+] [-] richardjordan|13 years ago|reply
Media companies are in the attention harvesting business NOT in the information delivery business. The marginal value of the information product is virtually zero. The marginal value of attention redirected to ads is some rate greater than zero - some rate greater than the cost of delivering that information product. So profit can be made. But the power is in delivering the attention, not the information.
[+] [-] neumann_alfred|13 years ago|reply
"What’s wrong with newspapers being paid for the content that they produce? No one has to use their headlines if they don’t want to pay for it."
What about fair use? Does that exist in Germany? I'm a quote geek for example. I love collecting "favourite quotes", giving a source (link if possible). I started out with the general quotes everybody knows, but of course I also copy and paste from the web in general, and sometimes I actually type what I read in a book, and translate it to English. Man, I even love talking about it. I love quotes.
Now, I consider that "fair use", and since I do it mostly in English the noobs left me alone so far. But I don't even know if there is such a thing as fair use in Germany... any ideas?
[+] [-] kibwen|13 years ago|reply
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4883289
But I suppose I really should have refactored the comment out into a top-level comment and linked to it from both. :)
[+] [-] yk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sherr|13 years ago|reply
"Taxing times As newspapers’ woes grow, some are lobbying politicians to make Google pay for the news it publishes"
Not necessarily the end of the world (see Brasil) but might not have the intended consequences :
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21565928-newspap...
[+] [-] kleiba|13 years ago|reply
But what's more: I think if this law became a reality it wouldn't affect my personal web usage at all. News sites are about the only type of website left where I still type in the URL and go to the page directly instead of doing a search.
[+] [-] b1daly|13 years ago|reply
Something like that. It's not a totally implausible argument. It does seem notable to me that Google is able to extract value from content that the creators can't.
[+] [-] mmariani|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yk|13 years ago|reply
[1]http://dip.bundestag.de/btd/17/114/1711470.pdf (German)
[EDIT: spelling]
[+] [-] richardjordan|13 years ago|reply
So Google should charge. Then they can do like the phone companies with termination fees and call it a wash.
[+] [-] hso9791|13 years ago|reply
This is a general problem with people and businesses perceiving themselves as working for society. They cannot see the wrongs they cause - because it's all for an even better cause.
German newspapers can use robots.txt and obey the social contract of the web like the rest of us.
[+] [-] richardjordan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boboblong|13 years ago|reply
Where are you getting the first part from?
[+] [-] richardjordan|13 years ago|reply
I think there's a simple argument with content and markets that all of these media companies disingenuously ignore. If no-one is prepared to pay for your content then the market rate for your content is, by definition, zero. We pay in two ways - direct purchasing, and delivering surplus attention beyond that required to consume the media, which can be redirected towards various forms of advertising. When you cannot run your business on advertising revenue alone it means that not enough people are giving enough surplus attention of enough value to cover.
This argument about the "inherent value" of one form of content or another - of the need to pay artists or creators, or in this case journalists - doesn't extend to other realms. If I decide I want to be a carpenter, I cannot build a table and demand someone buy that table for $1,000. If the market won't bear that price for the table then the government isn't going to force others to pay me $1,000 because I feel that's what it's "worth".
The market rates for all forms of media have plummeted due to there being more supply of attention-draining media than there is demand either in terms of hard-dollars in direct payment, or surplus attention to be redirected towards paid advertising (and its ilk).
When old media companies had a stranglehold on distribution because paper production and distribution was expensive, or video production costs were prohibitive, only a small elite were able to publish their opinions, and the monopolistic distributors were able to charge a premium for the limited access to information or entertainment they provided. They weren't paid well because they provided an outstanding product (though it often was), they were paid well because they limited supply. Those limits are gone. Many many people produce entertainment and informational content. Many do it just for fun and are happy not to get paid. Many more do it with the hope of getting paid anything without the expectation of the lavish salaries and expense accounts of journalists of old.
This undercuts their economics and doesn't even touch on the fact that the newer voices often offer media that is more attractive to younger audiences. Not to mention declining quality of the product in many cases. Many media companies as they've become bloated monstrosities have undermined their own product quality with short-term-profit-focused decision making which had long term harm.
Is it really the case that piracy accounts for all problems in a record industry where the giants spent the pre-Internet-boom '90s crushing independent labels, monopolizing market channels and creating a modern-day payola system on radio where programming was rigidly sliced and diced to the lowest common denominator? Is none of the loss of popularity of the New York Times down to their abandoning their predominantly liberal subscriber audience during the Bush years and being guilty of mis-leading story after mis-leading story in the build up to the Iraq War, destroying people's confidence in their role as a reliable neutral arbiter?
tl;dr The publishers referenced by the OP aren't happy at the market rate for their product and services and want government to rig the market to pay them a cushy wage. Such subsidies rarely save industries in the long term, and the public should be outraged - because legislation of this sort is a public subsidy on a privileged elite in no uncertain terms.
[+] [-] netcan|13 years ago|reply
Mediums beget business models, not content. Game Of Thrones has business model closer to X Factor than to Avatar, because similarity of the medium is more important than similarity of the content.
The best way to see this is by looking at the history of porn, the content industry with negative lobbying power. Adult cinemas had the same business model as (and competed with) live shows. Certain types of content got produced. Then home videos changed it entirely. DDifferent types of content got produced for different people. Then DVD + online sales, changed the industry (growing it again). Then live streaming shrunk it.
Each time the medium & distribution changed the whole industry changed. Different producers, different consumers, different content, different size industry, different business model.
Online consumption of news media is not the same as dead tree. That is reality. All of the characteristics of the industry change when that happens. Douglas Adams said it best "It's like trying to explain to the Amazon River, the Mississippi, the Congo and the Nile how the coming of the Atlantic Ocean will affect them. The first thing to understand is that river rules will no longer apply."