France Rules Google Must Pay News Firms For Content (reuters.com) 183
France's competition authority ruled on Thursday that Google must pay French publishing companies and news agencies for re-using their content. Reuters reports: The U.S. tech firm said it would comply with the French competition authority verdict, which followed a complaint by unions representing French press publishers. "Google's practices caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector, while the economic situation of publishers and news agencies is otherwise fragile," France's 'Autorite de la Concurrence' said in a statement.
Guess whose content is not going to be used at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Google will de-list the news papers, and after a few days/weeks the newspapers will complain about all the lost traffic. ...
This has happened before, in Belgium, in Spain,
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And critically at this time when huge amounts of international trade has stopped, each country is now LESS reliant on the USA and they may choose to keep it that way, especially with "USA first" policies by Trump. Economically for the rest of the world "USA last" could be a valid option.
In particular this crisis has shown a reliance on overseas manufacturing, be it China or the USA for me
Re:Guess whose content is not going to be used at (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither will happen. Because Google has the muscle to put the knife at the publisher's throat: Wave your fee or be delisted. All it takes is one to cave in because then the others have to follow or that one will dominate the local market.
Divide and conquer. Worked through the ages.
Re:Guess whose content is not going to be used at (Score:5, Interesting)
You've never met French in their natural habitat I see. They are the people who all but burned down their capital and guillotined almost entirety of their elites when they tried the whole "hold the knife to the throat of all and wait for one to falter".
This is a one culture that doesn't bend the knee. Instead they will kneel and then headbutt you in the jaw so hard, you'll be picking your teeth out of your eye sockets.
This is why they sat out of NATO Command in the height of Cold War, in spite of massive pressure from US to do otherwise. Compared to that, pressure from Google is barely noticeable.
Re:Guess whose content is not going to be used at (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's not pressure from Google - it's pressure from french media.
Google's choice is - loss of income from fr-linked advertising revenue, or paying the demands of french media.
It's a simple equation - which option costs less/more?
Of course, as others have noted, if Google caves in to french demands, will that set a precedent for other jurisdictions to consider? Google (Alphabet) will consider this in relation to its worldwide interests. It didn't go well for Spain.
And that's the end of the serious, considered response. If I were making the decision, I'd pull out of .fr with no correspondence entered into.
Until they came back begging. Fuck 'em if they can't adapt. And fuck 'em double if they won't negotiate in good faith.
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Ya but it isn't a short term decision problem, Google will game out how things would change over time for any scenario. Time matters.
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What, you think it *won't* come down to a purely economic decision by Alphabet? Isn't that what it's all about? Both sides are pursuing the money. That's commercial, but it's neither recent nor short-term.
Methinks your definition of observable reality is what's faulty.
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Governments have far greater array of means to enforce their goals than corporations. Your second faulty assumption is that French will limit their response to merely a corporate response, when French nation state made it clear throughout its existence that it will use all tools at its disposal in the cross-channel cultural clash.
Something that is increasingly vocalized and acted upon by French politicians today. This story being one of the smaller actions.
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Governments have far greater array of means to enforce their goals than corporations. Your second faulty assumption is that French will limit their response to merely a corporate response, when French nation state made it clear throughout its existence that it will use all tools at its disposal in the cross-channel cultural clash.
What are those tools? Serious question. If Google decides that paying the fees is a money-losing proposition and opts to simply de-list French media sites, what might France do?
Re: Guess whose content is not going to be used at (Score:2)
Consider the effect on humanity if France simply disappears. Meh, we'd get over it soon enough, I guess.
Now consider the effect on France alone -- never mind humanity -- if Google disappears.
Better get to sewing those white flags, Pierre.
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Hang on, are you asking me to consider this in a long-term historical context? Anglo.vs.franco?
Not a good choice, mon ami.
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Stategic geographical positions within NATO, or historical behaviour pre-21st century don't count for shit in the internet age. Gloating about barbaric executions wins you nothing. Do you honestly think french proletariat would get away with an armed and bloody revolution, these days? You're thinking like an american right-winger.
French in their natural habitat have little influence in global affairs - at least as far as internet commerce is concerned. You'd best learn how to ride the wave instead of preser
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French remain the #2 superpower on the planet, sporting the second best power projection after US.
What. The. Fuck?
There's a little country on the other side of the globe. It's called China. Look it up.
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And they did not sit out cold war. They tried hard to play both sides against each other. France was not allowed into NATO military because of that.
And America did not try to drag France into the military side. We knew they were plenty of traitors amongst the french who would cave into the Soviets and give them all secrets if we did. In fact, America/UK/Germany PROHIBITED France's military from joining. They were part of NATO political, but not militar
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"This is a one culture that doesn't bend the knee."
June 22, 1940 called. They want to send you a history book.
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Haven't been following up on world events in last decade have you? Between Brexit, French re-insertion into Western and Central Africa and Canada's woes, opposite is true.
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"When trend points at something becoming more powerful, it means it's dying".
Ok.
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Re:Guess whose content is not going to be used at (Score:4, Interesting)
You're confusing two completely different cultures. Spaniards, for all their nationalist chest beating in the wake of Catalan uprising, have nothing on French when it comes to nationalism.
Nor when it comes to ability to project power. Spaniards don't have a recent history of sinking ships in foreign ports after incorporated entity is deemed to be acting against their national interests. Same cannot be said about French. If Google really decides to play hard and enact punitive measures, I'd genuinely fear for my life if I was a alphabet exec. Like Americans, Russians and Chinese, French intelligence apparatus retains its ability to act in an utterly ruthless manner when interests of the state are on the line and some upstart moron who thinks that money gives him immunity from state action needs to be put in his/her place.
And the story mentioned here is just a tiniest part of French response over last few decades to deter what they see as the next phase in millenia old anglo incursion into their cultural core. This is not a fight that a mere corporate entity has any chance of winning. If they cannot make a deal that is acceptable to the French, at best, they can pack their bags and run. And I do mean run, because French have a history of being far more brutal than even the nastiest and darkest parts of CIA and Mossad when sufficiently slighted.
It comes from their history of having to operate in Maghreb for centuries.
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Right, the French would actually threaten or take the life of a Google exec? You're delusional.
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"Cash" in question is pittance compared to expenditures French state throws at this particular cultural conflict on yearly basis.
Which is why it's just a one tiny aspect of this particular conflict among many.
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Google already announced to would stop carrying their snippets last year. I don't know if they actually did it but the publishers didn't back down.
Delisting from Google entirely would likely invite antitrust problems. They list other sites without snippets on request and for a variety of other reasons.
Either Google will pay or they will abandon News in France and some other service will take over.
Re: Guess whose content is not going to be used at (Score:3)
It won't invite anti-trust problems. Google doesn't list ALL the papers in the world. There is no discrimination or anti-trust issues if it is based on cost of doing business. Especially where the cost is not determined by the violator.
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Antitrust doesn't mean that you can force a company into engaging into a contract with someone at that someone's terms against their will. Google can't decide to delist French' papers on grounds of "we don't want to deal with them dirty French", but that's not the case here. France wants to force Google to pay a fee to do business with their newspapers, if that actually flies, what you create is the precedence of any country being able to extort money from Google on grounds of alleged antitrust accusations.
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To be clear I mean delist from search results etc. Obviously moving them down in favour of sites with snippets is fine, especially on News because that's how the normal ranking works.
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We invented computers and the web.
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That's not what the ruling says. It says if you include snippets you need to pay them.
Google lists many sites without snippets already for various reasons.
So, usual USA bully tactics then? (Score:2)
Neither will happen. Because Google has the muscle to put the knife at the publisher's throat: Wave your fee or be delisted.
So business as usual for Google?
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Google isn't putting a knife to the publishers' throat. What these publishers don't realize / refuse to accept is that Google essentially created a new virtual space - search space. Those of us old enough to remember the Internet before Google know that it was a PITA trying to find anything. Google made it easy, and in the process created search space (well, more effective search space than Altavista and Yahoo
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You think there's anyone left who hasn't figured it out yet? For real?
Re: Guess whose content is not going to be used at (Score:2)
Actually what will happen is the newspapers will either sign agreements with Google or start paying Google to be indexed (when it used to be free). Or, they will go out of business.
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When I interviewed with them, the interviewer was very up front that they were an advertising company, not a search company.
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Re: Guess whose content is not going to be used at (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that's arrogance, it's just reality.
Publishers are doing this not because they are well off and out for a sporty fight. They're doing it because they're going broke and being desperate, so they essentially try to waylay anybody with enough money to be able to pay *and* be unsympathetic to the general public at the same time. Google fits the bill, so why not? Next in line is probably Facebook, Twitter etc, if this works.
They fail to see that it's not a parasitic relationship they've had with google so far, it's a symbiotic one (visibility for snippets). But it's a situation from which google, in its own domain, knows how to benefit better than publishers in theirs. (It would be parasitic if google would outright publish content; but they're not doing that.) It's not google's fault. It's the publishers for holding on, tooth and claws, to a business model that has obviously, slowly, been obsoleted by reality for decades now. They failed to adapt. What the publishers are pushing for now is also not balanced - it would be if they would just forgo their own publication entirely and only sold or leased the rights exclusively to someone who knows how to monetize, e.g. google. This is kind of what apple was proposing a while back. But they don't want that. They want their own cake (own publication revenue), and a piece of google's cake, too. Or, they could get smart, up-to-speed with today's readership, organize, and do their own publication system where I as a reader would pay flatrate of $50 or so a month and have access to everything. But no... being reactionary, divisive, and waylaying google, somehow appears to them as being the better option. Â\_(ãf)_/Â
Now what they're doing is inadvertedly killing off the symbiotic relationship, which means yeah, if it catches on, google news is also history. But that's the thing with relationships... if one side ends it, it's over for both. However this is acutally better for google than if they bend over. Just like a human about-to-get-abusive relationship, where the partner about-to-be-abused realizes this early on, and uses his/her common judgement to end it before he/she gets the short straw, I hope google will do the same and not end up abused.
But please don't unpack the "arrogant USA rhetorics" just yet, it has nothing to do with that. If you have an axe to grind with America, do it where it fits. (No, I'm not American, but I'm also not blinded by anti-American hate.)
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making them useless for 96% of the worlds population.
Google doesn't create any content of its own, this isn't as big of a problem as you think. It will be the loss of an echo-chamber of shit you like to hear to make you feel good (or bad).
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well it doesn't make money to index really.
maybe the reader or whatever stuff could be injected with extra adverts to make it worth it.
what's sort of strange about the situation is that the french companies INTENTIONALLY want google to index their news and they want google to pay for it.
I mean, sure, it would be sweet to just put ANY CRAP I WANT online on a news site and have google pay for indexing it. think about it. if google starts paying, you can just rent a webserver from france and print money - so i
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Until eventually either google pays, or they only index the USA making them useless for 96% of the worlds population.
The Germans tried that a while back. Didn't turn out so well. The EU tried to do it as well and the effort failed.Google just universally implements the "Right to be forgotten." In the end, the papers need Google more than Google needs them; and if a few cave the rest are given the choice of losing readers or caving.
From CJR: Google told German newspapers to opt in, and they did
https://archives.cjr.org/cloud_control/google_finds_a_way_around_lsr.php
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Sometimes it isn't about money or traffic.
If you are running a small news firm getting hit with a popular article from Google can cause chaos in your business. This use to happen back in the early 2000s with a now-obscure website called Slashdot. Where a new article got into notice and a lot of people began to hit the site, far more than their infrastructure has planned for. (Like that poor potato powered webserver) So sites would ramp up their IT Infrastructure because they are now playing with the big
Re: Guess whose content is not going to be used at (Score:3)
It's very easy to curate what Google will index and present in their search results. Ranking in the results is the hard part. If a business really has this issue, they can easily block Google from indexing certain articles. They can also pay Google to promote certain content to a specific demographic.
On the Internet, by default, the door is wide open with "welcome stranger" signs all over. It is your responsibility to put locks, guard dogs, and key pads if you want to filter visitors.
Re:Guess whose content is not going to be used at (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are running a small news firm getting hit with a popular article from Google can cause chaos in your business. This use to happen back in the early 2000s with a now-obscure website called Slashdot. Where a new article got into notice and a lot of people began to hit the site, far more than their infrastructure has planned for.
You might have had a good argument 20 years ago. Nowadays it's relatively cheap and easy to run your site on an over-provisioned "cloud" server. If traffic spikes, you pay a bit more for the one or two day surge in CPU/network utilization, and you're good.
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Google will de-list the news papers, and after a few days/weeks the newspapers will complain about all the lost traffic. This has happened before, in Belgium, in Spain, ...
Google should de-list the French media sites and then for good measure present French users with foreign English language news stories covering France with a banner at the top of the Google News page explaining why. The French bureaucracy needs a good dose of public ire.
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"Google will de-list the news papers"
Well shouldn't they? The ruling says Google is publishing their content. Google indexes their content, newspapers are the publishers. The "do no evil" solution is to de-list the publishers that think Google is a publisher. Just because the publishers have found a company is the best in the field to bring them eyes, doesn't mean they don't have other options. They might be more expensive and require more work, Google isn't the only available option to help them publicize
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Re:Guess whose content is not going to be used at (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems the French have attempted to make it impossible for Google to back out of displaying news articles from French publishing houses. By fiat, Google must link these things and Google must pay for it. Sounds to me like a contradictory and abusive order from the government.
What now? How can one reasonably define what Google must list among its results in light of this order? A specific set of publications determined by the government? That hardly seems fair to anybody, least of all French publishers themselves.
The only way this would make consistent logical sense is if Google was forced to list every post/article from every French domain, and pay every content creator a share of the ad revenue.
Also, we have seen from platforms like YouTube that advertisers do not deem all content equal. How does the law reconcile the content advertisers are willing to sponsor with what must be listed and remunerated by Google? I just don't see how this can work out without the French government essentially playing kingmaker here.
If I was Google, I might just give the French government the finger and delist all French domains from all Google platforms.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
How so ? (Score:2)
Re:Bye-bye French media (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey! Isn't Google's search engine monopoly wonderful?
You are missing the important bit. Even if we get more competition, this ruling will apply to the competition too. So any other search engine will also need to pay to use snippets while giving away results, which is not a strategy which can work for anyone.
Besides, there are lots of companies competing with Google. People don't like using the others, so much so that whenever Windows/Firefox/Apple switches their users to someone else, everyone immediately switches it back to Google. And do you really think Duck Duck Go will pay for news snippets, or could afford to do so? Or Bing or Yahoo?
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Bing could afford to do so, and they've been desperate for a way to claw some of the market share away from Google since inception. What I will be watching is if Bing is willing to pay trivial amounts just to see if they can put Google in a squeeze.
Of course the more likely outcome is that even with Bing paying the ransom, nobody will hear about it and nobody will care.
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I think it's worth pointing out that "delist" here is referring to the news snippits only.
No one outside of slashdot has mentioned "delist" in relation to the search results.
Google has already removed french news snips last year.
Yet searching for those news articles in google search still returns results to the news sites.
There has been no abuse of their search results.
One can hardly call it abuse to remove news snips from their news when google isn't willing to pay the asking price for them. They can't re
Reposez en paix (Score:5, Funny)
Ils sont morts, Jim.
Same thing in Belgium, with the expected results (Score:4, Informative)
In 2011/2012 Belgian publishers tried to make Google pay for content.
As expected, Google delisted all involved newspapers, and as expected they didn't appreciate it.
They finally "settled". I don't know the terms of the settlements but I wouldn't be surprised if it was along the lines of "stop complaining and we won't delist you".
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I believe there were some 'news' (using the term broadly here) sources that had no problem with Google agregating their content, so there was still local news from those sources (however, most of it came from sources i don't trust, or are of the rather sensational/clickbiat type. for me, personally, it was unusable).
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Belgium is much smaller than France and that was nearly a decade ago. Nothing says you're a monopoly like saying "you must do business with us on our terms otherwise you're fucked", and nothing says "monopoly abuse" like following through.
Do you think google will risk the ire of the EU's increasingly aggressive competition commission?
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I don't see how this is an abuse of a monopoly. Google provides a service. The publishers don't want to avail themselves of the service. It is not Google's fault that there are no viable competitors. Google is not leveraging their monopoly to get a better deal from French publishers. They offer the same terms to everyone.
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I don't see how this is an abuse of a monopoly.
If google is big enough such that publishers are fucked if they're delisted then google is a monopoly.
It is not Google's fault that there are no viable competitors
And that's why we have anti-trust regulation. Google might have earned their monopoly, but once they have it they are not allowed by law to use it freely, because monopolies allow massive distortions of the market.
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If Google even threatens to delist them it is abuse of monopoly and racketeering.
Google's abuse of their searching to push advertising over relevant search results means their product is daily rubbing our noses in the fact that they are abusive.
I think it is time to resurrect the Spanish Inquisition.
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In no Western nation is being a monopoly illegal. Google does not have to list French publishers if those publishers don't want to be listed. Remember, it is the publishers, via their government, that is trying to force Google to do business with them. It is not an abuse of a monopoly to say "no". Forcing a monopoly via threat of legal action is no better than the monopoly forcing someone via threat of economic action.
Re:Same thing in Belgium, with the expected result (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing preventing some French company from starting up a French search engine or news aggregator, and serving competing content. Oh, except for the French people themselves not wanting to use it in favor of the BIG BAD AMERICAN SUPERCORPORATION that is taking FOOD FROM FRENCH JOURNALISTS MOUTHS with their evil scraping of sites by way of well published and understood rules.
This is exactly why robots.txt exists. If you don't want your content indexed, write a simple text file that says so. Don't bitch because someone is doing free advertising for you, and then try to charge them money for it. They're going to stop doing that advertising and you're going to look like a proper idiot.
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Wow you really don't understand the first thing about antitrust do you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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So if google stops indexing french sites,giving other companies a chance to step into that market - it's anti-competitive?
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Are you trying to say that leaving a market is anti-competitive?
You might want to try not being a fucked-up moron some day.
That's stupid (Score:2)
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"Nothing says you're a monopoly like saying "you must do business with us on our terms otherwise you're fucked", "
Wrong. Business agreements are mutually beneficial to both parties, and no business is forced to agree to the terms. If a business model is built on the necessity to required another business to generate profit, the model will eventually fail. The failure is that of the model developed to be subordinate to the other business.
If you don't like the rules of my sandbox, go elsewhere (or build yo
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Business agreements are mutually beneficial to both parties,
lolwut. I can point to loads which weren't.
If you don't like the rules of my sandbox, go elsewhere (or build your own).
Quite. Google can abandon the EU and France if they choose, but there's far too much sweet, sweet profit for them to want to do that, so they'll stay and avoid pissing off the competition commission too much.
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"nothing says "monopoly abuse" like following through."
Except that Google doesn't have a monopoly, sure. There are several other search engines. Using the government to force Google to carry this content and also to pay for it is absurdly over-authoritarian.
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Except that Google doesn't have a monopoly, sure.
Yes it really does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Using the government to force Google to carry this content and also to pay for it is absurdly over-authoritarian.
Google running a protection racket whereby they have the market power to force companies to do business with them under terms they dictate is also absurdly over-authoritarian. Since I have to pick one poison, I'll pick the one answerable to the voters, not one answerable to a couple of very rich f
Re:Same thing in Belgium, with the expected result (Score:4, Insightful)
No, Google isn't forcing them to do business with them. They can set their robots.txt file to tell Google not to index them, and Google will respect that. But you want them to be able to force Google to index them, and then pay for the privilege. You have this exactly backwards.
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No, Google isn't forcing them to do business with them.
Google is in a dominant market position, that's sufficient to be classed as a monopoly for competition purposes.
Thing is if their choice is to do business with google under terms entirely dictated by google or go bust then yes, google is forcing them. That's the entire premise of antitrust legislation.
But you want them to be able to force Google to index them, and then pay for the privilege.
Google is already only doing it because they believe they can
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"Do you think google will risk the ire of the EU's increasingly aggressive competition commission?"
The EU doesn't force you to buy anything, news included.
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Nothing says you're a monopoly like saying "you must do business with us on our terms otherwise you're fucked"
Interesting. I went to the local grocery store today and tried to bargain them down on coke. They said no. I guess that local grocery store is a monopoly now.
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In 2011/2012 Belgian publishers tried to make Google pay for content. As expected, Google delisted all involved newspapers, and as expected they didn't appreciate it.
They finally "settled". I don't know the terms of the settlements but I wouldn't be surprised if it was along the lines of "stop complaining and we won't delist you".
The Germans also tried too and Google offered to let news outlets opt in and they would show snippets; if they didn't all the returned was a headline which drove far less traffic. Some opted in, the other newspapers caved when traffic dropped and they realized they needed Google more than Google needed them.
A horrible decision (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I to assume this applies only to Google? If so, it would be patently unfair. If not, does this mean that any time someone quotes content from a French news report they can expect an invoice from the news organisation concerned? If news organisations do not want excerpts of their content to be quoted elsewhere on the Internet, the robots.txt file provides an easy technical solution to broadcast that wish, obeyed by Google and other reputable companies.
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Am I to assume this applies only to Google?
Why would you assume that? Do laws work like that in the USA?
The publishers themselves wanted this. When they get delisted because Google refuses to pay they will get to reap what they sow. The decision itself isn't horrible. A horrible decision would be to ignore the written law just because a big corporation is the target of it.
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Legal rulings work like that in the USA. A lawsuit is brought by an injured party against the injuring party, and the injuring party faces some kind of sanction if they were found to be injurous.
Once in the books, that decision can be used on a wider scale as a precedent if there are multiple injurous parties, or multiple injured parties. But this article specifically mentions that Google must pay, so I'm guessing this is tantamount to an ordered remediation against Google.
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In case you were wondering, American law is (kind of) based on English law. (Which, strangely enough, derives from Sharia law, though rather indirectly), and is based on confrontation - you put your guy on a horse, I put my guy on a horse, they run at each other at full speed with long poles, and God decides who falls of his horse.
French law is NOT AT ALL similar, and derives from Roman law - through Napoleonic interpretation. A magistrate sits in a room, and both
Summary judgment (Score:2)
A magistrate sits in a room, and both sides bring their arguments, evidence (and quite possibly bribes) to him - in their own time, and not simultaneously. When the magistrate has got both parties to agree on what they an agree on
As I understand what you've written, this is how preliminary motions work in the United States as well. Both sides present their briefs, and the judge decides what facts are not in dispute and thus what claims can be disposed of in summary judgment as a matter of law. For any remaining material facts in dispute, the judge schedules a jury trial.
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Legal rulings work like that in the USA. A lawsuit is brought by an injured party against the injuring party, and the injuring party faces some kind of sanction if they were found to be injurous.
Once in the books, that decision can be used on a wider scale as a precedent if there are multiple injurous parties, or multiple injured parties. But this article specifically mentions that Google must pay, so I'm guessing this is tantamount to an ordered remediation against Google.
I was being facetous. Even in the USA legal rulings are based on an interpretation of law and you can expect the same legal interpretation to apply to different companies.
Just because the police officer didn't see the other guy run the red light doesn't mean you're being treated unfairly while he's writing you a ticket.
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'The Fourth Estate' (Score:2)
Being able to access the media has over the last ~25 years become dependent on the internet, including search engines.
On this subject of search engines indexing newspapers, about a week ago I read an interesting piece in the largest Dutch paper, they were upset that Google massively censors them by refuses to link to articles with for a small group of people scary keywords, for ex
As EU announces it will create its own Google... (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently heard an official of the European Delegation say that Europe wants to build its own data lake so that European companies can profit from machine learning and data mining on it, not Google or Facebook. The official explained what must be one of the main European Union's talking points now, how Google was just lucky how they got where they are and their success can be easily replicated. Another American and I talked to each other afterwards wondering at how strange that sounded. Yes, great idea but "just lucky"? Luck and timing and a huge number of really smart people grabbed from places like Carnegie Mellon and so on. Not a rabbit out of a hat. It would be nice if there was a competitor since they are a bit too evil and pervasive now though. That said, I just googled "eu to create its own google" and found a few links. ... [forbes.com]
2015:
In search of a European Google | Technology | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]
2020:
EU Plans European Rival To Google With New Data And AI
Europe, Overrun by Foreign Tech Giants, Wants to Grow Its Own [nytimes.com]
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Yes, great idea but "just lucky"?
Indeed a large portion of any business that builds up is luck. It's only when you reach a certain critical point that you can make your own luck, and at that point you've got lawyers looking over everything you do.
You can't just go and assemble the best and brightest minds and be a success. Timing, vision, and a fuckton of luck is infact involved.
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And you think this is a good thing? Let's look at the 2 sides:
Google, or insert any "evil corporation": They data mine like crazy from your searches, make billions of dollars, and have great power, and influence. If they get out of hand, the government will step in and hopefully do some good. Never know on this, but there could be regulation.
EU making their own search engine: The government data mines like crazy and does what with it? They will make money off of it. It will cost 5 times the cost it s
In Other News (Score:2)
Response already known (Score:2)
We already know Google's response: stop listing French news sources in it's search engine. And the news sources' response will be the same as last time: they'll scream that it's unfair Google doesn't include links to them anymore.
Re:People want to read the news, payment is broken (Score:5, Insightful)
People want to read the news.
Many people would be happy with micropayments to fund journalism.
It is the publishers fault that there is STILL no system for that.
Going after search engines - who will now simply make your news sites go almost dark - is NOT the answer to funding journalism.
I haven't bought a newspaper in 20+ years. Used to get it every day until there was more space used for ads than news, and critical journalism seemed to disappear.
The sunday papers were usually the best, with color comics, and coupons for things I probably didn't need or want.
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Weird. I've gotten the newspaper, off and on, for 30+ years. They have always been 70% ads, and the local Sunday paper still has color comics and coupons for thing I won't care about. My local paper now has less critical journalism (it has decided to follow our President's "facts" rather than reality) but there are several national papers which will investigate. Maybe you just read the wrong papers?
Journalism? What journalism? (Score:2, Interesting)
My dad is a prized journalist, who risked his life many many times to get hard quality news, stuff that rivals the NSA leaks in explosiveness, and . . .
. . . news companies don't want that anymore! They have become pussies like everyone else nowadays.
You got the news of your lifetime, and they ask you to tone it down and make it a "light" fluff piece, that looks like news, but isn't. That cannot offend any of the big and powerful. Cause they might sue you (Or noes!), or worse.
Nevermind you having hard proof
Re:People want to read the news, payment is broken (Score:4, Informative)
I prefer the approach taken by The Guardian. Free access to their site and they ask for donations at the end of their articles. No annoying pop-ups or asking to stop your ad blocker.
It's one of the sites that I read regularly. There's a couple others that I would like to read more often but I don't find the price worth it. Places are comparing access to their site to the price of their printed edition but we don't consume the two the same. If I were to buy the print edition I would go through the whole thing while the online I only go to articles I'm brought to from other sites, the RSS feed, or an email with the new headlines. I know that it's the cost same to write all of the content but the value to me is different.
I'm hoping that micropayments never take off for a number of reasons which I won't get into here. It will turn into a rant if I do. :) I'd rather just send the paper or magazine $20 a year to access their site because that's what it's worth to me.
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Re: (Score:2)
Google will then decide whether to bother.
Better yet, Google can charge them for the listing.
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