German Government Wants Google To Pay For the Right To Link To News Sites 186
First time accepted submitter presroi writes "Al Jazeera is reporting on the current state of plans by the German government to amend the national copyright law. The so-called 'Leistungsschutzrecht' (neighboring right) for publishers is introducing the right for press publishers to demand financial compensation if a company such as Google wants to link to their web site. Since the New York Times reported on this issue in March this year, two draft bills have been released by the Minister of Justice and have triggered strong criticism from the entire political spectrum in Germany, companies and activist bloggers.(Full disclosure: I am being quoted by Al Jazeera in this article)"
Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Google have to pay to index their sites, the news sites are the ones missing out. Unless Google are force to index them and also forced to pay, but that would in essence be a tax against a single company.
Re:Say what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
They can ask Google to not index them.
captcha: retard
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
and the users just skim the results instead of clicking the links.
Yes, because I didnt find anything of interest during the skimming.
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
additionally, previewing articles in this manner can be seen as an attempt to improve search quality - news outlets are not averse to having a ridiculously inflammatory headline that has little or no relation to the article within - all to game search engines. they can't have it both ways.
Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
The proposed law has nothing to do with linking to news site at all. The point is that the publishers are to be compensated if anyone takes parts of the article or the full text and displays them somewhere else. There is not even so much debate about the intention itself, I think it's only fair if you reprint significant parts of an article (and thereby deprive the original author of advertisement revenue or subscription fees), but what constitues a "significant part" of a news article? For example Google News usually shows the first few sentences under the link, is that a significant part? In my opinion it's not, but that is what the discussion is about.
In the original draft, even single sentences would have been regarded as "significant parts", but that would then also mean that you cannot quote from any news article anymore in any other publication, which would have significant negative side effects. So, what happens now is what happens in every democracy, someone drafts a bill, other people critisize it, and we have no clue yet what is going to happen in the end.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what happens now is what happens in every democracy, someone drafts a bill, other people critisize it, and we have no clue yet what is going to happen in the end.
Perhaps your democracy is not old enough to be operating optimally. In Westminster, it works like this:
1) One or more big businesses lobby government;
2) Government produces draft legislation to benefit these businesses, but including all sorts of bullshit in it too;
3) There is a "debate" in which the government "concedes" to removing all the bullshit that no-one was expecting to be included anyway;
4) The bill passes.
Re:Yes, sadly, it is too much. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless Google are force to index them and also forced to pay, but that would in essence be a tax against a single company.
Yep, that's what they want.
If those sites just wanted Google to stop indexind their pages, a robots.txt would be enough.
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Google removes those sites from their results, removed page sues because of anti-trust unfair competition.
It's not about beeing indexed or not. it's about getting money from Google cause Google has money. And with all that money lying around, there has to be a way to get some of it.
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Insightful)
There is plenty of stuff that are not working in EU as they do in the US, however /. is a US centric site and therefore focus on the not working part of the US and what is better outside. EU centric sites do the opposite.
Try to think for yourself. If you just want the warm feeling that the US is the best place in the world and nobody else does anything better, just open the TV news channel lined up with you existing opinion and shut down your critical thinking.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Murdoch pushes policy in Germany?
Yes. Sky Deutschland is owned by Murdoch and pushes Murdochs policy. (Germany's largest pay TV provider according to wikipedia.)
That's true.
But your missing one relevant point: Pay TV doesn't mean shit in Germany.
Murdoch can influence more or less nothing here.
But we have or own 'Murdochs': The Axel Springer AG is News Corp. in German.
If only we could do that automated (Score:5, Insightful)
They can ask Google to not index them.
If only we had some way of doing that automatically per site?
I propose a file named "robots.txt" file to be placed in a http server's root,
in which is some parsable description that describes what web crawlers are and aren't allowed to access.
It's not like we have anything like this right now... right?
Re:Opt-in vs Opt-out (Score:5, Insightful)
Because operating a webserver is basically opting-in to being part of the World Wide Web.
Re:Opt-in vs Opt-out (Score:5, Insightful)
Because one can safely assume that being listed in Googles index is what website operaters want. The existance of all those black- white- grey- and donkey-hat SEOs supports that assumption.
But I partly agree, if someone would re-invent the internet and write specifications from scratch, opt-in should be the norm. But once again. THAT's NOT THE POINT here!
Google offered those publishers who are pushing for that law, to ignore their pages, so they wouldn't even have to opt-out, but the following outcry "Google threatens to unlist us!!!!" was even louder than the former one "Google indexes our pages without paying compensation"
This is NOT about indexing or being found by google news. Everybody wants to be indexed by Google!
They simply want money!
Re:Say what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Opt-in vs Opt-out (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA doesn't explain the situation... at all.
Newspapers seem to think that Google wants their content to create services like Google News and enhance its search results, from which it derives profit. The problem is that Google's attitude is that web sites have to make their own money from visitors, which makes sense for search but Google News is essentially creating a kind of "digital newspaper" from other people's content.
Because Google integrates news stories into its search results the line between the two is now blurred. Personally I think Google is right here, and while some profit sharing would be nice doing so would set a dangerous precedent.
Re:Still more that Google can do... (Score:4, Insightful)
Courts aren't stupid... They would still recognize that as an equally unfair action against competitors.