German Newspaper 'Snippet' Law Passes: Watered Down, But Still Stupid

from the how-small-is-smallest? dept

For a year now, Techdirt has been following the sorry saga of Germany's attempt to make search engines and others pay for licenses to show even small excerpts from online newspapers. The main motivation seems to be to take money from Google for being successful, and to give it to the German publishers that are struggling.

Even though the idea that newspapers were suffering because of the short excerpts shown as part of search results is absurd, and existing copyright law already forbids unauthorized use of longer extracts, publishers had enough friends in the German parliament to get the "snippets" law pushed through today. However, along the way, a small amendment was made to the text that makes it slightly less damaging. According to the new wording (pdf - German original), quotations will have to be licensed unless they are:

single words or the smallest excerpts
Unhelpfully, no definition for "smallest excerpts" is given, which means there is still considerable uncertainty over just how many words can be quoted without paying a licensing fee. That's bound to have a chilling effect on the use of snippets, as publications err on the side of caution before court cases begin to establish what is and isn't acceptable. Another issue is whether quotations in blogs or on social networks will be exempt: according to the German magazine Der Spiegel they will ("probably", in the case of Facebook). But again, we won't know for sure until cases come to court.

Happily, there is still some doubt over whether the law will ever come into force. According to Der Spiegel again, the SPD (Socialist Party) may be able to overturn the law in Germany's other legislative body, the Bundesrat. Let's hope it succeeds, and saves Germany from the embarrassment of trying to implement such a backward-looking and unworkable law.

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Filed Under: copyright, fair use, germany, newspapers, search engines, snippets


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  • icon
    Ninja (profile), 1 Mar 2013 @ 10:01am

    Search engines could simply drop German papers from their results. It would be amusing to see the results.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:25am

      Re:

      and so should CDNs to ISPs demanding money.

      It would indeed be very interesting to see the results. I expect lawsuits on the level of judge judy.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:45am

      Re:

      This is really the best and cheapest idea possible.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 12:50pm

      Re:

      Concur. And, in my daily rant, hope to take those nutters in France with them into Internet oblivion.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 1:05pm

      Re:

      Only problem I can see with this Ninja is via the wording "online newspapers".

      I'm wondering if foreign publishers will be able to collect as well or if this article just is missing some of the legal-ese to explain it's just the German papers that the country wants to drive out of business.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      That One Guy (profile), 2 Mar 2013 @ 8:56am

      Re:

      Keep in mind this is the country of 'GEMA: It doesn't matter what music you play, you still owe us', so they'd probably use the same 'logic' and just charge the search engines anyway, just in case they had some snippets/quotes from german newspapers show up.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 10:59am

    'publishers had enough friends in the German parliament to get the "snippets" law pushed through today'

    yet another example of something ridiculous happening because the USA allowed, even encouraged, the music and movie industries to go down the road of extorting money out of anywhere and anyone, rather than encouraging those industries to adapt, to progress, to listen to others than to just themselves and produce things for today's market. the stupidity of what was started has spread like a plague, making the successes of a few the means to a permanent income for doing nothing new, to others.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:05am

    Let's hope it succeeds, and saves Germany from the embarrassment of trying to implement such a backward-looking and unworkable law.

    I take exception with your calling one of Europe's highly progressive laws backward. You must maintain a solid forward looking progressive attitude that fully promotes the underclass at the expense of those damn Republicans.

    What can we expect next? For you to call the New York Times conservative.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Glen, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:22am

      Re:

      Can someone tell me if this is sarcasm or not? If so, my sarcasm meter needs to be realigned.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Wayne, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:13am

    Well hopefully they get what they want and Google decides to stop linking to ANY german newspaper or published periodical.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:22am

    Good thing "probably" is only one word long... since you quoted it from Der Spiegel.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Web and Other, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:24am

    This is a tough call. They both depend on each other, but to be honest, publishers need to protect their content better but allow Google to spread their word.

    Do whatever NY TImes does...subscription based articles. :)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:48am

      Re:

      Or what techdirt does, ads + sponsored content + viewer feedback fact checking.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Another AC, 1 Mar 2013 @ 1:41pm

      Re:

      Sorry, why exactly do publishers need to protect their content better? I assume you mean newspaper publishers not publishers in general.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:24am

    "single words or the smallest excerpts"

    Easy to work around. Allow me to demonstrate with the title of this article:

    GermanNewspaperSnippetLawPassesWateredDownButStillStupid

    Single word. No infringement.

    Now, off to profit from Mike's hard work.

    * evil grin *

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:30am

      Re:

      Oh yeah, I'm profiting from someone's hard work AND misattributing the original article.

      * evil snicker *

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:36am

    Adrian Lopez

    Does Germany have something like the DMCA allowing for evidence-free takedowns of copyrighted content? Now imagine the DMCA coupled with this stupid law.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    out_of_the_blue, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:41am

    "take money from Google for being successful" --

    OFF SOMEONE ELSE'S WORK! All that needs be said here.

    By the by, Google is reported to be sitting on $48 BILLION IN CASH. Most of it is sheltered off-shore from wherever they're dodging taxes, mostly the US.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:48am

      Re: "take money from Google for being successful" --

      Reading glasses broken?
      Can't control the knee JERK reaction to bash Google?

      It's a stupid law and the German public should be firing off rants at these obviously bought off politicians.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:51am

      Re: "take money from Google for being successful" --

      So... how much do you owe Techdirt for using the phrase "take money from Google for being successful"?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 12:27pm

      Re: "take money from Google for being successful" --

      I would like to visit this fantasy world you inhabit. Do you sell tickets?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 5:12pm

        Re: Re: "take money from Google for being successful" --

        I dunno; are you prepared to pay the $100 million he demands for every film-like fantasy he takes you through?

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • icon
          PaulT (profile), 2 Mar 2013 @ 6:23am

          Re: Re: Re: "take money from Google for being successful" --

          The $100 million fallacy is all that lets us know that it's the "real" ootb any more...

          link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Rapnel (profile), 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:45am

    It's been said that knowledge is power. If knowledge and information is not free or is taxed, censured, unduly private or the ownership and control is maintained and extended beyond a reasonable amount of time then the longer moneyed interests can control the dissemination of knowledge and information and the longer we can be a somewhat controllable population?

    Then the next thing you know it will be discovered that your local nationwide bank is in a concerted effort with government to track and monitor and plan coordinated contingencies against the people. Oh wait..

    Why are there a handful of, theoretically elected, political people facilitating this,, as was mentioned up in post#2, plague? Because it is a rather nasty situation and it's not looking good. Don't you think these folks would be uncomfortable with their head up their butts and for so long? I guess the RIAA/MPAA told certain folks it feels good to have your head up there. Something.

    single words or snippets? "Your Mama."

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Watchit (profile), 1 Mar 2013 @ 11:57am

    New google germany searche results
    -THE
    -THE
    -THE
    -VOLCANO
    -MURDER
    -HOMICIDE
    -AN
    -MURDER
    -THE
    -WHEN
    -HOW
    -MURDER

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Nick Ashton-Hart, 1 Mar 2013 @ 12:01pm

    It gets better ... according to a German colleague, the word that we translate as 'smallest' is, in German, a word that can mean smallest number of words - or actually smallest in literal size.

    Hard to imagine something less clear ... or more likely to result in lots of wasted time in court. Great for law firms though.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Gwiz (profile), 1 Mar 2013 @ 12:07pm

    single words or the smallest excerpts


    **whew** We all dodged a bullet there.

    Otherwise, anybody writing pretty much anything in German on the internet would owe the publishers of German online newspapers money for all the words they are "copying".

    I don't know German, but can you imagine all the revenue they would have generated from the equivalents of "the" or "and"?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 12:29pm

    Germany really wants to make itself irrelevant.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    special-interesting (profile), 1 Mar 2013 @ 12:34pm

    How would anyone be able to even mention newspaper news socially on a blog site at all? This the same thing as prohibiting all social discussion of the news? Enforcement of such a law would be like suppression, oppression. How about making backyard fence gossip illegal while they are at it? I see news aggregation sites as nothing more than harmless gossip.

    A law like this would effectively put a black-out on all things german. What a huge PR mistake could that be? Come visit Germany: just don't quote the news in your e-mail letters (or your family blog spot) to home.

    How could any piece of legislation leave the details to the court system? Isn't that just saying lets try to “get away with whatever we can”? How bad can the German legislators be to skip out on the details of a law. Its like leaving the answer blank on a test and expecting to get credit for it anyway. I think they need a homeroom teacher to oversee and make them show their work (so to speak). Sloppy legislation at best.

    I must be appalled (there are so many question marks after my sentences).

    This is just another attempt at dying business models, in this case newspaper industry, struggling to force into law monopolistic methods regardless of the collateral damage.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Jessie (profile), 1 Mar 2013 @ 2:54pm

    Oops

    Google just needs to "accidentally" configure their servers to not direct search traffic to the sites of the media sites pushing this for a day or two. I'd bet I could hear the howling and gnashing of teeth all the way over here.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 3:52pm

    It is no small stretch of the imagination to see Google de-listing German newspapers as a result should this become law. It already does this for search results complained about by the US entertainment industry in the attempt to block infringement.

    How would this be any different since they are demanding payment for even small snippets, meaning that the whole site should be blocked on the odd chance something could be searched, such as a snippet?

    This same cure will work with German newspapers, that the Belgium newspapers got for their demands.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 5:54pm

    Does this include the grabbing of "snippets" from little people by ad agencies, data aggregators, and other lowlifes with nefarious intentions ?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Mar 2013 @ 7:42pm

    Uhm ... No offense, but this article, based on its writing style, seems more like it was written by Mike Masnick than Glyn Moody. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    techflaws (profile), 1 Mar 2013 @ 10:51pm

    Watered down, my a**!

    The Federal Association of German newspaper publishers (BDZV) already stated that even the watered down version does NOT exclude Google snippets. That means, Google has to pay for any search result that refers to content provided by newspapers.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      techflaws (profile), 2 Mar 2013 @ 1:55am

      Re:

      According to Der Spiegel again, the SPD (Socialist Party) may be able to overturn the law in Germany's other legislative body, the Bundesrat.

      BTW, the Bundesrat cannot overturn the law. Since it's an "Einspruchsgesetz" the SPD can only force the law to be reconsidered in the mediation committee which may make some amendments or withold approval in which case it gets send back to the Bundestag where again the coalition will pass the law.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      That One Guy (profile), 2 Mar 2013 @ 9:11am

      Re:

      Well that ups the odds of google or any other search engine flat out dropping any mention of german newspapers ten fold I'd say.

      Should this law go active, without challenge, I look forward to the screams as the newspapers suddenly find themselves effectively cut off from the internet in germany.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        techflaws (profile), 2 Mar 2013 @ 9:49am

        Re: Re:

        Like I wrote the last time when this law was debated: the newspaper have been ratcheting up their rhetoric on Google being a bad, bad monopolist and they will continue this path and demand more once they're kicked out of the index.

        link to this | view in chronology ]


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