Newspaper Industry Lawyers Attack Fair Use, Claim Google Is Illegal
from the and-so-it-begins dept
Hmm. So, on Monday Rupert Murdoch suggests that the courts would reject fair use as a concept, and by Friday two newspaper industry lawyers just happen to have an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal explaining how Google violates copyright law by caching the websites it indexes. If the names of the lawyers -- Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown -- sound vaguely familiar, that's because they're the same two lawyers who, six months ago, wrote a laughably ridiculous editorial (that time for the Washington Post) proposing special new copyright laws to save newspapers, while destroying pretty much everything that makes the internet useful. Of course, both the Washington Post and the WSJ conveniently left out the fact that these two lawyers regularly represent newspapers and other media and entertainment firms -- even as that seems rather relevant (what happened to those FTC disclosure laws?).While I do actually agree with the lawyers that it's a shame the focus on the Google Book Search settlement avoided the big fair use question, I think they're entirely wrong to suggest that Google itself violates copyright law.
The copyright code allows public libraries to copy texts as long as there is no "direct or indirect commercial advantage." But that does not describe what search engines do. They use the complete copies they take for free to sell the advertising that has made them enormously profitable. This has a direct impact on book publishers, and on the publishers of magazines and newspapers that are losing the advertising that once supported them. According to Ken Auletta's recently released book "Googled," its search business alone now takes in 40% of all advertising across the Internet.Perhaps Sanford and Brown are unfamiliar with basic copyright law, but the commercial advantage issue is only a small part of copyright law, and there are plenty of well-established cases of fair use in commercial use. In fact, I'd suggest that they consult the very media companies they work for, as most of them regularly rely on fair use defenses for reprinting or broadcasting content -- despite the fact that they're very commercial entities.
Furthermore, it appears that Sanford and Brown are either unfamiliar with how Google works -- or are purposely misrepresenting it. In the case of most news stories, Google has little or no ads. It only recently put ads on Google News -- long after the decline in ad revenue for newspapers. Besides, if local advertisers are finding a better return by advertising on Google, isn't that a good thing? That's called competition, and I'm surprised these lawyers would be against that.
In the last year, many fresh ideas have begun to circulate on how to help the publishing industry transition profitably to the online world. But without legal reform to back up these new business models, publishers will not have the bargaining power to make the search engines into true partners willing to compensate them meaningfully for their copyrights.Yes, proposals like the ones that you guys suggested in the Washington Post without disclosing who pays your bills? Funny how that works. And those proposals are not about "helping the publishing industry transition profitably." Plenty of smart publishers are perfectly profitable. The proposals are about protecting the status quo and hurting the innovators who better serve the market. Sanford and Baker are trying to protect their big clients, but they'd be better off telling them to innovate, rather than push bogus editorials and pass ridiculous laws designed to hold back progress.
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Filed Under: bruce brown, bruce stanford, copyright, fair use, newspapers, search
Companies: google
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In that case...
All browsers also violate copyright law, as would DNS servers that cache any domain name that's 'copyrighted'.
Fox News... and other News Corp computers - no doubt have browsers and I'm sure News Corp has DNS servers.
Therefore: they are also violating copyright law.
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Set robots.txt to "DISALLOW". Problem solved!
Otherwise, if it isn't word-for-word copying of the entire article and republication, it's fair use and not infringement.
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Re:
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robots.txt
Stupid world making more work for us for no good reason.
Bryan
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Really
I would think that most people would love to have a complete monopoly where they could charge whatever they wanted.
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Re: Really
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They're not just missing how google works
When a user agent, a browser or a search engine or whatever, requests a page, the server copies the page into its outbound network stream. The copying is done by the server.
The copy isn't made by google, it's requested by google and made by the server. Further, if you don't like what "the Goog" is doing, robots.txt.
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Re: They're not just missing how google works
These lawyers are either ignorant about how this works or are outright lying. Google will completely ignore your site if you so wish.
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http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091111094923390
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Re: Microsoft patented the sudo linux command.
:)
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Re: Re: Microsoft patented the sudo linux command.
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I'm sure i remember reading a very similar piece recently.
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Store and forward
In addition, I noticed this was the final device touched in the route:
a72-247-242-217.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com
Akamai Technologies get paid to cache their client's web pages everywhere, so the site data gets to your browser faster than it would if it were coming all the way from the original website. I hope Newscorp realized this when writing up their contracts with Akamai, or they could be facing a copyright theft suit as well!
I hope they do cut Google off in their robot.txt files. I want that trash to stop showing up in my *news* searches, since all they offer is fake news.
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You're all misunderstanding Murdoch's strategy
Murdoch is aiming to get legislation in place that will force Google and other search engines to pay for Indexing Rights. And in such a way that Murdoch can play search engines against each other for exclusive indexing rights and at prices he can control.
Imagine an auction between Google and Bing for the rights to exclusively index all Murdoch's publications. It could easily become very expensive and a greater revenue source for Murdoch.
This is also completely in line with how Murdoch has always done business. He's an old style land grabber who has never shunned from just taking other peoples property, often with the help of the law, and then start charging the previous owners for using the property.
He is out to grab a large bite of Googles property, their search index, and make Google pay for accessing it.
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Re: You're all misunderstanding Murdoch's strategy
There are so many things wrong with this - it will never fly. I would, no doubt kill the internet as we know it today.
But even if it did, who would care? I do not need any of news corp products, and honestly I try to avoid them when I am aware of it.
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Re: You're all misunderstanding Murdoch's strategy
Pfft. LOL! If it's valueless now, why will an arbitrary price tag make it worth more ? Just means less people will see his vomit.
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Re: You're all misunderstanding Murdoch's strategy
If Murdoch says "pay or you don't get my sites", Google and Microsoft will both say "fine, we won't pay".
The funny thing is, there isn't even a bluff to call. Murdoch is insignificant. His websites are a blip on the internet, and will be lost in a pile of Google caching if he really was intent on hiding his content away behind paywalls.
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Re: Re: You're all misunderstanding Murdoch's strategy
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Re: You're all misunderstanding Murdoch's strategy
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Re:
For example, 9/11 happened because terrorists hate freedom.
USA! USA! USA!
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Attack Fair Use? Google is marketing your columnists.
So many people seek to more up-to-date sources for news such as Google, Drudge, and online properties such as CNN, or Twitter.
With these up-to-the-minute sources, how can you begin to expect to compete with an 18-hour old product?
At this point, a better idea would be for newspapers in a given geography to consolidate printing and distribution operations under a separate corporate entity. Outsource it in a way.
This would allow the newspapers to focus on their core competencies of reporting, copyediting, ad sales, subscription services and developing their own online presence.
The online presence is the future. How you decide to derive revenue (be it from online ad sales or subscription model) should be up to the individual paper, and be fluid: Perhaps one month you want to let anyone access the news, and the next, you want to convert freeloaders over so you require a login or online subscription model, The next month, maybe you're free again. Maybe certain columnists have a loyal following and their articles need a subscription for a month. Play with it. But only when you have solid SEO and analytics in place. They will provide insight into and will be major factors in a successful campaign.
But in order to get to this point, you have to see Google as your marketer, or 2011 version of a street corner newsie.
Printing is the biggest cost in the industry and will continue to decline. It doesn't make sense to protect it and fair use.
If people see value in what your reporters and columnists do, and can connect with them, (key concept) they will probably become more loyal and pay more than a print subscription.
But we're probably a few years out before anyone figures out how to do the whole gamut successfully.
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Re: Attack Fair Use? Google is marketing your columnists.
lol
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robots.txt
I love the attitude of "we're working on getting onto the Internet, but we need the government to come in and secure our future for us".
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Re: robots.txt
You're right! However, a good description of how to properly use robots.txt functionality as part of an overall online strategy is found in comment 23. I put that together in 20 minutes. Surely it can be improved upon.
At minimum, comment #23 provides a foundation to build the business outside of legalistic tactics, which I believe everyone on one level or another desires to strive towards.
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Re: Re: robots.txt
In any case, see the comment titled
"Attack Fair Use? Google is marketing your columnists."
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I would say that's the root of their problem, not Google.
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Corporate lawyers against competition, what a shocker!
A lawyer for a big corporation against competition is about as surprising as a bank robber against guards carrying shotguns.
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So many ways to save the industry...fighting over ownership of content isn't one of them
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Newspapers vs Google
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why do we still kil trees to support newspapers
ADD if the freemasons ever did anyhting for hte world it was the adjutant to free knowledge to make it so that the world can all share in its enlightenment.
TO take knowledge away is to destroy man. IT is to make you all slaves to someone elses will. DO YOU WANT TO BE SLAVES
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I can't wait until this era of "Wheel Chair and shit-bag baby boomer ignorance" is done & over with.
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Claim Google Is Illegal,,,?
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Re: Claim Google Is Illegal,,,?
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Over and over and over and over.....
Best thing to do is just be patient. The people fighting for the status quo are expending enormous resources (losing money) in a battle to save dying business models (losing money). Let them. If you ignore bleeding long enough the problem fixes itself.
As for file sharing and the music industry The problem is their own fault. They had the chance to deal with this decades ago. Consumers have been file sharing forever, we just did it differently and no one minded. Or did everyone for get the "mix tape"?
As the formats in music changed there wasn't a lot of whining. Vinyl became 8tracks which became cassettes which became CD's; and I don't recall the RIAA sending me a notice telling me that because the format changed I could bring in my old Vinyl which I paid for and get a brand new shiny CD for the music I already paid for. No I had to buy it again and again and again. Then the format changed again (and I'm sure they were ready for the next gray train at first), but this time it was greeted by the internet which happened to be an insanely good distribution channel. So as far as the RIAA is concerned, enjoy the old profits and welcome to the new world, and good luck.
As for movies and software, those issues are a little more complex. I'll save my thoughts on those for another post.
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Why doesn't google just fix this with a new business model.
Put in big 24pt font a link to exclude your newspaper (With some authentication of course).
Then put one guy at google to work browsing the web and remove any website that has a formal complaint about news aggregation. Seeming how most stories have the "All 3,823 news articles" link, losing a few hundred stories wont affect the quality of the service.
Then wait two weeks and when all the newspapers freak out because traffic dropped 90% overnight, charge them a few thousand to get re-enrolled.
Problem solved.
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They Will Fail
It doesn't take a genius to see it coming. Go to any large book store and check out the prices on new books. It is no wonder the industry is suffering. No longer can one buy a good magazine for fifty cents. These days five or six bucks are typical.
Electronic technology including this new sixth sense technology will be the final nail in the coffin of the traditional publishing industry. Crying about trivial stuff like Google using their material won't help one little bit.
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Idiocy
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Bloggers Disclosure Requirements
"the Washington Post and the WSJ conveniently left out the fact that these two lawyers regularly represent newspapers and other media and entertainment firms -- even as that seems rather relevant (what happened to those FTC disclosure laws?)."
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Who wants Murdoch crap anyway?
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