European News Publishers Still Believe They Have The Right To Make Google Pay For Sending Traffic Their Way
from the bad-arguments-and-bad-laws dept
The European Commission is still (slowly) moving forward with its plan to dump a link tax on service providers like Google, Facebook, etc. in hopes of propping up local news outfits. The plan has been in the works for a couple of years now and it's looking like the longer the planning goes on, the less likely it is to result in something that makes its advocates happy.
A long report from Politico details the current state of this doomed venture. And it is doomed. Even if implemented in a way that makes news outlets happiest, the end result will be less incoming traffic from some of the most-used sites in the world. Some news agencies aren't so sure this is the way forward.
“Other stakeholders are challenging the provision … questioning not only whether this is the best way of addressing concerns of press publishers vis-a-vis digital technologies, but also questioning whether the Commission proposal is adequately restricted to such concerns,” Therese Comodini Cachia, the Maltese rapporteur shepherding the proposal through Parliament, told POLITICO.
Translation: Opponents of the plan, including some small web publishers, worry it could choke traffic to their sites by creating a thicket of regulations that will dissuade Google and other platforms from driving users to them. These critics also argue that a publisher’s right will create a “link tax” (a phrase that supporters liken to a slur) but won’t achieve its backers’ main aim: to save the news sector’s broken business model.
That's the problem with short-sighted legislation like this: it fails to consider the options available to those hit with the link tax. And it's not as though there's no information available that indicates what the future would hold for supposed beneficiaries of the link tax. Past efforts in Spain and Belgium to institute a link tax (targeting Google) resulted in the search engine pulling out of the market by dumping any search results that might have resulted in tax liability.
Then there are the numerous ways it might affect the average computer user -- beyond finding fewer local articles on Facebook or fewer search results when Googling.
The plan’s loudest critic has been Green MEP Julia Reda. Originally elected as a member of the Pirate party, Reda’s encyclopedic knowledge of copyright has made her a respected adversary for the publishers. She’s shown a particular knack for condensing the legalese of copyright reform into alarmist soundbites. She has argued, for example, that the Commission proposal could affect how articles are shared on Twitter, something both the Commission and the publishers deny.
As is to be expected, the lack of forward progress is being blamed on Google. Proponents of the link tax are complaining about Google's lobbying efforts in Europe, as though the company should do nothing more than sit down, shut up, and start paying FOR DRIVING TRAFFIC TO THEIR WEBSITES.
Opponents of the tax say it's not up to the EC to force other companies to prop up struggling businesses. Those advocating for the tax say it's not up to the EC to question the soundness of their business decisions. It's about ownership… or so they claim.
The publishers counter that it’s not up to Parliament to analyze the merits of their commercial strategy. What’s at issue is a basic question of ownership, and the publishers say it is incumbent on legislators to protect their rights. In the pre-digital age, such protections weren’t necessary because news content didn’t fall victim to large-scale piracy. The internet, the publishers argue, has changed that because articles can be disseminated far and wide with a few clicks.
This attitude speaks directly to the concerns raised by Green MEP Julia Reda. The publishers view sharing as piracy -- a view not shared at all by millions of people who post links on social media and, again, help drive traffic to the sites. Very few people share news articles by taking entire posts and redistributing them through third parties. And Google -- the top target in the proposed legislation -- does nothing remotely approaching this bizarre definition of piracy with its links to sources and small snippets of article text.
That disconnect between what publishers feel is "right" and what the rest of the world believes is acceptable is yet another nail in this legislation's coffin. Even if it passes, it won't do what publishers hope it will. Google will stop linking to European content. People will find less and less local content being shared. And for all the complaining about Google's lobbying efforts, publishers have no problem touting their own as a reason the terrible proposed legislation might one day become law.
Despite the skepticism, the publishing lobby remains sanguine, confident that its deep political connections will ultimately see the legislation through.
“The news media sector is optimistic that policymakers agree on the need for a publishers’ right,” said Wout van Wijk, executive director of News Media Europe, a lobbyist for press publishers. “Such a right will create the legal certainty needed for further investments and innovation to guarantee a free and pluralistic media landscape in Europe.”
Granting this right won't fix publishers' problems. It might give them more ways to sue, but flagging new agencies can't be legislated back into fiscal health -- especially if it means levying taxes on US companies to prop up European entities. In the end, publishers may get what they THINK they want, but they won't be seeing any return on the lobbying investment. Anything that discourages the free (as in "open") dissemination of information tends to work out worst for those compiling the information. A link tax is just a band-aid to be applied to the internet's surface, unable to staunch the blood flow of the new publishing industry's internal wounds.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: ancillary copyright, copyright, eu, google tax, news snippets
Companies: google
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I would say *especially* if implemented in the way that (they think) will make them happiest. Google and others don't have to host their links, and history shows that they have no problem dumping them, leading them to whine about losing revenue.
"Translation: Opponents of the plan, including some small web publishers, worry it could choke traffic to their sites by creating a thicket of regulations that will dissuade Google and other platforms from driving users to them"
Shorter translation: "Erm, guys, we saw what happened in Spain, we'd rather have some traffic that's not monetised 100% than zero traffic from them".
"The publishers view sharing as piracy"
Don Quixote viewed windmills as giants. So what? They were still windmills.
Again, this is the problem - they're either not dealing with reality, or they know they've got major problems and would rather force Google to pay them instead of fixing their broken model. Nobody "pirated" a newspaper by sharing it with friends, co-workers or cutting out snippets to share around. In fact, it was so well known that this happened that they built in the assumption that each copy would be read multiple times into their business model.
They were successful - which is what happens when you build reality into your business model rather than fighting it off because you wish things worked differently. Now reality has changed again. Deal with it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
There is a trivial solution.
robots.txt, anyone?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
less traffic to Techdirt?
Therefore this would also cost this site a few visitors.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: There is a trivial solution.
So, while robots.txt is indeed an easy solution to stopping Google from indexing their content, that's not what they want. They simply want to be paid for doing nothing.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Ridiculous
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: less traffic to Techdirt?
Depends on how idiotic they want to be.
If they go the Belgium/'Incredibly stupid' route and simply rule that excerpts aren't allowed unless they're paid for, then TD could easily hand out a 'Anyone can link to any of our stuff for free' blanket permission, and the problem with regards to TD is bypassed.
If they go the Spain/'My head just exploded due to how unbelievably stupid this is' route and make the payments mandatory, such that sites cannot simply give permission then yeah, that could be a problem.
While the latter is without a doubt the more boneheaded choice out of a pair of incredibly stupid ideas, it is the one that isn't trivial to bypass, which means it's likely that that is the one the publishers are going to be pushing to have implemented should this stunning display of shortsighted greed be put into law.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Tim, you don't get it
And the headline is already right. The news publishers don't believe they have the right to make Google pay, they want the right to make Google pay.
Now every right and law comes with unintended consequences, so you cannot just make a law for letting Google pay publishers unconditionally: it would likely cause a lot of people to have to pay lots of other people unconditionally.
So Spain tried to link the payments to linking to websites, because linking is what Google does.
So Google stopped doing that. Which is sort of an obvious outcome, just not the desired one.
Basically the publishers are fighting for the right to point a gun at their feet and pull the trigger, in the expectation that this will put them in a position where they can sue the gun manufacturers for negligence. So they got the right in Spain to lawfully point a gun at their feet and pull the trigger and now Google refuses to sell them guns.
Naturally, that's not the end game. The end game is that everybody should point guns at their feet and pull the trigger so that Google will just hand over their guns as a present (and thus without liability).
However, Google apparently prefers the "molon labe" approach.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: There is a trivial solution.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Ridiculous
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Let's look at what the media companies are giving up by making this request:
In short, everything that makes people want to click the link, or helps them discover that those articles exist. I wonder how they'll feel when they have to tell their advertisers that "social media engagement" is down 80-90%...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Tim, you don't get it
That's not even half of it. The publishers are fighting for the right to point a gun at their feet, in the expectation that they will not end up with a tarsal-shattering hole, and someone else will have to suffer the agony and medical bill.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
A strong news media sector is the basic condition for well-functioning democracy. You might not agree with a publishers'right as such, but please let's not say that the news media industry does "nothing" or their content is "priceless".
Instead, if you guys are happy with your alternative facts and kitten journalism, well - thats great news since this is what you going to get if we don't find a solution on how to monetise journalistic content online.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Ah but you see, if they can stop people from getting their news from that infernal 'internet' novelty then surely people will go back to buying physical newspapers, and their coffers will once more overflow with gold and jewels as people are once more forced to get their news from them or not at all!
It's foolproof, what could possibly go wrong?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
Yeah, finding a way for them to be profitable is no-one's problem but their's. That a robust press may serve a valuable service does not give them the right to shake down others in order to keep the profits up, if they want the money to keep rolling in it's up to them to figure out how, without turning a symbiotic relationship into an unsupportable, parasitic one as they're attempting here.
They're welcome to try different methods to keep the money rolling in, what they aren't welcome to do is try and screw over everyone else in the process.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
Enjoy your dose of alternative facts.
Best,
That other guy
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
You miss the point. The cost and/or quality of the content is irrelevant to what's being pushed here.
You're also lying to yourself if you think that forcing Google and Facebook to pay for the content will have any bearing on whether or not users of those services continue to fall for and share the crap content. In fact, forcing them to do so will lead to more of the real journalism going to the wayside.
The industry has to work to adjust to the current reality of the marketplace - and demanding a tax from the people who help promote their content sure as hell isn't the way to do it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
Did you bother to read past the first sentence in my comment? Or did you somehow miss the whole 'just because they can serve a purpose doesn't give them the right to demand others step up to keep them profitable' bit?
Once more with emphasis:
They're welcome to try different methods to keep the money rolling in, what they aren't welcome to do is try and screw over everyone else in the process.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
A clue for you: if, after reading 5 sentence snippet, I do not go to read the rest, then the rest is worth nothing. No time here for click-baits.
Another clue for you: do you realize, how much work it was to upkeep the horse carts? And yet - people switched to cars. Maybe nobody cared?
I have given news outlets an easy solution: turn off indexing in robots.txt. All the problems gone - no google snippets, no "piracy". Why don't they?
Oh, and one more thing: it's news outlets who claim their contents is "priceless". Point in case - attempt at some stupid law in Germany.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Unfortunately, Eventual doesn't equal Imminent
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
Agreed. However, the proposed tax falls under the all-too-typical political approach:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
and, apparently, you want government to assist in making it so ... this does not look right, what is wrong with this picture?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
1. We're making a lot less money than we used to
2. Google has lots of money!
3. Let's blame Google and force them to pay us instead of finding a solution to the underlying problems
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
It requires a smart phone, and a means of publishing on-line, coupled to an ability and time to do the back-up research. These days, almost all the support research can be done on line.
That said, it can be expensive hiring journalists, and ensuring that they have access to politicians and their staff, so that they can parrot the party line.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Unfortunately, Eventual doesn't equal Imminent
[ link to this | view in thread ]
So European news outfits are demanding Right to Die and Right to be Forgotten legislation.
Why doesn't Techdirt stick to Tech stories?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Unfortunately, Eventual doesn't equal Imminent
If too much damage is done, most people will be isolated from the revolutionaries, and one set of tyrants will be replaced by another. Those with a strong desire to change politics will always find a way to communicate, but they also fall for the needs of the people justify all actions line of politics..
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
Even though a simple robots.txt file would completely STOP Google for grabbing a single thing from your site. So I'm all for this law, and then Google and do what they did in the other countries and drop all the news and have no links to any of it. Problem is solved either way. Do a robots.txt file or create a law and Google just drops you. Of course all the news company's against the dumb law are now pissed because their traffic also dropped way off. Who is hurt more? It's not Google.
Really, if you can't see trying to force this business model doesn't work, then there's nothing in the world to fix you and you'll fail. Anyone with a brain higher then 10 IQ points knows trying to force Google to pay is going to fail and hurt YOU not Google.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Legal Certainty Accomplished
The certainty, legal and otherwise, is the death of the newspaper model and the uplifting of the online news model. It's unfortunate in some ways, since the larger newspaper-derived media outlets have well-established and usually vetted journalists and standards. The younger, independent and blog-oriented news community must and no doubt will mature ever more swiftly as the old publishers decline. The online blogger newsies are more frequently a bit less able to produce the breadth and depth of coverage - for now. The touted pluralism will be among vast numbers of increasingly well-adapted Internet news providers in the absence of the outmoded, news publishers.
It's a shame that the majority of big publishing organizations have not incorporated the Internet as a distribution channel. They have all the other resources. Search engine aggregators, e.g., Google, have been funneling traffic to them at no charge. The news groups have not even had to pay personnel, third-party or in-house, to promote SEO placement - it just happened, optimally and for free by Google. The cluelessness is astounding.
In the long run - no longer all that long, I suspect - the newspaper industry and its stunted, twisted children die...the Internet news industry prospers. I expect some of the smaller, more agile, old-school publishers to evolve and adapt, outliving their inflexibly incompetent, gigantically dinosaurian competitors. Investing any other way to promote innovation in the newspaper model is silly.
One prediction - when Google aggregates and promotes an Internet news publisher that operates with a correct grasp of contemporary Internet principles, there will be no screams demanding a link tax.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Legal Certainty Accomplished
The certainty, legal and otherwise, is the death of the newspaper model and the uplifting of the online news model. It's unfortunate in some ways, since the larger newspaper-derived media outlets have well-established and usually vetted journalists and standards. The younger, independent and blog-oriented news community must and no doubt will mature ever more swiftly as the old publishers decline. The online blogger newsies are more frequently a bit less able to produce the breadth and depth of coverage - for now. The touted pluralism will be among vast numbers of increasingly well-adapted Internet news providers in the absence of the outmoded, news publishers.
It's a shame that the majority of big publishing organizations have not incorporated the Internet as a distribution channel. They have all the other resources. Search engine aggregators, e.g., Google, have been funneling traffic to them at no charge. The news groups have not even had to pay personnel, third-party or in-house, to promote SEO placement - it just happened, optimally and for free by Google. The cluelessness is astounding.
In the long run - no longer all that long, I suspect - the newspaper industry and its stunted, twisted children die...the Internet news industry prospers. I expect some of the smaller, more agile, old-school publishers to evolve and adapt, outliving their inflexibly incompetent, gigantically dinosaurian competitors. Investing any other way to promote innovation in the newspaper model is silly.
One prediction - when Google aggregates and promotes an Internet news publisher that operates with a correct grasp of contemporary Internet principles, there will be no screams demanding a link tax.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
Such a tax could turn the net into a means for corporate publishers to have their own island of content, for those who can afford to pay for it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
"free and pluralistic media landscape in Europe"
Pluralistic? When they all print the government line, in minor variations? Free, when they believe that their survival depends on government-handouts ('Link-Tax' is just another word for government subsidy, or, less friendly, government bribes for presenting our leaders in a favorable light).
Ironically, free and pluralistic is what they are trying to destroy with their link - tax: For the first time in centuries, everybody has a platform to publish their information, their view of the world. Some may be fake, some may be questionable - and we all need to learn how to manage this flood of information. Many of the blogs are good reporting, and the fact that Joe Average now has the same or better sources than the 'quality media' is the biggest achievement of the internet - and the biggest threat to publishers and governments.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Two way street
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Link tax both ways
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Painful situations, no clear paths
Now, when electricity came to the forefront, it spelled doom for the lamp oil suppliers, and a tectonic shift for the lamp makers. Similarly, when automobiles became common, buggy whip makers had to shift focus.
None filed suit in court to turn back innovation, none tried and succeeded to impose a tax as RIAA did on writable computer media to subsidize their business model that had collapsed on them. (It didn't, not really, just changed).
In a like way to RIAA, journalism changed. In fact, it changed before the internet when conglomerates stopped considering news as "something we must do as a civic duty" and started looking to it as a profit center, and you know, demanding profits. The internet did not start that shift, but neither did it help.
The attempt to monetize journalism via regulation would be to enthrone it in a government granted, government regulated, government enforced monopoly. I don't see any other result possible. And as we well know from experience, looking to government is solve problems while remaining non-partisan can, and often is, fraught with peril. Sooner or later some politician will find the levers to pull to make it geek in his or her favor, or at least to the disfavor of his perceived opponent.
Neither can we completely rely on enlightened self interest overmuch, as evidenced by the reduced funding found that way.
At issue is that journalism is an intangible, and while intangibles are easy to keep in stock, their value to an individual is incremental and variable. A set price is to foreclose some markets, and a variable price if known will depress marketability in others, at least to an extent. After all, I may not be disturbed to find I paid $10 more for something than my neighbor, but that is not commonplace.
Micropayment services to allow for small payments has been tried. I don't recall seeing any great success there.
Subscription services have been found to lack enough scope to fully fund at the desired level.
Ad supported has been found to compromise journalistic integrity while simultaneously annoying almost everyone and at times placing visitors at risk of malicious infection. Besides, a learned and reasoned article on almost any subject looses at least some of it's serious intent when paired with a ad for, say, sex toys, synthesized realistic dog poop gag gifts, or tarot readings.
One thing is clear however, is that participation by the audience is desirable. As an example, see the slight but undeniable reduction in traffic for sites such as CNN, NPR and others when they stopped allowing online reader comment.
Another problem is the indistinguishable nature of journalism. The average reader is quite happy to read a blog post on something they care about quite as much as they would if it were written by a learned, trained, and professional journalist. With the rise in popularity of such sites as breitbart and infowars, arguably they are happier to gobble slop rather than feast at the table of reason, facts and logic. In other words, the customer has changed from Wall Street Journal and New York Times to National Enquirer and World News Now. As much as I bemoan that selection, it will not change it.
So much for problem identification, on to target selection.
Find ways to show that the breitbart, infowars and their ilk ultimately hurts their consumers.
Highlight how professional journalism helps the reader
Monetizing that is unfortunately where my analysis washes up on the rocky shores of the possible and desirable. At best, I echo "Connect with Fans" and "Reason to Buy". Hey, if it were easy, I'd be rich.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Germany, Belgium and Spain so far, with the last going above and beyond in their idiocy-that-might-have-been-intentional, and effectively forcing Google to pull out of the country.
(Regarding the Spain debacle, as several comments pointed out at the time while all sites took a huge hit in traffic, the larger sites were much more able to weather the loss, whereas the smaller competing sites might not have been able to. And of course the group that pushed the legislation was representing... the larger publishers.)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
Print newspapers once served a useful purpose too -- and still could if they chose to -- but at least the EU ones have decided to be parasites instead.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: There is a trivial solution.
It would be illegal to link to anything you have not paid for. It would be illegal to not link to something that you must pay for. There would be no requirement to actually have content, but the laws would require links.
Virtually overnight, to comply with the law, every website in Europe will become nothing but a long page of links to every pay-walled site in Europe, hundreds of thousands to millions of links per page, with no actual content whatsoever.
Because no company will be able to afford to pay anyone to write that content, all the money will go to aggregating links.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
publication or films/videos.
[ link to this | view in thread ]