German Publishers Still Upset That Google Sends Them Traffic Without Paying Them Too; File Lawsuit

from the your-honor,-how-dare-they-send-us-traffic dept

Oh boy. Remember VG Media? That's the consortium of German news publishers who were so damn angry that Google News sends them all sorts of traffic without also paying them. A year and a half ago, they demanded money from Google. That failed, so they went crying to German regulators who laughed off the request. After there were some concerns that a new "ancillary copyright" right regime in Germany might require payment for posting such snippets, Google properly responded by removing the snippets for those publishers, who totally freaked out and called it blackmail.

Let me repeat that for you, in case you missed it: the publishers insisted that Google's News search was somehow illegal and taking money away from them, and thus they demanded money from Google. When Google responded, instead, by removing the snippets providing summaries to their stories, the publishers claimed it was unfair and blackmail. In short, not only do these German publishers want Google to pay them to send them traffic, they want such payments and traffic to be mandatory.

However, with Google removing the snippets, VG Media granted a "free" license to Google just to get the snippets back into Google News -- even though Google didn't need such a license. Meanwhile, they complained to German competition authorities about this supposed "blackmail" and like the earlier regulators, the German competition authorities told VG Media to go pound sand.

If you thought the situation was over, you underestimated the short-sightedness of VG Media and the German publishers. They've now apparently filed a lawsuit against Google over all this, taking the issue into court. Again: this is all because Google is sending their websites traffic... for free.

Meanwhile, these geniuses at the German publishers might want to actually play out this game strategy a little further. Should they actually win the case, they need to look no further than Spain to see what might happen. Remember, Spain passed a ridiculous law that not only put such a tax on aggregators but made it mandatory. It was clearly nothing more than a "Google tax" for Spanish publishers. Google's response? It pulled out the nuclear option and shut down Google News in Spain.

So even if VG Media and the German publishers "win" this lawsuit, there's a decent chance that they still end up shooting themselves in their collective foot, by pushing away one of the most popular news aggregators that drives a tremendous amount of traffic. It really makes you wonder about the thought process of the folks who run VG Media.

Filed Under: aggregation, ancillary copyright, copyright, germany, google news, google tax, snippets, traffic
Companies: google, vg media

Study Of Spain's 'Google Tax' On News Shows How Much Damage It Has Done

from the ancillary-copyright-is-a-bad-idea dept

As you may recall, governments across Europe, generally at the behest of traditional newspaper publishers, have been pushing for what they call an "ancillary copyright," but which is much better referred to as a "snippet tax" or a "link tax." Or, if people are being honest: a Google News tax. The idea is that any aggregator site that is linking out to other sources with little snippets telling people what's at the link, has to pay the original publication to link to them. If you think this goes against the entire concept of the internet, you're not wrong. Belgium was the first country to try it, and Google responded by removing complaining publications from Google News. In response, the publications then complained that Google News was being mean to them, even though they were the ones complaining. In Germany, a similar thing happened, whereby Google left the complaining publications in Google News, but without snippets since that was a key aspect of the law. Again, the publishers screamed "unfair" even though they were the ones who had pushed for the law in the first place.

When it came time for Spain to try to appease its misguided and angry publishers, the government sought to avoid the tactics that Google had done in the past and thus made it mandatory to pay, saying that sites themselves couldn't even opt-out of getting payments, even if they didn't want them. In response to this, Google broke out the somewhat surprising "nuclear option" and shut down Google News in Spain entirely. It seemed quite obvious that this move would create huge problems for media properties that wanted to be open and wanted people to link to them.

After the law went into effect, the Spanish Association of Publishers of Periodical Publications (AEEPP) commissioned an economic study about the impact of the new Spanish ancillary copyright law -- and found (not surprisingly) that the legal change (and the shuttering of Google News and other aggregators) was absolutely harmful to the Spanish news media and innovation in general. It also found strong evidence that, contrary to what those fighting against Google News have claimed, aggregators expand the market for the original sources, rather than shrink it by acting as a substitute. The latter is based on a "study of studies" basically, looking at all of the academic literature in terms of the impact of aggregators -- all of which shows that it increases the overall size of the market, rather than shrinks it.

However, the really telling part of the report is that this law that was passed in the name of helping news publications, ended up doing tremendous harm to many online publications -- especially smaller sites that frequently (and happily) relied on Google News and other aggregators for a significant amount of traffic. The report points out that it wasn't just Google News that shut down because of this law: a whole bunch of local Spanish aggregators shut down themselves, switched business models entirely, or similarly left the Spanish market entirely. The report notes that sites like Planeta Ludico, NiagaRank, InfoAliment and Multifriki shut down entirely, as they were scared of the economic and legal liability from the new law. The report notes the case of NiagaRank is particularly troubling as it has a wider impact on innovation in Spain:

NiagaRank: ignoring the extent, quantity and methods followed to determine whether they should pay the fee, they preferred to close down. This case is remarkable because NiagaRank was not a “traditional” aggregator, but it analysed social networks to draw up lists with the most relevant news (“active listening”, as they used to call it). However, it is an example of the legal uncertainty that the lack of definition of key aspects of the act has caused.

[....]

For example, and as already pointed out, currently there are several services focused on the aggregation of content for mobile phones, such as the mobile applications Zite and Flipboard. The amendment to the act will discourage the introduction of this sort of services in Spain, as well as the potential development of new models. A clear example of this situation is the portal NiagaRank, an innovative aggregator based on the analysis of the content published on social networks (similar to News360 or Prismatic) which, as mentioned before, also closed down as a direct result of the law amendment.

And all of this has had a tremendous negative impact on the press, rather than a positive one as those behind the law insisted.

The negative impact on the online press sector is also very clear, since a very important channel to attract readers disappears, resulting in lower revenues from advertising. In addition, the new fee is also a barrier to the expansion of small publications with little-known brands, and an entry barrier for new competitors, since they will be unable to count on these platforms to increase their readers’ base.

The evidence available so far shows that the impact on traffic has been negative and that less consolidated publishing titles, such as digital native newspapers, have been the worst affected. This is not only because the total number of publication readers has been reduced but, in the case of online readers that would be attracted anyway (that is, who would visit the publications web sites in some other way), they will surely end up visiting known publications with established brands, to the detriment of small and new publications, in line with the evidence in the literature analysed above

Of course, for the major newspaper publishers, maybe that's what they really wanted all along: less competition. But it's difficult to see how that's a legitimate public policy strategy.

And, not surprisingly, looking at multiple different ways of measuring these things, traffic to all Spanish news sites dropped after the law went into effect:

A simple traffic analysis of Spanish digital newspapers in the first three months of 2015 based on data from ComScore also suggests results in line with the aforementioned. The impact of the closing down of Google News and some other aggregators has generated a decline of visitors to the 84 major Spanish online newspapers...

The report notes that this is even more stunning given that overall internet traffic and usage in Spain has been increasing, so even the percentage drop in traffic undercounts the real impact, as it likely would have been growing.

The data, not surprisingly, shows that the impact on smaller news publishers has been the worst -- again consistent with the idea that all this law really does is lock out competition for the larger players:

A more detailed analysis, breaking down traffic depending on the newspaper size, also confirms that the effect has been uneven. Thus, for the sample of online newspapers in Spain, it appears that smaller newspapers have been the worst affected ones.

All of this should really raise serious questions about just what is the intent of the Spanish government in passing this law. It does not appear to serve any legitimate public policy. At best, it appears to have damaged small news publications, making it more difficult for them to compete against larger publications, though it has also served to damage those larger publications' traffic as well.

Filed Under: aggregation, ancillary copyright, copyright, google tax, innovation, snippet tax, snippets, spain
Companies: google, niagarank

EU Parliament Rejects Bad Proposals On Copyright Over Outdoor Photography And Links

from the good-move dept

In the past few weeks, we've discussed two particularly ridiculous proposals put forth by members of the European Parliament in the report that it is sending to the EU Commission for copyright reform across Europe. First was the proposal to remove freedom of panorama, which would allow countries to block the photography of certain buildings and structures, claiming that those photographs violated the rights of the architects. The second was a plan to support a link tax that would tax content aggregators like Google News for linking to content elsewhere.

Thankfully, both of these proposals were voted down, despite earlier indications that they might have enough support in Parliament. Either way, the real issue now is what proposal the EU Commission comes out with for copyright reform across the EU. Julia Reda who prepared the original report for the EU Parliament hopes that the EU Commission recognizes the importance of the public's rights in its eventual plan (though she continues to refer to them as "limitations" rather than the public's rights, as is more appropriate):

This decision embodies a central message of the report: Commissioner Oettinger cannot limit his upcoming reform proposals to improving conditions for cross-border trade. Reforming exceptions to copyright protection must be at the center of his initiative, since they fulfil such an essential, multi-facetted role: They provide creatives with the space to create new works, users with legal certainty for everyday activities, and access to culture and knowledge to everyone.

It calls for a reduction of geoblocking measures, particularly to allow cultural minorities to access content in their language online. The report asks for consideration of new exceptions for libraries and scientists when dealing with digital works, for example allowing e-lending. Creators should be strengthend in their negotiations with publishers, it states.

We'll see what actually comes out of the Commission, but Oettinger's comments in the past have not been encouraging. And, of course, other aspects of what was added to the report are just as troubling. Such as this:

Jean-Marie Cavada, a French member of the centrist ALDE group, amended the report to claim that “virtually all the value generated by creative works is transferred to… digital intermediaries, which refuse to pay authors or negotiate extremely low levels of remuneration.”

Needless to say, there's going to be a lot of fighting over the eventual proposal.

Filed Under: copyright, eu, eu parliament, freedom of panorama, google tax, julia reda, link tax, links, photography, snippet tax

EU Politicians Try To Create A New 'Link Tax' To Protect Newspapers Who Don't Like Sites Linking For Free

from the don't-do-this dept

Bad ideas never die. Although there have been some recent minor steps in a positive direction concerning copyright in the EU, politicians have been trying to undermine them with really terrible ideas. We already covered the push to effectively outlaw outdoor photography, and now it appears that (despite already having this proposal voted down), some are pushing for a so-called "ancillary copyright" concept, better known as a snippet tax or a link tax.

The basic idea here is that newspapers that have failed to innovate want to blame third party aggregators (mainly Google News) for somehow "damaging" their business because they link to stories with snippets, and then send traffic to those newspaper websites. We've spent years talking about how it's weird to complain about a giant site sending you traffic, but some old school publishers can't seem to get past the fact that Google is big and successful while their own sites are not -- and assume that means that Google somehow "stole" their revenue. In response, they've pushed ridiculous proposals to require anyone who aggregates content with links back to the original to pay a weird fee, above and beyond the traffic that they're sending.

These plans have backfired pretty much everywhere they've been tried. Because it's nonsensical to charge someone to send you more traffic, aggregators have done things like removing those publishers or removing snippets only to see howls of protest from those same publishers who previously claimed that such things were "stealing." In the most extreme case, in Spain, where a law was written that made it mandatory for such a link tax, Google News shut down completely -- once again leading to howls of protest from the newspapers who previously had been arguing that Google was somehow stealing from them. It's an odd sort of "stealing" where you'd run complaining to the government when it goes away.

Either way, all this leads to a silly and nonsensical resolution from MEP Angelika Niebler, working with a number of German MEPs (Germany is where the strongest push for a link tax has come from), arguing for a special new copyright right, which it claims is about supporting journalism:

Calls on the Commission to evaluate and come forward with a proposal on how quality journalism can be preserved, even in the digital age, in order to guarantee media pluralism, in particular taking into account the important role journalists, authors and media providers such as press publishers play with regard thereto

While not directly calling for a link tax (which Niebler had pushed in an earlier amendment that had been rejected), it's a pretty obvious attempt to open the door for such a link tax to return in the near future. In the link above, MEP Julia Reda notes that Niebler's own party, the European People's Party (EPP) had already agreed that no more amendments would be added -- but Niebler went ahead and added it anyway.

The good folks at OpenMedia are vocally opposing this amendment and have set up a site at SaveTheLink.org with more information. The EU Parliament will vote on this proposal tomorrow. While it won't determine what the eventual law is, it may help guide dangerous future proposals that could have serious consequences for how the internet works (or doesn't) in Europe.

It's time for major publishers to get over the fact that they've failed to innovate and failed to keep up with the way the internet works, while others have stepped in and done a better job. Blaming others for your failures is one thing. Looking to the government to change the way the internet and free expression work, just to try to squeeze money out of the companies who did innovate, is a cynical and backwards looking move. EU citizens and their elected officials should not allow it to happen.

Filed Under: ancillary tax, angelika niebler, eu, europe, google tax, journalism, julia reda, link tax, media, snippet tax

Austria Wants To Bring In Google Tax For Snippets -- Including Single Words

from the how-low-can-you-go? dept

Here on Techdirt, we have been following with a certain bemusement attempts by a number of European governments to bring in laws that would grant newspaper and magazine owners a special "ancillary" copyright over snippets -- actually a thinly-disguised attempt to tax Google. Despite the miserable failure of this ploy, Austria has decided it wants to join the club, as reported here by the Initiative Against Ancillary Copyright site:

The Austrian proposal is very similar to the German law. Producers of "newspapers and magazines" shall be granted an exclusive right only against commercial providers of search engines and news aggregators. As in Germany, this right is also supposed to only last for one year. But there remains one big difference: The draft does not include an exception for "single words and shortest text-snippets" which expands the scope of the right tremendously!

That's something of an understatement.

Assuming Austria goes ahead and brings in this change (it's currently a draft amendment to the country's copyright law), it will surely learn the hard way that it doesn't help publishers. What's more worrying is that there is an amendment (number 204 - pdf) to the proposed revision of the EU copyright directive, that seeks to bring in this crazy idea across all 28 member states:

Notes that the current legal framework provides for neighbouring rights for performers, phonogram producers, film producers and broadcasting companies, but not for press publishers; calls on the Commission, therefore, to analyse whether neighbouring rights for press publishers can provide appropriate protection and remuneration for their work in a digital media world;

There's an important vote on Tuesday that will determine whether that amendment is adopted, along with some of the hundreds of others that have been proposed. Let's hope that the European politicians bear in mind how badly the idea has turned out every time it has been tried before.

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Filed Under: aggregators, ancillary, ancillary rights, austria, copyright, germany, google tax, snippets
Companies: google

Surprise: Spanish Newspapers Beg Government And EU To Stop Google News Shutting Down

from the bed-made,-lie-in-it dept

Yesterday, we wrote about Google's decision to shut its Google News service in Spain as a result of that country's insane new copyright law. In a move that will surprise no one -- except, perhaps, at how little time it took to happen -- the newspapers association is now begging the Spanish government to do something about the damage the new law, which the publishers lobbied for, is about to wreak on the newspaper industry. The Spain Report explains:

The Spanish Newspaper Publishers' Association (AEDE) issued a statement last night saying that Google News was "not just the closure of another service given its dominant market position", recognising that Google’s decision: "will undoubtedly have a negative impact on citizens and Spanish businesses".

"Given the dominant position of Google (which in Spain controls almost all of the searches in the market and is an authentic gateway to the Internet), AEDE requires the intervention of Spanish and community authorities, and competition authorities, to effectively protect the rights of citizens and companies".

What that intervention might be is not clear. AEDE can hardly expect the Spanish government to pass a new law making it compulsory for Google to keep its Google News service running at a loss. The only workable option is to take the route followed in Germany: to give Google a special deal that allows it to carry on as before, but without having to pay -- which would gut the new copyright law completely.

What makes this situation even more ridiculous is that, according to the ABC.es newspaper, German publishers are now asking Angela Merkel to change the manifestly broken German approach to using news snippets online, by copying the even more backward-looking Spanish law (original in Spanish.) Once again, it seems that an obsession with "protecting" copyright from imaginary harm causes otherwise rational people to lose the ability to think properly.

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Filed Under: ancillary copyright, copyright, google news, google tax, snippets, spain
Companies: google

Spain Passes Copyright Law; Demands Payment For Snippets And Linking To Infringing Content

from the taxing-google dept

Apparently ignoring just how badly this worked out for publishers in Germany, the Spanish Parliament has passed a law to fine aggregators and search engines for using snippets or linking to infringing content. As plenty of folks have described, the bill is clearly just a Google tax. As we had discussed, the proposed bill would be a disaster for digital commons/open access projects. There had been some thought that the proposed bill might be delayed because of a referral to the EU Court of Justice on a related issue, but apparently that didn't happen. Either way, it looks like the bill kept the ridiculous "inalienable right" to being paid for snippets -- meaning that Creative Commons-type licenses may not even be allowed, and people won't even be allowed to offer up their content for free. That's ridiculous.

It appears that almost everyone dislikes the law that passed. On the internet/aggregator side of things, the law doesn't make any sense at all, and seems likely to harm any sort of aggregator setup. And, meanwhile, those who want greater copyright expansion felt the law was a "missed opportunity" that is described as "vague and weak." I guess the silver lining is that "it could have been worse."

This idea of taxing aggregators for promoting your content is still completely ridiculous. It remains to be seen if Google takes the same approach as it did in Germany, removing the snippets of those who protest, only to have them begging to put them back -- except that, unlike in Germany, the newspapers may not be able to grant a free license thanks to the whole "inalienable right" thing. Either way, it's unfortunate that this seems to be the direction Europe is heading in. These kinds of laws are a recipe for chilling effects on innovation online, scaring companies away from doing useful things.

Filed Under: aggregators, copyright, google tax, links, snippets, spain
Companies: google

Europe's New Digital Commissioner Explores Imposing An EU-Wide 'Google Tax'

from the not-learning-from-experience dept

Last week, Techdirt reported on the humiliating and inevitable climbdown by German publishers in their attempt to force Google to pay for daring to drive traffic to their sites by using snippets from their publications. Despite that abject failure, it seems that the European Union's new commissioner for the digital realm, Günther Oettinger, is thinking about bringing in exactly the same misguided idea across the whole of the European Union, as the Handelsblatt newspaper reports (translation by Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda):

When Google is taking intellectual works from within the EU and using them, then the EU has to protect those works and demand a tax from Google.

Coming from the person who is charged with reforming European copyright, this does not augur well. If Oettinger really thinks that such a tax is the way forward for copyright in the digital age, he is evidently as clueless about the Internet as everyone feared he was, after telling the European Parliament that celebrities storing nude pictures online are stupid.

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Filed Under: copyright, eu, europe, google tax, gunther oettinger, snippets
Companies: google

Spain's Ill-Conceived 'Google Tax' Law Likely To Cause Immense Damage To Digital Commons And Open Access

from the digital-cluelessness dept

Techdirt recently wrote about Spain's imminent and almost unbelievably foolish new copyright law designed to prop up old and failing business models in the publishing sector. Mike mentioned that it was potentially disastrous for things like fair use, Creative Commons and public domain material -- so broad is the reach of this new law's "inalienable right" for publishers to be paid when snippets of works appear elsewhere. Now Paul Keller has put together a great post on Communia's blog exploring the details of this particular threat:

The law creates a right for 'electronic content aggregation providers' to use 'non-significant fragments of aggregated content which are disclosed in periodic publications or on websites which are regularly updated' without the permission of the rights holder. However such uses require payment of a 'fair remuneration' to the rights holder (via a collecting society). This is a right that content providers already have and can choose to license or waive assuming the non-significant fragments are copyrightable and absent an applicable exception or limitation. What this new legislation does is eliminate the ability of providers to choose how to exercise this right, and impose a mandatory royalty on reusers even for content that has been made available under a public license such as Creative Commons or that is otherwise available under an exception to copyright or in the public domain.

It's that last fact -- that the mandatory royalty can't be turned off, even for works released under Creative Commons licenses that are explicitly designed to encourage payment-free sharing -- which is so disturbing. It threatens to undermine not only Creative Commons licenses by negating one of their key features, but also the central feature of a digital commons -- that anyone can draw upon it freely in order to create new works that are then returned to an enriched commons for the benefit of all.

I can't believe even the Spanish legislators who put together this misguided law really intended this attack on the Creative Commons world, but that simply suggests they are largely clueless about how the digital world and its commons operate. That's confirmed by another post on this topic, this time from Renata Avila, writing for Global Voices. She explores the likely impact of this new law on another uniquely-digital phenomenon -- open access publishing:

The current reform of Spain's copyright law incorporates a new levy on universities that is related to open access to publications. Under the policy, universities that want to share research or other content for free will be prohibited from doing so beyond the confines of their institution and personnel. In other words, if you are an author from a university and you want to share beyond the academic world and someone links to your journal article, that person must pay even if you do not even want the payment. A percentage of these fees will be collected by the Spanish agency CEDRO (Centro Español de Derechos Reprográficos) and the virtual campuses of universities will be required to comply.

The new law's provisions thus negate the whole point of open access, which is to facilitate the free sharing of academic materials on a global scale so as to accelerate research and its benefits.

That's naturally a tragedy for the researchers who want to share their work so that others can build on it, but it's also a tragedy for Spanish society. If this law is passed, it means two of greatest benefits arising from the widespread use of the Internet -- the creation of a digital commons that can be shared by all, and the wider dissemination of knowledge thanks to open access -- will be seriously harmed. As a consequence, gifted entrepreneurs and academics in Spain are likely to move to other countries with a greater understanding of these matters, helping to drive innovation and intellectual discovery there instead, while Spain may well find itself turning into a digital backwater.

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Filed Under: copyright, digital commons, google news, google tax, inalienable right, open access, snippets, spain
Companies: google