Google Begins Removing AFP From Google News 403
An anonymous reader writes "Google has began removing web-based content of Paris-Based news agency Agence France Presse (AFP), from the Google News service. This past weekend we reported that the Agence France Presse had sued Google for displaying their photo's, stories, and news headlines on Google News without permission. AFP is seeking damages of around $17.5 million and requested the courts that Google News is not to display any of its copyrighted material. It appears Google is complying with what the AFP is requesting. Google doesn't have a timetable for when all AFP links and content will be removed from Google News, but the company is actively working on the matter, said Steve Langdon, a Google spokesman."
Google's revenge... (Score:3, Informative)
It's AFP, not APF (Score:5, Informative)
Re:AFP will now disappear (Score:2, Informative)
How else will anyone find them excpept through google.
AFP are a newswire service. That means they make ther money by selling copy to other news organizations. Professional journalists hardly need to use Google news to be aware of the existence of (despite all the /. snideness) one of the worlds premier news agencies.
Re:Biting the Hand that Feeds them. (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of people seem to think that google was taking pictures from the AFP web site, and AFP sued them for it. That's not what happened. AFP sells a picture to, say, the New York Times. The Times puts this picture on the NYT site with the caption, "Photo by whoever, copyright 2005 Agency France Presse." Google then then takes this picture from the NYT site and puts it on the Google News front page. It has nothing to do with Google indexing the AFP site.
Google using AFP photos without attribution (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone loves Google, so it's easy to mock AFP. But if this were being done by a site that everyone loves to hate, I think people would tend to side with AFP.
As a side note, Agence France Presse is one of the Big Three (with AP and Reuters). It takes great pride in the quality of its photography.
http://www.resourceshelf.com/legaldocs/afpvgoogle1 .pdf
Re:But isn't Reuters.... (Score:5, Informative)
British. Although the world's largest news outlet, 90% of its revenues come from selling financial data.
Look, get the story right, dammit. (Score:3, Informative)
AFP's business model isn't to run a service to deliver news to readers directly. What they do is sell content to news organizations. This means that if you run a newspaper, you pay AFP for the right to reprint their stories.
Google is getting the AFP content from these newspapers as a third party, and not as a subscriber to AFP, who probably don't give a rat's ass at the moment about making you go over to their site. You, as an individual who reads the news, are not their customer.
No. You haven't read the article (Score:3, Informative)
No. Re-read the story.
AFP sells photos to different news organizations. The NYT, London Times, Washington Post, Hong Kong, Tokoy, pretty much everywhere.
Those newspapers *WANT* Google to index their pages. What AFP is doing is preventing 3rd parties from being indexed by Google.
So the end result will be that news sites sill be less likely to use AFP photos, because once they do, they will not be indexed by Google.
Hope that's clearer why not being on google will damage AFP in a way they don't comprehend. Its almost as if they don't understand the Internet. But that's not surprising since they still advertise that you should call them on an ISDN line. Welcome to 1990.
They really don't get it.
Re:Disection of an idiot's post (Score:1, Informative)
The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: "quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported."
You'll notice I have highlited the occurences of the word "quotation". For something to qualify as a quotation, it must be clearly attributed to its author or source. That is not what google is doing, rather, it is taking AFP's pics and inserting them into articles from third parties without attribution.
The issue, therefor, is not one of compensation but one of attribution. AFP's business model does not rely on google or anyone else linking to them. Rather, they provide content to newspapers and other outlets and generally keep a low profile themselves. If said newspapers have to compete with third parties who basically rip off AFP images and insert them into a foreign and unattributed context, then they are right to complain before a court, and do so after having contacted google directly beforehand.
To suggest that AFP should keep its content away from google's robots is to ignore the issue. AFP isn't trying to keep its pics off google, just keep them in context.
To suggest that AFP is suing for the money is to have absolutely no idea what kind of budget one of the world's big three news agencies runs with and is downright ridiculous.
Before I am called an idiot by someone else who is just looking for a good chance to bash the french because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside rather than because the nationality of the news agency in question has anything to do with the issue at hand, let it be known I am not french.
American Fascist Party? (Score:3, Informative)
Here's their robots.txt (Score:1, Informative)
You, sir, are yet another ass that's spouted his mouth off without realizing what the story is. Google News isn't spidering the AFP site. They're spidering the sites of AFP's customers, and republishing content, without paying AFP the fees that they charge their subscribers for the privilege to republish that content.
er? (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone else renember this article? about 6 months ago or more.
Re:Good move (Score:2, Informative)
News agencies sell their news and images to magazines and get most of their money from there. They employ a horde of reporters around the world to write news to them. Why would they want one publication to copy their news and photos and use them without payment?
Also, please back your claim and post a link to information that tells how much of their money comes from French goverment.
Re:AFP will now disappear (Score:5, Informative)
AFP is big all over the world. There are 3 real global news agencies, AP, AFP and Reuters (in no particular order).
Hell, they're even "big" in the US ! Look at Yahoo's top stories [yahoo.com], check out the sources (upper right corner). Guess who comes third, right behind AP and Reuters ?
In other parts of the world (say, the Arab world or western Africa), AFP happens to dominate. It has more to do with politics and language than anything else, but still, they're not just big in France.
How many shortwave programs does AFP broadcast? And in what languages? Let's see, the answer would be none and none. Hell, the Beeb broadcasts in multiple languages.
Wow. Congratulations, you just discovered that a news agency is not the same as a media corporation (Hint: how many AP / Reuters programs are syndicated on public radio in the United States ? How many shortwave programs do AP and Reuters broadcast ?)
If you want French media, you should look at TV5 [tv5.org] (French-language international television) or Radio-France Internationale [www.rfi.fr] (radio services in 19 languages).
Thomas-
Apostrophe (Score:2, Informative)
http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif
I could ignore it if it wasn't on the main page of Slashdot.