Australia To Make Facebook, Google Pay For News in World First (reuters.com) 70
Australia will force U.S. tech giants Facebook and Google to pay Australian media outlets for news content in a landmark move to protect independent journalism that will be watched around the world. From a report: Australia will become the first country to require Facebook and Google to pay for news content provided by media companies under a royalty-style system that will become law this year, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said. "It's about a fair go for Australian news media businesses. It's about ensuring that we have increased competition, increased consumer protection, and a sustainable media landscape," Frydenberg told reporters in Melbourne. "Nothing less than the future of the Australian media landscape is at stake." The move comes as the tech giants fend off calls around the world for greater regulation, and a day after Google and Facebook took a battering for alleged abuse of market power from U.S. lawmakers in a congressional hearing.
Or they could just not. (Score:2)
Re:Or they could just not. (Score:5, Informative)
here is the most important snippet from the news article, although still without too much detail:
Publishers in Germany, France and Spain have pushed to pass national copyright laws that force Google pay licensing fees when it publishes snippets of their news articles. In 2019, Google stopped showing news snippets from European publishers on search results for its French users, while Germany’s biggest news publisher, Axel Springer, allowed the search engine to run snippets of its articles after traffic to its sites to plunged.
This is what happens when countries do this. Google and Facebook are not going to eat these costs, they are going to restrict access to these news sites.
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People die of exposure. (Score:3)
This is basically the "exposure" argument: let us use your stuff for free, because it's "exposure"! And Google and Facebook so dominate their respective fields that if they don't give you exposure, you will be invisible.
So, Facebook and Google are using their dominance to drive the world to a model where nobody gets paid (but them). This is not a good thing.
This is basically a case of giant corporations leveraging monopoly power. They dominate the market, and that allows them to set the terms of all deals
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So, Facebook and Google are using their dominance to drive the world to a model where nobody gets paid (but them). This is not a good thing.
Google and Facebook aren't doing anything, they can't pass laws. It is the government forcing them.
Before, all news was treated equally. Now it is up to the news publishers, not Google or Facebook.
The publishers get to set the price that nobody wants to pay.
The ones that allow Google to list them for free will remain, the ones that don't allow their articles to be listed, won't be listed.
It was a very good thing when everyone was treated equally. This new setup is what is bad, giving publishers control o
Re:People die for LACK of exposure. (Score:2)
I can think of at least two major search engines (Bing and DuckDuckGo) that are common alternatives. A quick Google search (the irony) lists at least 15 more general and 25 additional specialized search engines. People don't have to use Google even though a majority do. Don't confuse a market leader with a monopoly. https://neilpatel.com/blog/alt... [neilpatel.com]
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What monopoly?
Google owns 82% of the search engine market. The next highest, Bing, is 6%. In terms of monopoly power, Google has it.
I can think of at least two major search engines (Bing and DuckDuckGo) that are common alternatives.
The next highest, Bing, is 6%. In terms of monopoly power, Google has it.
A quick Google search (the irony) lists
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Exactly. Showing by your actions the opposite of your words is exactly the definition of irony.
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But in this case, we're talking about a headline and perhaps a phrase from the article that drives traffic to the web site of the news organization. Why wouldn't they want that? How many news sites have people visited that they wouldn't otherwise, generating advertising income for the news site? What's the worst case, that Google lists a headline and nobody clicks on it? What does the news organization have to lose?
As we've seen in Europe, the news sites need Google more than Google needs the news sites. If
Re: Or they could just not. (Score:3)
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Ah yes, but the Government thinks it has got this covered. It is going to find Google and Facebook 10% of their revenue if they stop posting snippets of news, or discriminating against Australian media in anyway in listings. This deal was done after Murdoch's News Corp and Nine Entertainment (whose Chairman is an ex-deputy Leader of the ruling Liberal Party), the major beneficiaries, lobbied hard for it in exchange for favourable coverage of the Morrison Government and also free TV spectrum and the suspens
Why stop at news? (Score:2)
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Yeah, I remember back when search engines sucked and did not find the things I was looking for. Then someone came along with a better search engine that did find what I wanted, and we all started using that one. But I'm sure that would never happen again.
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Or they could just not index your content, and nobody will ever find it or know it exists.
Exactly. They leverage their market dominance to FORCE news companies to give their work away for free.
This is exactly why monopolies are bad.
Re: Why stop at news? (Score:2)
Generally speaking free services are not subject to anti-trust enforcement. At least not in the U.S. The whole point of anti-trust is to preserve competition so that a monopoly doesn't increase prices on consumers. The system doesn't really apply to free service, unless they are trying to use a dominant position in one market to take over another market while operating at a loss. Since Google is not trying to become a news organization, they are just providing a free service. If the news organizations can't
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Re: Why stop at news? (Score:1)
And a simple robots.txt conf can ensure that. If you wish to sell the right to show your content, you are free to do so. And search engines are free to not buy what you're selling.
The real questions is whether google's position makes it unviable to refuse being indexed, and if yes, how do we change the situation.
I don't think that forcing tech companies to buy news content from media companies, as as been attempted many times, is a good solution. It gives bad incentives to both sides. Teaching them to finan
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And a simple robots.txt conf can ensure that.
Indeed; this is the websites' fault, at least when it comes to search engines. Not quite sure about how this works with Facebook.
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I know this won't force all fake news off the internet, but i bet it helps a great deal.
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What?
The news source isn't paying, Google or Facebook is - assuming they don't just stop embedding content altogether, which would be a logical solution. After all Australian news outlets only provide a tiny fraction of the content they deliver, even in Australia.
Meanwhile the entire point of fake news is to spread misinformation - they're hardly going to put themselves in a position where Google, etc. have to worry about paying to help them.
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I think the GP was proposing the opposite, that news writers should pay Google for linking to their news. Not sure if he was being serious however.
Re: One of these days... (Score:2)
Everyone else is paying people for links to their content. I don't see why news orgs should be fundamentally different. They need to figure out how the web works and how to operate in the modern world, or they need to go out of business.
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forces a lot of non-news/fake-news sites OFF the internet
How exactly does it do that? Since it is fake, there are no legitimate media outlets to claim reimbursement for the content. In fact, this could increase the fake news content, particularly as it applies to Australian politics and events. The fake stuff is free. The real news costs money. Which do you think will get more exposure?
Drop bear attacks up and babies continue to be eaten by dingoes. News at eleven.
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All crap like this is going to do is to make me even LESS likely to read the garbage the publishers (which in this case probably means Rupert Murdoch) put out.
I get my news from the ABC (which is 100% free and has better quality news than Murdoch anyway IMO)
Voc (Score:2)
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> Sering as FAANG are the new megacorp to rival the Dutch East
> India Trading corp, I doubt a few dollars for the small views
> aussie media gets is really going to make any difference.
It's about *SETTING A PRECEDENT*. Australia is merely one of over 190 countries on the planet, and has approximately 1/3rd of 1% of the planet's population. If Google caves to Australia, the other 190+ countries with 99%+ of the planet's population are going to be demanding a payout too. *THAT* is what Google fears.
Why would they pay? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Fuckerberg has mod points today it seems.
Or not... (Score:3)
Facebook and Google have done a lot of seedy shit, but this is out and out extortion.
Google should simply remove news.gooogle.com.au, and see how the local media like the reduced clicks they get.
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Facebook and Google have done a lot of seedy shit, but this is out and out extortion.
...by Google and Facebook.
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Re: Or not... (Score:2)
It's not theft. It's not even copyright infringement. It's fair use. Facts are not protected by copyright.
News orgs go out onto the AP or Reuters, reword a few things and publish it as if it's journalism. Google is then linking to their site where the news org can collect ad revenue for the content that was actually produced by AP or Reuters.
Re: Or not... (Score:2)
AP and Reuters get paid by the news orgs, not Google.
Did they do this in France? (Score:1)
Were they not paying attention? (Score:5, Informative)
Were they not paying attention when other countries did this? Google simply said "ok, we don't want your news content anymore" and delisted from their platform news stories from those countries. And the news publishers then proceeded to be damaged by the reduced traffic.
Also the linked article is misleading trash, Australia is not the first to do this. Several European countries already have, including I believe France, Spain, and Germany.
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Come now - obviously Australia is the first, otherwise the politicians who passed this (and the media companies that lobbied for it) would just be idiots...
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Nope. Australia is one of the first. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/0... [cnn.com]
Most other countries have not done so because publishers figured out that being listed on Google is more or less a mandatory requirement, esp. if you have competitors. Also, being 'being forced to pay' means nothing, because Google can use its weight to obtain bargain-price deals ...I can just imagine a Google employee telling a publisher - "We drive traffic to you, which makes you approximately X00,000 € in ad-revenue each year. THe
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Which is where the "otherwise" (a.k.a. primary) portion of my comment comes in...
The cost of indexing (Score:3)
This isnt about "Independent Media" (Score:5, Informative)
This is purely about NewsCorp. NewsCorp has a huge almost monopoly in Australia. It runs almost all the Tabloid format newspapers in the country, and the major broadsheet (Theres also the Fairfax broadsheets, but they havent done well and have been brought out by a conservative TV station which just happens to close to the Murdochs.) Murdoch also runs SkyTV and the Foxtel cable network. The end result is that Murdoch is the King maker here. If he doesnt like you, you dont get to be government anymore.
Now the biggest myth of Rupert Murdoch is that he's a conservative. Bullshit, his only ideology is Rupert Murdoch. Historically he used to mostly support Labour in Australia and the UK until he decided the Tories would make him more money, and would trade more concessions. In Australia that tipping point was Labors laws preventing monopolization off cross media ownership. He wants it all and his prefered Labor party stood in the way, so he changed teams.
What Murdoch wants now is controlling online news, and the "New money" companies stand in his way. See Murdoch has a dilemma on his hands. If he drops the paywall he gets lots more advertising revenue and more political influence. But he loses *all* the subscriber revenue. But if he can extract rent from Google, Facebook, etc then that would be enough to drop the paywall.
But it'd also completely end the free internet. Now every website that wants to link will need to start opening accounts with content management megacor[porations, ,lots of them, to pay for the links they make, It would be a disaster for free speech and the internet as we know it. Only the wealthy megacorporations would be able to run social media. No more low-budget DIY social media sites. No more private blogs. Everything to be accounted for and paid out in full.
And the Torys will give them that because they know that all it takes for Labour to win back the government is to offer Murdoch a better deal.
And don't think this doesn't affect you America. You know full well Trump is gunning for Facebook and the other Social media companies. And he's very fond of Murdoch and Murdoch is very fond of him, as long as he is useful to them. And theres an election coming. Bring Murdoch the head of Mark Zuckerberg and the election belongs to him. Trump would like that deal very very much.
Your democracy is next.
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You know full well Trump is gunning for Facebook
Everyone is gunning for Facebook [slashdot.org] son.
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Your democracy is next.
Bollocks. Democracy disappeared long ago. Newscorp already owns enough of the Australian media narrative that they can decide the election outcome.
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There are no good guys to root for here. I see the problem Google is causing, I just don't know if that's the right solution. I do agree it needs addressing though.
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Your democracy is next.
If you mean the United States, you're about 30 years too late.
Democracy died here not long after the corporate overlords bought the "Democrats" and "Republicans."
We're an oligarchy with a thin veneer of "choose the lesser of two evils" to keep the consumers pacified.
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Democracy died when Kennedy was shot.
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In a World First (Score:2, Informative)
Australia will do what Spain and France already do and Germany partially do. It's FIRST.
This will not end well. In Spain the very media companies campaigning for the anti-Google-News laws are now campaigning for the laws to be reversed after a significant drop in viewership.
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Both. Google drives a lot of traffic to sites which does not result in clickthroughs. I.e. people visit a page out of curiosity since they are exposed to it but aren't interested enough to stay. That kind of market is easily swayed by other alternatives be that simply not click (didn't see that interesting article pop up in my feed so didn't bother to look for it) or as I found out last time I visited Spain, simply get results from BBC or other international news corporations.
What is this Australia of which you speak (Score:5, Funny)
I found some vague uncertified articles on wikipedia, but no searches on google found anything.
I think it's an elaborate hoax by some British sounding people to convince me there's a continent near New Zealand.
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Indeed people keep trying to make "Australia" happen but we all know next to New Zealand is New Holland. The marketing just won't work.
Nah (Score:2)
I think its far more likely that they just stop linking news articles . . . and then the news sites will see their traffic nosedive.
Protectionism, or fair commerce? (Score:2)
On the other hand, news that exists entirely on the Internet, if copied, doesn't take that content away from anyone, it can be copied infintely and not destroy the source; this of course the same argument that exists for filesharing, and the arguments against it are likewise identical.
people should contribute if they gain from it. (Score:1)
Costs must be telegraphed to decision makers
Just an Extortion Attempt (Score:2)
To effectively invite Google by not using the tag, then complain that Google has to pay you for sending traffic to your site per your effective request is nothing more than an extortion attempt, and a stupid one at that.
I can only assume that the stellar Australian politicians don't understand how the web works and believe that clicking on a Google provided Australian News LINK prod
Goodbye Australian News (Score:2)
Australians are not going to be able to find most Australian news on Google anymore. Google will either dump AP and Reuters on the market or other international news orgs like the BBC or they will form a deal with one or two Aussie news organizations and shut out the rest.
Paying for links and fair use is not how the web is designed to work.
What do media outlets have to do with journalists? (Score:1)
Let alone independent ones!
Media outlets are the opposite of journalism, only ever come in contact with journalists, by abusing them, and generally steal from people without doing any work what-so-ever.
All this is, is some more of their business model.
"Intellectual property". Aka stealing. Or at-gunpoint highway robbery.