Web trawlers may have to pay to slurp up German newspaper snippets The parties in Germany's ruling coalition have proposed a new protective copyright law for news publishers to ensure they are compensated by "commercial traders" that use pieces of their copyrighted content online, according to an automated translation of a document (15-page / 91KB PDF) recently published by the parties. The …
Then you miss the point.
The newspapers pay to generate content. They make their monies off of advertisements.
Its not just taking and posting links to the articles, but taking snippets. Where do you draw the line.
Also note the following:
"The ruling meant that users of a clippings service must have a licence from newspaper publishers to click on links taking them to newspaper website pages to avoid infringing the publishers' copyrights."
So what they are saying is that if you want to do it, you need to negotiate a license to do so.
TANSTAAFL!
"... as well as stopping the Google News snippets the internet giant also stopped displaying links to the newspaper websites via its search engine results."
Which is exactly what I'd do in that situation.
"The newspapers had complained that Google had been "unnecessarily aggressive" in removing them from the search engine."
So they want free advertising and also to get paid for being advertised.
I think they want links to their web sites, but for Google to not publish the summarised content of the site. The publishing of summarised content gives most people all they want to see, this means that most potential visits to the newspaper's web sites are not going to happen. The practical upshot is that advertising revenue stays with Google and doesn't make its was to the newspapers.
Delisting the site links is clearly a case of sour grapes on Google's part with a healthy dose of forgetting their corporate slogan. Particularly off when you consider how many times Google's representatives say that they can't mess with the algorithm and it's all automatic.
not so straightforward. It's one thing for google to remove the papers from google news entirely if they demand payment for it. It's another for them to remove them from google search.
That could be seen as using the search business to punish companies for not wanting to play with a different separate business.
e.g. using one monopoly(ish) to force compliance with a different business.
I'm hoping I misunderstood...
I wish they had been more aggressive, and not returned any results in .be, adding a note to search results "There are also results in the .be domain, but we are not displaying them until the application of Belgian copyright law has been clarified."
That would have brought Copiepresse's action to the attention of the rest of the country, and probably a lot of pressure onto Copiepresse (perhaps a boycott of their members).
If I am to understand what the news services want from the news aggregators' and Google's perspective:
1. I link to your site.
2. You want me to pay to link to your site.
3. I remove my link to your site because I don't want to pay to advertise your site.
4. You bitch at me because I removed my link to your site.
5.In other words, you want to force me to link to your site AND pay for it?
...
FUCK. YOU.
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