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."
Sucks for AFP (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Just to be safe (Score:2, Insightful)
Biting the Hand that Feeds them. (Score:3, Insightful)
Google has become the doorway to the internet. Your site doesn't exist until Google indexes it. Anyone who sues them isn't trying to prevent copyright infringement or reproduction of their data, they are most likely looking for a reason to press charges and make a quick franc.
Re:Just to be safe (Score:1, Insightful)
$17.5 million seems like a good reason.
Re:Good move (Score:5, Insightful)
The ones who don't get this concept will just quietly go under or be bought up by other news organizations that "get it". This is exceptionally silly on AFP's part since once a user clicks on a link from Google News to go to AFP's site they can display banner ads to help pay their costs.
Looks like this will be one of those cases where the company deserves exactly what it's asking for. I wonder how they'll try to spin their declining web readership?
You're all ignoring one thing (Score:4, Insightful)
AFP make their money by selling their stories to other media organizations. If they allow their news to be disseminated without the appropriate fee being paid (as Google News is doing), they will be cutting off their main source of revenue.
All AFP is doing is using legitimate means to protect a legitimate business model.
Re:Just to be safe (Score:5, Insightful)
i'm pretty sure they would have happily sold the stuff to google under normal terms...
Google should remove all links to them (Score:3, Insightful)
I can not imagine how the Google News links could do anything but help make more profit for news sites that Google links to.
Google News could link to my sites anyday - I will not complain
Re:You're all ignoring one thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Legitimate means would be not posting these articles on publicly accessible systems if they don't want the public to access them.
Re:Good move (Score:4, Insightful)
Papers which have less than the WSJ's stature pretty much know they are leaping from shrinking pond to shrinking pond. Paid readership is dropping....fast. And they don't have a solution. They know they have to have an online presence in order to compete against everyone else who knows they need to be online. And if they aren't online, most people aren't going to follow that newspaper.
The bottom line is those (readers) who are online will read online - in many cases moreso than hardcopy; especially if it's free. Those who aren't wired aren't in a number big enough to keep the paper in business across the long haul.
I have a silly question:
what are "photo's"? (see main
Re:Google should apologise. (Score:1, Insightful)
> totally blacklisted by Google.
Depends just how much Google wanted to make an object lesson of them. Remove ANY page anywhere with material from AFP. Basically, to Google AFP wouldn't exist anymore and for most intents and purposes if it ain't on Google it ain't on the Internet. How long would news organizations pay AFP for content nobody would ever see online?
And if France (and Germany, I haven't forgot them either when they harrassed Yahoo! and eBay) doesn't stop this practice of trying to make American companies subject to their wierd laws it is getting time to just pull the fibers connecting France to the rest of the world. They need the world a hell of a lot more than the world needs them.
Re:Just to be safe (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Google should apologise. (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, if I ran a news site of some sort, and I found that one of my content providers was engaging in direct and successful lobbying efforts to get me kicked off google news because I'd been buying content from them, I'd definitely start looking for an alternate provider for that content immediately.
Re:Good move (Score:3, Insightful)
Good lord (Score:5, Insightful)
If a link, a headline and a half-paragraph quotation is "disseminating", we're all fucked.
Can't wait to see where we go next with this amazing new logic. "Amazon.com book reviews banned in france because people were quoting sentences from the books they reviewed, the book companies make their money by selling those books to customers, if they allow those sentences to be disseminated without the appropriate fee (as amazon.com book reviewers do) they will be cutting off their main source of revenue"...
Re:Other news sites removed by Google (Score:4, Insightful)
but of course, that would make me a great big evil racist...
Re:When you're wrong, become insulting (Score:3, Insightful)
is that so? so everybody stops buying from de facto newswire because it's not on google news, which doesn't really matter at all in the 'rest of the world'?
btw you don't know jack about history apparently either, so I guess partially to blame why you don't understand shit about the oldest news agency in the world...
Re:Sucks for AFP (Score:5, Insightful)
Listen, e-vangelising is all well and good - sometimes. Other times, we actually *need* these old-methods companies. Say AFP folds; who, then, gathers the news which Google collates? Google sure as hell doesn't. They index, and that's all.
AFP, BBC, ABC, Reuters; whatever, whoever: the fact is, these organisations are essential if we are to continue to receive cutting-edge, informative news from around the world.
AFP doesn't want to "defend a natural monopoly". It wants to ensure that it obtains sufficient revenue to allow it to continue to pay its journalists, without whom Google News would be largely pointless.
Re:AFP will now disappear (Score:5, Insightful)
Before anyone starts talking about fair use... (Score:2, Insightful)
User-agent: * /
Disallow:
AFP didn't do their homework, and that's a poor way to protect any investment.
To sum up: AFP, of their own volition, paid to get on the web. They completely ignored RFCs. They ignored standard practices by established companies in their business sector. They wait until $17M in damages accrue, which doesn't happen overnight. Only then do they cry foul, and sue using copyright law to protect something they won't protect themselves when they have the chance. If you were a judge, which way would you rule?
Notice that I didn't even need to talk about fair use rights. France doesn't use the US Constitution. My arguments are purely economic, and I'm fairly sure the French understand money. If any lawyers at Google are reading this, please fight this suit. AFP are being unreasonable, and need to be taught a lesson.
Re:Good move (Score:2, Insightful)
Obviously from the clued-in news services who realize that staying with Google means more viewers directed to their sites, thus more ad revenues, especially when all their competition are willfully removing themselves from the game. Watch the free market work.
On another note, anyone want to wager on how long it will be till AFP quietly allows their content to be reinserted into Google search results?
Re:Good move (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good move (Score:5, Insightful)
AFP doesn't want users directed to their website. Their business model is damaged by direct customer interaction: they want users directed to the websites of newspapers who reproduce their stories, and that won't happen if viewers can see the original source indexed alongside all the paying clones.
Who will decide to go read more ads and intrusive branding, when you can get the original just as easily?
Re:Good move (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, yes... Yet, I can't see their point.
1. AFP is hurt in its sales because Google lets end-users get their news for free, so that they don't flock any longer to sites which buy news from AFP. I can see how going up against Google may be useful there, yet wouldn't it be faster and more effective to "secure" your own site? i.e.requiring registration etc...
2. AFP is hurt by other commercial sites getting and reproducing AFP news for free, and displaying them. Alright, teach'em a lesson by suing Google. Then again, I've never heard a news agency having these kinds of problems, as there are usually many value-added services clients get when they subscribe to services - such as actual "real time" news feeds.
3. At least according to Wikipedia, AFP is a government-subsidized news agency whose most important market is an artificial one -- i.e. France, where it's the "official" agency. Why go after Google like you were a real company, aggressively protecting your fictitious market?
It seems to me as though they're looking for additional funding for fiscal 2005, more than protecting a supposed market... After all we all have national budget problems in the EU (and not only there...)
Re:AFP will now disappear (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, you look like an intelligent person capable of insightful discussion, now, grats.
> AFP is nothing compared to the Beeb.
Indeed. Let me explain it for you slowly : the BBC and AFP are not in the same business. BBC gives news to citizens, while AFP gives news to BBC (and about all newspapers in the world).
> How many shortwave programs does AFP broadcast?
Let me explain it for you slowly : AFP doesn't broadcast anything, they sell news to newspapers.
> The Beeb could get along quite well without Google News
And AFP doesn't give a fuck about google news, since, they're not a newspapers. Every major newspapers in the world is a customer of AFP. NYT, BBC, Washington Post, The Economist, all of them buy content and pictures from AFP. AFP is as widely known and as widely respected as Reuters. Both of them are the first and most respected content provider of every newspapers in the world. Without Reuters and AFP, you would more or less see no pictures on any newspapers. If you don't believe me, buy the NYT, and look for credits on their pictures. 90% of them are from AFP and Reuters.
You and I are not custumers of AFP, NYT, BBC and all are.
Basically, Google News is trying to take AFP work without paying for it. AFP is not happy with that, and they have every right to be, since Google is effectivly warezing from them.
This lawsuit has nothing to do with the French lawsuit on Yahoo, which was quite stupid. This lawsuit is very valid, and Google removing their content shows that they know they would loose in a lawsuit.
Next time you launch in a flamefest, try to educate yourself, you really do look like a moron talking out of his ass.
Re:Before anyone starts talking about fair use... (Score:3, Insightful)
This isnt about the images and content being taken from the AFP website, this is about AFP images and content on OTHER news sites such as the BBC, NYTimes etc appearing on Google News with the attributions stripped.
If you take a look at the AFP website [afp.com], you will see that their website, while having a little news content, does not revolve around presenting news to the public.
If you look at their robots.txt it contains the following:
Which I think is more than enough.Dealt with above, this is about reuse without attribution, which is NOT covered by any meaning of the term 'fair use'.
My god, you have a perverted and thoroughly wrong view of copyright and the protections granted to it. The whole point of copyright is that YOU DO NOT REQUIRE other protection, it SHOULD be publically available with no threat of copyrights being stripped just because someone else decided to use your content and you sued to stop them.
By taking this action against Google, they are doing exactly what you want them to do, protect their copyrights. Copyright is granted so that works do not spend eternity in someones private collection never to be seen by the public. It grants the holders protection so that others can see the content.
Re:Google's revenge... (Score:1, Insightful)
What would be good about sinking AFP in search result? Do you think this is fair regarding google customers? AFP might not be the best news organisation out there, but if google does what you say, I don't want to hear about them either.
Re:A Great Day in World History (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good move (Score:3, Insightful)
I own a news site, and I buy a story from the AFP I'm not allowed to be on google news. But I want to be on google news because it brings traffic to my website.
Maybe the AFP should tell the people who buy its storys not to put them out on a public internet. Sure google shows an image and a blurb of text, but to read the whole story you still have to go to the website that actually published it.
If this is true, then the failing is in the aFP's buisness model and not google news, google is just providing an index of news sites based on my keyword search.
Says who? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd imagine that google's bot simply asked the news site's webserver for the information via http requests; and the webserver handed out the goods with no conditions.
Enjoy
I hope they pull all their pages out of search.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Black hole those bitches.
Re:Look, get the story right, dammit. (Score:3, Insightful)
Individuals who read the news are not the customers of any news outlet. This is a fundamental mistake. Individuals who read the news are the product, sold to the advertisers who are the actual customer.
News outlets exist to bring eyeballs to advertisers at a profit, no different from any other form of for-profit media.
Re:AFP will now disappear (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm a Historian, I don't read one book or source on something and decide, well that's it.
The BBC or CNN or Foxnews or FT aren't enough.
The goal of a copyright when copyrights were established was the have a short window for the author, then to open it wide for people to copy. Copy Right.
Look at Piri Reis's atlas of 1517, it says that those who copy it and offer it freely are doing the work of God and will be blessed by the Creator of the Universe.
So, hell, Google is doing God's Work.