Google sees signs of success in its campaign to water down Australian pay-for-news plan Google appears to be successfully chipping away at Australia’s pay-for-news plan and the "Draft news media bargaining code" in which it is codified . The search ‘n’ ad giant confirmed on Wednesday that it had met with Australian policy-makers to discuss the draft code. The Register understands that Google considers the tone …
"the company is not entirely opposed to paying publishers but opposes the arbitration model. "
Google definitely does not oppose an arbitration model. But it opposes a model in which it's not them who's the arbiter that can force his arbitrary pricing, conditions and and decisions on others.
Also the paragraph at the end about ACCC makes it obvious that there's not substantial change planned to the model of the law, despite of what Google's saying. Which is a good thing.
Google and all other companies which make their living off taking other people's stuff and not paying anything in return needs to be stopped, and this is the first step. And the arbiters of prices should definitely not be these companies, but those who actually own the stuff that's used by them.
If Google or Facebook think they're providing actual value "in return" to content creators with their "services", then they are free to put a price on that, too, and let creators decide whether they really think it's worth that and are ready to pay that. But one has nothing to do with the other, and Google and Facebook shouldn't be allowed dictate terms on both.
If Google and FB were to pull out or reduce their services, perhaps the Oz action could be considered to be a way of breaking their monopolies.
Thereby leaving room for smaller companies to move i and offer services. As things are the two have far too much power and do more or less what they like.
I'm all for increasing competition, but if this is passed, it would have the opposite effect. The news publishers would stop getting linked to, and instead of making money from link taxes, they would slowly start to fail, and maybe one or two big ones would become the main sources.
You know that Google News (in Australia at least) just shows a headline and maybe a picture, and then links to the actual article on the actual website on which the article was originally published?
The content of the article is not scraped and presented as if Google were the author.
It does seem like a slippery slope though. I'm not a social media user anymore but I just wonder why it's only Google and Facebook. What about if I'd post a link to a news article on a forum or blog or reddit?
I might be wrong but seems to me like links to news articles from people they know would actually encourage people to click on them which would then load the lovely ads we see when reading said article. Isn't this essentially free publicity?
The search ‘n’ ad giant confirmed on Wednesday that it had met with Australian policy-makers to discuss the draft code. The Register understands that Google considers the tone and substance of the meetings suggest its opposition to the plan has not fallen on deaf ears and may even have begun to sway opinion among those who will review feedback on the code and then refine Australian policy.
So the money's in their accounts, there's more to come so all's good!
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