German Chancellor Proposes Special 'Save Newspapers' Copyright Law

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

Mon, Nov 2nd 2009 7:11am — Mike Masnick

It's beginning to look like German Chancellor Angela Merkel believes the entire point of copyright is not to provide incentive to create, but as a way to hurt Google and protect obsolete local businesses. Last month, we wrote about her complaints concerning the Google book project (where she conveniently left out the fact she had tried to fund the European equivalent). And, now, her party has proposed creating a special new copyright law just for old school news organizations. There aren't many specifics, other than they want to protect news organizations, and this odd claim:

"The Internet cannot be a copyright-free zone."

The thing is, it's not a "copyright-free" zone. But what the internet has shown is that if you put in place dumb copyright laws that do no more than to prop up business models, people will route around them. That's even more likely to occur if Merkel and her colleagues create a special "protect newspapers" copyright.

The article suggests that the likely proposal would involve "neighboring rights," which are found in some other areas of copyright law -- and would require that the original creator of the content give some kind of permission before any commercial use of the work. So, in theory, any "commercial" aggregator could only aggregate and link to stories from which it has received explicit permission. In other words, it would effectively break the basic premise of the web by not allowing you to summarize and link where you would like.

Not surprisingly, newspaper and magazine publishers in Germany are all for it, though they might want to think twice about that. Just wait until one of their competitors breaks a story, and they're unable to talk about it without "permission." Meanwhile, plenty of people who actually have put some thought into this realize that the "commercial/non-commercial" line is not clear at all. Is a personal blogger who puts up some basic ads on his or her site (even if they earn pennies) a "commercial enterprise"? And what about Google News, which doesn't have ads on the European version of Google News (it only recently put ads on the US version)?

On the whole, this sounds like someone decided they wanted to "help out" the major media companies, but without anyone putting much thought into the actual details or inevitable consequences of such a law. A more cynical person might suggest that this proposal is really designed to gain the current ruling party a bit of support from the mainstream press in Germany...

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Filed Under: angela merkel, copyright, germany, journalism

17 Comments

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Dark Helmet (profile), 2 Nov 2009 @ 7:23am

A message from us hateful grammar Nazis...
Last week on your grammar Nazi post, I and some others tried to explain how minor errors in syntax, grammar, tense, and usage can cause some of us issues in reading works.

"And, now, her party has proposed created a special new copyright law just for old school news organizations."

This would be an example. Especially because you normally right so well, I reread that sentence four or five times after it caused my brain to come to a screeching halt trying to figure out what you were saying.

Just saying....
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2009 @ 7:29am

Re: A message from us hateful grammar Nazis...
Huh. I just skimmed over that, my brain filling in the appropriate ending to "created" making it "creating".

I'm more of a vocabulary and spelling Nazi though, so maybe I've just become acclimated to small errors.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 2 Nov 2009 @ 7:31am

Re: Re: A message from us hateful grammar Nazis...
No, I know it isn't a big deal. I guess for someone like me that really delves into the text in order to try and understand as best as I can, that kind of mental roadblock is really taxing.

Probably the writer in me due to self-editing where this is a larger issue, but I have trained myself to actually AVOID the whole filling in the blanks thing, so maybe I'm just being picky...
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BBT, 2 Nov 2009 @ 7:42am

Re: A message from us hateful grammar Nazis...
"Especially because you normally right so well"

Muphry's Law strikes again!
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Free Capitalist (profile), 2 Nov 2009 @ 7:47am

Re: A message from us hateful grammar Nazis...
My brain also stumbled on the "proposed created" sentence.

However...

Especially because you normally right so well

I get the impression that Mike, in general, is more of a political agnostic on this blog when it comes to the "two parties"...
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2009 @ 8:06am

Wasn't Angela Merkel unconstitutionally elected in 2005 by Diebold's Election Machines?

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutiona l-uncool/
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2009 @ 8:16am

The internet isn't a copyright free zone, rather, it is too fast moving of a subject for the real world legal system to deal with properly. It is essentially copyright free, because it just takes too long (internet time) to fix violations.

So while you may not like the politician's message, he is pretty much bang on in reality.
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Pete Austin, 2 Nov 2009 @ 8:18am

This "neighboring rights" law is good for politicians and marketeers, but dreadful for newspapers.

It would mean that, if a politician gives a speach, or a company issues a press release - THEY as the original creators would have control over how it's reported.
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Free Capitalist (profile), 2 Nov 2009 @ 8:35am

Re:
There is no instantaneous "fix" to copyright infringement in the "real world" either, and that is a good thing. In fact physically tracking down copyright issues probably takes longer than hiring a staff of torrent searchers.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2009 @ 8:47am

Re:
The internet is copyright free, if people want it to be. Not legally of course, but the number of people who are copying, creating, copying, recreating, copying, producing, copying, and did I mention copying, at this very moment through thousands of means (copying into their own memory for later recall and reproductions, copying into computer memory for printing or redistribution, copying illegally torrented filees "Has anyone found a good Boondock Saints 2 torrent yet?", unintentionally copying text 'illegally' etc...) is staggering. And it is just the way the internet works. It's a communication medium that is hardly controlled, and allows hundreds of infringements a second, with every single transfer. I don't see this changing any time soon
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Michael, 2 Nov 2009 @ 9:18am

Re: A message from us hateful grammar Nazis...
"Especially because you normally right so well"

does he "left" well also? So much for the grammar police...
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Dark Helmet (profile), 2 Nov 2009 @ 9:48am

Re: Re: A message from us hateful grammar Nazis...
DAMMIT!

Well, to be fair, I said the HE wrote well, not me...

I really wish I could pretend like I was trying to subtely be funny on that won....
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Mike Masnick (profile), 2 Nov 2009 @ 11:38am

Re: A message from us hateful grammar Nazis...
That's more of a typo than a grammatical error. We just missed it in editing.
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Wittkewitz, 2 Nov 2009 @ 11:50am

merkel's peers
German chancellor Angela Merkel hast to friends. First one is Liz Mohn, was the 2. wife of the owner of Bertelsmann Verlag (one of the biggest Publisher in the world with Random House and BMG and the like), second one is Friede Springer (who also was the wife of famous Axel Springer) the owner of the biggest german newspaper publisher called Springer Verlag. So she has some close and strong relations to the media world. Innovation will come with what Marissa Mayer called hyper-personalized newsstream. As of now even Google can't cope with realtime web. So do the old business models of these dinosaurs do. There is plenty of room to outperform the german media landscape by simply being a charm to readers. No one did up to now, but there will be one sooner or later. I guess it will be a newcomer who is just sitting in his garage...
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Wittkewitz, 2 Nov 2009 @ 11:50am

merkel's peers
German chancellor Angela Merkel has 2 best friends. First one is Liz Mohn, was the 2. wife of the owner of Bertelsmann Verlag (one of the biggest Publisher in the world with Random House and BMG and the like), second one is Friede Springer (who also was the wife of famous Axel Springer) the owner of the biggest german newspaper publisher called Springer Verlag. So she has some close and strong relations to the media world. Innovation will come with what Marissa Mayer called hyper-personalized newsstream. As of now even Google can't cope with realtime web. So do the old business models of these dinosaurs do. There is plenty of room to outperform the german media landscape by simply being a charm to readers. No one did up to now, but there will be one sooner or later. I guess it will be a newcomer who is just sitting in his garage...
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Jason, 2 Nov 2009 @ 12:03pm

Re: A message from us hateful grammar Nazis...
"Especially because you normally right so well"

Yes, he normally does right himself once it is brought to his attention that his grammar is upside down. However, yours was the very first comment, so it's hard to see what you are complaining about here. Or did you mean that he 'writes' well? Grammar Nazi, genocide thyself.
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rollinginsanity, 2 Nov 2009 @ 2:30pm

Re: Re:
It's true democracy at work. Think about it. In reality, if a government set all speed limits to 20Km/h, right, theoretically, and everybody thought it was stupid and did the old speed limits (a majority) then it would be a law that is too tough to enforce, it would either be ignored by police and lawmakers or it would be repealed. The only problem is that this occurs on the internet every day, the majority of web browsers that is, then politicians go and apply their stupid laws and morality to something that is never going to be obeyed and/or work at all. Why waste money on trying to enforce copyright law. I think copyright organisations should be ashamed of themselves and the money they waste. Go after child porn or online scams for goodness sake, at least they'll stop some actual crimes that hurt people on a dailey basis.
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