Google Removes News Snippets From Complaining Publications In Germany; Publications Claim It's 'Blackmail'

Copyright

from the let's-see-how-that-goes dept

Earlier this year, we noted a somewhat ridiculous and cynical attempt by some German newspapers to demand payment from Google for sending them traffic via Google News — and not just a little bit, but 11% of gross worldwide revenue on any search that showed one of their snippets. There were a few issues that we noted here: first, anyone not wanting to appear in Google News can quite easily opt-out. Second, Google News in Germany doesn’t show any ads. Third, those very same newspapers were using Google’s own tools to appear higher in search, suggesting that they certainly believed they were getting value out of being in Google’s index.

While German regulators rejected this request from the news publication industry group VG Media, Google has now decided to remove all news snippets from VG Media publications. It will still display results from those publications, but only in pure link/title format. Google claims it’s doing this to “remove [the] legal risks” from ongoing legal action from VG Media, but it seems equally likely that this will also decrease the traffic to those publishers’ websites.

As we’ve discussed in the past, years back under similar circumstances in Belgium, Google simply removed the complaining publications from its index, only to have those publications freak out and beg to be let back in, exposing the hypocrisy of those publishers, insisting that what Google was doing was somehow unfair.

Indeed, almost immediately, VG Media shot back that this is a form of “blackmail.” According to David Meyer at GigaOm:

“Google is discriminating in that they do not show snippets and thumbnails for publishers that made a claim, but they still show snippets and thumbnails from other publishers,” he said. “They’re trying to [apply] economic pressure.”

So… showing the snippets without payment is unfair and infringing. And, not showing the snippets is unfair and blackmail. Someone want to explain how any of this makes any sense other than that it’s just petty corporate jealousy that Google has made a lot of money and those publishers want some of it for nothing?

VG Media’s spokesperson seems to honestly think that there’s some sort of moral requirement for Google to both pay for and show snippets. Again from Meyer:

The spokesman said VG Media was still in talks with the regulator about the case, and would add a complaint about this latest move. But how does this move harm consumers? I asked him. ?Because they won?t have quality content in the future? if Google doesn?t pay for the snippets it uses, he claimed.

But surely Google actually helps publishers by sending traffic their way ? do the publishers really believe that anyone sees a sentence-or-two-long snippet in Google News and then goes ?Eh, that?s enough, I don?t need to click through??

It’s difficult to see how this is anything other than “We failed to develop our own business model, so the company that did ought to just give us money.”

Filed Under: blackmail, copyright, germany, google news, search, snippets
Companies: google, vg media

German Regulator Rejects German Newspapers' Cynical Attempt To Demand Cash From Google

Legal Issues

from the nice-try-but-no dept

Back in June we wrote about the ridiculous and cynical attempt by a number of big German newspaper publishers, in the form of the industry group VG Media, to demand 11% of Google’s gross worldwide revenue on any search that results in Google showing a snippet of their content. We noted the hypocrisy of these publishers seeking to do this while at the same time having done nothing to remove themselves from Google’s search — and, in fact, using Google’s tools to help them rank higher in search results. In other words, these publishers know that ranking high helps them… and yet then still demanded cash on top of that.

VG Media had specifically filed an arbitration request with the German government, but it has now been rejected. And, while German regulators didn’t go so far as to say they found the claim laughable, they did the regulator-speak equivalent:

?Sufficient suspicion is always necessary to initiate an abuse procedure. The complaint from VG Media did not establish this,? Andreas Mundt, president of Germany?s Federal Cartel Office, said in a statement on Friday.

Those poor, poor newspapers will just have to go back to accepting free traffic from Google, via Google News (a site that doesn’t have ads in Germany). Whatever will they do now?

Filed Under: copyright, germany, google news, newspapers, payments, snippets
Companies: google, vg media

Spain's Ill-Conceived 'Google Tax' Law Likely To Cause Immense Damage To Digital Commons And Open Access

Copyright

from the digital-cluelessness dept

Techdirt recently wrote about Spain’s imminent and almost unbelievably foolish new copyright law designed to prop up old and failing business models in the publishing sector. Mike mentioned that it was potentially disastrous for things like fair use, Creative Commons and public domain material — so broad is the reach of this new law’s “inalienable right” for publishers to be paid when snippets of works appear elsewhere. Now Paul Keller has put together a great post on Communia’s blog exploring the details of this particular threat:

It’s that last fact — that the mandatory royalty can’t be turned off, even for works released under Creative Commons licenses that are explicitly designed to encourage payment-free sharing — which is so disturbing. It threatens to undermine not only Creative Commons licenses by negating one of their key features, but also the central feature of a digital commons — that anyone can draw upon it freely in order to create new works that are then returned to an enriched commons for the benefit of all.

I can’t believe even the Spanish legislators who put together this misguided law really intended this attack on the Creative Commons world, but that simply suggests they are largely clueless about how the digital world and its commons operate. That’s confirmed by another post on this topic, this time from Renata Avila, writing for Global Voices. She explores the likely impact of this new law on another uniquely-digital phenomenon — open access publishing:

The new law’s provisions thus negate the whole point of open access, which is to facilitate the free sharing of academic materials on a global scale so as to accelerate research and its benefits.

That’s naturally a tragedy for the researchers who want to share their work so that others can build on it, but it’s also a tragedy for Spanish society. If this law is passed, it means two of greatest benefits arising from the widespread use of the Internet — the creation of a digital commons that can be shared by all, and the wider dissemination of knowledge thanks to open access — will be seriously harmed. As a consequence, gifted entrepreneurs and academics in Spain are likely to move to other countries with a greater understanding of these matters, helping to drive innovation and intellectual discovery there instead, while Spain may well find itself turning into a digital backwater.

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Filed Under: copyright, digital commons, google news, google tax, inalienable right, open access, snippets, spain
Companies: google

Spain Likely To Pass 'Google Tax'; Makes Paying For News Snippets An 'Inalienable Right' And A New Bureaucracy To Collect It

Legal Issues

from the yikes dept

We’ve covered a few attempts in Europe to create what appears to basically be a tax on Google News for newspapers. These newspapers, who have been struggling to adapt in the modern internet world would like to blame Google News for their own failures, despite the fact that Google sends them traffic. When a court case in Belgium was won by the newspapers, Google simply removed those newspapers from the local Google News… and those very same newspapers freaked out and demanded to be let back in. This, of course, demonstrates the vast hypocrisy by the newspapers here. They know they need to be in Google News because of all the traffic it drives, but they also demand to be paid for it. Google has made it quite easy for newspapers to opt-out of Google News if they really feel like their work is somehow harmed by having Google link to it — but none of the newspapers use it, because they know how valuable the traffic is. In fact, many of the same newspapers who are complaining are, at the same time, using Google’s own tools to improve how they appear in results.

Efforts like the ones in Belgium have happened in France and in Germany, where a new law was passed last year. That law had some loopholes, so now German newspapers are demanding a huge chunk of money from Google.

But the situation over in Spain just got even more ridiculous. Julio Alonso has the details, in which it appears that the lower house of the Spanish legislature has approved a very, very dangerous bill that creates a brand new inalienable right for news publishers to be paid for, via compulsory licenses, any “electronic news aggregation system,” which is broadly defined as anyone who shares more than just anchor text with a link. A short summary? You’ll have to pay up:

The Spanish law proposal declares that editors cannot refuse the use of ?non-significant fragments of their articles? by third parties. However, it creates a levy on such use to compensate editors and declares it an inalienable right (derecho irrenunciable).

The introduction of the inalienable right was done to avoid what happened in Germany. If you are a digital editor that publishes with a copyleft license, like myself, and you minimally understand how the internet actually works, you cannot decide to not charge Google News. It is compulsory. More than a right it is an obligation. Therefore, Google cannot exclude sites requiring payment from Google News. It would still need to pay for those it includes, even if they do not want to be compensated.

Furthermore, such tax, is to be administered by a third party (entidad de gestión) in a similar way to what SGAE (the Spanish RIAA) does with music rights. In this case most likely CEDRO (the entity that collects fees for the use of written text, photocopies and so on). How much it is to be paid and how the proceedings would be split among editors has not being disclosed. Though there is reason to suspect of a distribution just to AEDE members.

To make things even worse, the tax is not even aimed only at Google. It is aimed generally at ?electronic news aggregation systems?, and, therefore it includes basically anyone who links with anything more than an anchor text.

It seems worth noting here that collection societies around the globe have been plagued with corruption and other problems, often diverting money from smaller creators to the biggest. And, some of the worst stories come from Spain, where SGAE was accused of mass corruption, involving stealing $550 million from artists. That doesn’t bode well for this new “organization.”

As Alonso notes, this isn’t just directed at Google News, but Menéame, a popular Digg/Reddit-like aggregator in Spain (randomly: we get a fair amount of traffic from that site). But it could also impact Twitter and Facebook where people share links with text. And also a variety of other aggregators like Flipboard, Zite and Pocket.

The fact that it’s considered “inalienable” is especially troubling. It basically overrides any concept of fair use, Creative Commons or even public domain material. Furthermore, Alonso notes that a bunch of organizations, including a bunch of other newspapers, are fighting against this, but it didn’t seem to matter. A report has warned that implementing this law could cost the Spanish internet industry over a billion euros, and sites like Menéame are already talking about leaving the country. There are rumors that Google might just shut down Google News in Spain over this. But, still, the legislation was pushed through under questionable circumstances:

The law was passed on Congress in a special session in the mid of summer, on the Culture Committee and not on the plenary session, with almost no debate in a very awkward session, with many Congressmen declaring to the press, sometimes unintentionally, that they knew very little about what they were voting.

Despite widespread public and industry (outside the largest Spanish newspapers) opposition to this, Alonso suggests that the bill is still likely to become law. And we’ll have yet another disastrous policy for the internet, designed to protect the industry of a few legacy players who failed to adapt.

Filed Under: aggregation, collection society, google news, inalienable right, quoting, snippets, spain, tax
Companies: google, meneame

Is Google Regretting Paying Off Belgian And French Newspapers Yet? Other Newspapers Demand Their Cut

Journalism

from the like-that-wasn't-predictable dept

For years now, we’ve talked about how various newspapers (and local governments) around the globe were arguing that Google News was somehow unfairly cheating them out of revenues (even as they sent a ton of traffic to those sites, often to visitors who wouldn’t have visited the pages at all otherwise). Back in December, we saw that Google “settled” a long running dispute with Belgian newspapers, with part of it being an “agreement” to buy a bunch of advertising to effectively pay off the newspapers. Then, in February, Google did a similar deal in France, this time to the tune of $82 million. Of course, it didn’t take long for people to point out that this sets an awful precedent for the internet, as these legacy publishers now believe they have a legitimate argument that sites should pay to link to them.

And, of course, newspapers in lots of other countries were paying attention. While Google has insisted that those two deals “won’t be replicated” elsewhere in Europe, it appears that newspaper publishers elsewhere in Europe would like to test that claim. Media companies in Portugal are first up to the plate, demanding that Google pay up:

“Our position is that the content has to be paid for … We showed that our focus is to be paid for Google News using our news,” he said, adding that the two sides planned to continue regular meetings.

A Google spokeswoman said the company “does not comment on private meetings held by its teams”.

Maybe, next time, Google should stand up for its principles on deals like this, even in the face of political pressure. Because giving in and paying up only means that pretty much every country with a struggling media business (meaning, most countries) is going to come calling before too long…

Filed Under: belgium, france, google news, newspapers, portugal

Belgian Newspapers Agree To Drop Lawsuit Over Google News After Google Promises To Show Them How To Make Money Online

Copyright

from the baby-steps dept

As we’ve been reporting, there’s been a movement underway in many countries to argue that something like Google News — which displays headlines, brief snippets and links to full news stories on newspapers’ own websites — somehow violates newspaper copyrights. This makes no sense logically, especially given just how much those same sites likely spend on “search engine optimization” to try to get better ranked in search engines. The only explanation for it that makes sense is the most obvious one: the newspapers are struggling to find ways to make money these days, and they see that Google is making a lot. Hence: come up with a plan to force Google to fork over some of that revenue. Of course, the very first to do this — years before Germany and France and others got into the game — was a group of Belgian newspapers who sued Google for sending them traffic. Amazingly, a local court agreed with the newspapers and told Google to pay up. Following this, Google removed those newspapers from its index, leading the newspapers to freak out and demand to be put back in.

The somewhat acrimonious legal dispute continued, until now. Google has announced that the news publishers have agreed to a “settlement,” where the terms are somewhat hilarious. Basically, it looks like they’ve agreed to drop the lawsuit… if Google will teach them how to make money online:

• Promote both the publishers’ and Google’s services – Google will advertise its services on the publishers’ media, while the publishers will optimise their use of Google’s advertising solutions, in particular AdWords to attract new readers.
• Increase publishers’ revenue – by collaborating on making money with content, both via premium models (paywalls, subscriptions), and via advertising solutions such as the AdSense platform and the AdExchange marketplace;
• Increase reader engagement – by implementing Google+ social tools, including video Hangouts, on news sites, and launching official YouTube channels;
• Increase the accessibility of the publishers’ content – by collaborating on the distribution of the publishers original content on mobile platforms, in particular smartphones and tablets;

It’s good to see the whole thing settled, but, really, the settlement itself seems somewhat silly. Google’s agreement to buy advertising with those publishers is the “payoff” bit (apparently to the tune of approximately $6 million — and which allows both sides to claim “victory”), but the focus on effectively teaching the publishers how to “do internet stuff” just shows how ridiculous the original lawsuit was in the first place.

Filed Under: advertising, belgium, copyright, google news, internet
Companies: google

Brazilian Newspapers Apparently Don't Want Traffic; They All Opt Out Of Google News

Business Models

from the how-much-do-they-spend-on-seo? dept

We’ve already seen newspapers in Belgium and Germany argue that Google needs to pay them for linking to them in Google News. And we just wrote about how French newspapers were looking for the same ridiculous handout. But a bunch of Brazilian newspapers have taken the issue even further, and colluded to all pull out of Google News together (well, 90% of all newspapers in Brazil). They’re demanding that Google pay them to link to them. Of course, I’m curious if any of those newspapers has ever hired an SEO expert to try to get them better search rankings…

Google, as it does, has pointed out that it sends these newspapers a ton of traffic, which you would think they’d appreciate. A Google representative pointed out how ridiculous the newspapers’ stance was:

it would be absurd for a restaurant to tax a cab driver for taking tourists to eat there.

In the meantime, if I were one of the 10% of newspapers smart enough not to opt-out, I’d be going all out to try to steal that traffic from the big newspapers.

The newspapers defended their decision by arguing that Google News is “not helping us grow our digital audiences.” Instead, they claim that “by providing the first few lines of our stories to Internet users, the service reduces the chances that they will look at the entire story in our web sites.” I’m wondering how they determine this, because I can’t see how that would possibly be true. Google notes that it sends four billion clicks to news sites each month. The newspaper guys seem to assume that without Google News people will just go straight to their newspaper sites, which is a huge assumption. It also assumes that the people looking at Google News aren’t clicking through on news articles. Those both seem like very big assumptions that are likely to be entirely incorrect.

Filed Under: brazil, business models, google news, newspapers, search traffic, seo, traffic
Companies: google

Proposed Licensing For Newspaper Snippets Could Threaten Users Of Blogs, Facebook And Twitter In Germany

Copyright

from the triumph-of-the-dinosaurs dept

A few months ago we wrote about a really bad idea that was being floated in Germany: making companies like Google pay for the use of news snippets in services such as Google News. Unfortunately, that idea has now been turned into a concrete proposal for a new law; remarkably, it is even worse than the original plans.

As Udo Vetter points out in a post entitled “Digitally Castrated” (German original), the emphasis of the proposed modification to German copyright law (available as pdf) has shifted: now the primary targets of the law are not only companies like Google, but also ordinary people who blog or post short excerpts of news stories on Facebook or even Twitter, who may be required to obtain a special new license to do so.

Vetter suggests this is because the German publishers have realised that Google would probably rather close down its Google News site in Germany than pay for each snippet, and so they have decided to go after an Internet group who make up in numbers what they lack in revenue: German users of blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

They are likely to be affected because two aspects of the proposed law are vague. It would apparently apply to anyone who makes money from their online writing, and that seems to include things like a few Google Ads or a micropayment system like Flattr. The other uncertainty is what exactly is allowed in the way of unlicensed excerpts from articles. The proposal explicitly mentions that quotations that are currently legal will remain legal. But as Vetter points out, a recent German court decision established that even very short excerpts could be infringing, which effectively guts that apparent safeguard.

This creates a gray area of what will be lawful for ordinary Internet users. And that, in its turn, will create an opportunity for publishers to send out huge numbers of threatening letters to bloggers and others that have quoted from newspapers and magazines. Since few of the latter will have the resources to defend themselves in court, most will simply give in and pay for one of the new licenses the legislation would create.

This will doubtless have a chilling effect on German blogging, and by extension on the use of quotations from newspapers in German Facebook posts and on Twitter too, since users will hardly be keen to fight major battles against well-funded publishers to establish the exact contours of the new law.

The end-result could be a disaster for German blogging, microblogging and social networks. Freedom of speech would inevitably suffer, as people hesitate to challenge articles published in newspapers and magazines for fear of running afoul of the new rules. Old media will be back in the driver’s seat — exactly as the publishers doubtless planned when they lobbied for this law.

One hope is that the extreme nature of this proposal will shock enough people into protesting against it — the massive street demonstrations against ACTA showed what the German Internet community is capable of. The other is that, if the worst comes to the worst, and it is passed in its current form, the new copyright law would surely alienate so many users of popular platforms like blogs and social networks that the German Pirate party would find itself propelled to even greater political power.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: germany, google news, licensing, newspapers
Companies: facebook, flattr, google, twitter

While Newspapers Threaten To Ban Google News, This Journalist Begs To Get In

Journalism

from the not-your-site dept

Lately, it seems that most media outlets are up in arms over Google and other news aggregators using their content. So, it’s somewhat ironic to hear veteran journalist, Robert X. Cringely, complain that he has wanted to be included on Google News for years, but has had a hell of a time getting listed. He goes as far as to claim that he is on a “blacklist” of news sources that are denied from Google News.
While this may seem like an exciting and interesting conspiracy theory, I’d have to wonder if Occam’s razor applies here. Most likely, the Google News product managers have made some sort of algorithmic decision figure into whether or not a site is included in Google News, and simply put, Cringely.com did not fit the bill. No harm or ill will need be implied. Actually, after looking at Google News’ technical requirements, it appears that Cringely’s site does not meet Google’s requirements of a numeric URL or news site map — so, perhaps the first step would be to satisfy those requirements.

That said, while Cringely does run an excellent site, he gives no reason why he should feel entitled to be included in Google News. After all, Google is incentivized to create the best news product that they can reasonably create, and if including a Cringely post would make Google News better for their users, then they would include it. After all, we are thrilled when Google News includes Techdirt on their site, but to this date, it is a mystery to us which posts are included — and we don’t feel entitled to that inclusion. That said, Cringely’s ire is a reminder to the media outlets that there are plenty of sites that would love to take their place in news aggregators, if the opportunity should arise, so perhaps they should count their blessings for now.

Filed Under: google news, journalism, robert x. cringely
Companies: google

Italian Newspapers Get Gov't To Investigate Google For Not Sharing Ranking Secret Sauce

Politics

from the seriously-delusional dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in the news that Italian regulators have begun an investigation into Google, at the request of some Italian newspapers. The complaint is a typical one from newspapers who seem slightly clueless about how Google works. They say that Google News is unfair — even though they can opt-out, but don’t. The newspapers falsely claim that if they opt-out of Google News, they also have to opt-out of Google Search. That’s simply untrue. But even if it were true, I’m not sure what the point would be. Getting traffic is a good thing. It’s unclear why Italian newspapers (or any newspapers) don’t like it.

In fact, the whole idea that Google News is unfair for sending traffic is undermined by the other complaint from the newspapers: that Google doesn’t reveal how it ranks stories:

Because Google does not disclose the criteria for ranking news articles or search results, he said, newspapers are unable to hone their content to try to earn more revenue from online advertising.

Of course, that’s silly. First, plenty of people have figured out how to optimize for Google — there’s a whole industry called SEO that does that. That doesn’t mean that Google needs to reveal the secret sauce. But the best response to the demand for Google to reveal how it ranks stories comes from Danny Sullivan, who turns the story around, and wonders how newspaper would feel in the other direction:

No newspaper editor of any quality would allow an external interest to walk into their newsroom and demand to know exactly how to guarantee a front page article about whatever they want. But that’s what the Italian papers seem to desire. Google has an editorial process for producing rankings, one that’s done using automation — but the papers seem to want to bypass those editorial decisions.

Exactly. The newspapers are basically demanding that their stories get ranked higher, but how would newspaper editors feel about the subjects of stories in the paper demanding that their stories be on the front page. After all, being on the front page would get the subject of a story more attention, and the newspaper isn’t paying those subjects — so the newspaper is “getting all the value.” — at least according to newspaper logic.

Sullivan also does a good job highlighting how useless it would be if the newspapers did get the details on how Google ranks stuff, because then everyone would just start writing stories to get to the top of the list, and any “advantage” would be lost. Separate from that, shouldn’t we be just a bit troubled to find out that the newspapers are interested in figuring out how to write stories that top Google, rather than writing stories to better inform the populace?

Filed Under: antitrust, editorial, google news, italy, journalism, news, ranking, seo
Companies: google