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The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

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Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#141

Post by dannyobrien »

AnssiH wrote: post #98
paol wrote: post #9

I'm a lot less worried about the "link tax" clauses than the copyright liability clause. Not because the link tax is a good idea but because it's a spectacular own goal that is mainly going to hurt the idiots who lobbied for it. Giving companies direct liability for policing copyright in user-uploaded content is a much bigger disaster, on two separate fronts, both highly damaging: 1) Implementing youtube-style conten…

> 1) Implementing youtube-style content id will be a huge burden for small companies. I will be extremely surprised if that will be required from small companies, considering the directive expressly says that "special account shall be taken of [...] ensuring that the burden on SMEs remains appropriate and that automated blocking of content is avoided." (SME = Small and medium-sized enterprises) There is also no langu…

You're citing the European Parliament language; the current ongoing trilogue negotiation is between this and the original council text. The SME exemption is seen as a controversial addition by some of the Council negotiators, and may go away or be watered down.

The current proposed Presidency compromise text has been leaked, and you can read it here: https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SPOLITICO... , pg 22 onwards. (The EU Presidency is seen as the independent negotiator in the discussions.)

A couple of things to note -- this "compromise" text moves Article 13 into being a blanket liability, which means that intermediaries can be sued unless they get prior authorisation from all rightsholders. Given that anyone is a rightsholder for their own material, that seems... unlikely. The only conceivable alternative under the rest of the proposal is some sort of copyright filter — but even then, it has to be effectively perfect, so that's potentially not enough.

The other point is to note that under this language, being an SME is one of seven factors that may or may not make you liable; thus injecting even more uncertainty into whether you will be liable for the actions of your users.

(Disclosure: I work at EFF, and have been tracking this for some time.)

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#142

Post by comex »

ryukafalz wrote: post #112
jasode wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there's no reason someone couldn't make a small bit of desktop software which, fed AWS/Azure/GCP/DO/ The gp (notatoad) mentioned technical skill as a barrier and you responded to that point but easy-to-use idiot-proof software isn't really the issue. The bigger problem(s) mega-sites like Youtube solves is financial . When one uploads a video to Youtube, it doesn't matter if it gets 0 views or 1 billion views. The co…

>Hosting it on one's own with AWS/Azure/GCP/DigitalOcean/etc will have variable egress costs and budgeting/forecasting a potential expense of thousands of dollars is not something regular people want to tackle. Peer-to-peer distribution systems like BitTorrent, IPFS, and Dat are a good solution to this; distribution actually gets easier and cheaper as demand for a file increases.

Then you run into the opposite problem: if a video is not popular (which applies to most videos), P2P distribution relies on the uploader continually seeding it. That requires disk space to spare, fast upload speeds (since making viewers wait to start watching the video would be a massive downgrade from YouTube), and an always-on computer of some sort — which, if you don’t own a desktop PC (and aren’t a nerd who already has a NAS at home), needs to be a new purchase.

I’d like to see a hybrid solution that combines the best of both worlds: for “base load”, there’s be a decentralized market to pay for storage and seeding, ala Filecoin; for videos that become popular, viewers would also automatically seed while and after they watch them. Actually, I’d be shocked if there wasn’t already an ICO or two with this exact idea. (Googled it; more like five.) We’ll see if anything actually takes off.

Still, it’s going to take a lot to beat YouTube’s offer. $0 to have unlimited videos stored forever, re-encoded in various quality levels, and streamed to anyone on demand via a fast CDN – with no ads, unless you choose to enable them on your video in exchange for a cut of revenue. And it’s not like that’s only possible because Google’s unsustainably throwing money in a hole. While they don’t disclose revenue or cost figures, rumors hold that YouTube is anywhere from breaking even to already profitable, and it’s certainly meant to be a profit source in the future. It’s a classic example of an economy of scale. YouTube is certainly losing money on the long tail of videos, but in exchange they get all the popular videos on their platform, which make enough money to pay for everything. It’s hard for decentralized to compete with that. Less hard as costs go down over time, perhaps – but still hard.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#143

Post by ocdtrekkie »

vorpalhex wrote: post #139
ForHackernews wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don't we just make Google give every news org a few million a year then? That sounds sensible enough to me. As an example, Canada taxed blank CDs and CDR drives and distributed the revenue to their music industry.

I suppose my sarcasm wasn't indicated well enough. Google doesn't have any special duty to fund the news, anymore than Zuckerberg does personally, or George Soros, or any other financier. You can't just go around and demand someone pays for something you think is important.

The issue is that Google is, in fact, scraping news content and delivering it to users while cutting the creators of that news out of the revenue. Google doesn't have a "special duty" to fund the news, it has an obligation to pay for what it's taking, usually without permission to do so.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#144

Post by wmf »

c16 wrote: post #22

What's stopping Google from refusing to pay the news sites, thus de-indexing them from Google entirely? If the relationship is "pay me for my content", then refusing to serve links to their media is absolutely within their rights. Only the publishers have something to lose here.

The next step is probably a version of "must carry" for the Internet where Google is required by law to index news and required by law to pay for it.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#145

Post by deckar01 »

cr0sh wrote: post #140
deckar01 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes complete sense to me. There is no reason that posting content to a platform that millions of people could see should be free or instant. Other publishing platforms take responsibility for their content, and it costs them money that Google isn't spending, because it would rather spend it on legal on the back end. I wonder if any platform has ever created a moderation system that can acheive this scale. I im…

> There is no reason that posting content to a platform that millions of people could see should be free or instant. So if someone is on a particular platform, such as the one we're currently using, and they post a base64 encoded image, or article, or whatever... ...you really want every possible comment screened, paid for, or be delayed in some manner so someone or something can check that the data is legit? That ca…

I am not talking about automating things, but rather setting up a system of self-governance. What if posting a video required you to review other peoples' videos to earn the right to post? And if you deviate from the majority opinion you get penalized? Like captcha, this would solve a problem by aligning incentives and solving a massive problem with a massively distributed workforce of real people doing small tasks.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#146

Post by troygoode »

devman0 wrote: post #120
IanCal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem though is not that aggregators link to the news articles, but the concern of them containing so much And if Google are making a profit by bringing eyeballs to their site using other people's content, shouldn't it be up to the people who created that content to choose how to negotiate that? They're free to let Google take the content for free / pay Google to take the content if they want, unless there's so…

They already have that freedom. They can post a robots.txt that tells Google to not index certain content.

But then how would they eat their cake and have it, too?

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#147

Post by ucaetano »

reaperducer wrote: post #30
vesinisa wrote: post #27

The very idea that the aggregator (Google) should pay the advertisers (news sites) for directing traffic to them is just patently absurd. By common sense, it should be the other way around. Sadly, the traditional media has a massive conflict of interest here, so the issue passed at least in my part of EU with little to no ado. But once the member states start enacting the directive to legislation, the manure will sur…

Is Google News really that big a deal for publishers? Considering all the places where they voluntarily put their content (Facebook, Twitter, Apple News, etc...), is the loss of Google News really a problem? I don't see anything magic about Google News that isn't done better (Apple News), or more thoroughly (Twitter) elsewhere.

> Is Google News really that big a deal for publishers?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study-shows-...

https://www.aeepp.com/pdf/InformeNera.pdf

The NERA analysis found a 6 percent overall drop in traffic from the Spanish Google News closure and a 14 percent drop for smaller publications. Those numbers are slightly smaller than a GigaOm analysis from last year, which found traffic drop-offs of 10 to 15 percent.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#148

Post by IanCal »

zaroth wrote: post #115
AnssiH wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that would satisfy the requirements of the directive: > Any complaint filed under such mechanisms shall be processed without undue delay and be subject to human review. Right holders shall reasonably justify their decisions to avoid arbitrary dismissal of complaints. It also requires Member States to ensure "that users have access to an independent body for the resolution of disputes as well as to a cou…

So damned if you do and damned if you don’t? How does this right here not destroy the prospect of any small company trying to scale operations in this space? From the company’s perspective, it’s like a DDoS attack that is illegal to defend yourself against.

Small companies have lower requirements for what they need to do under the directive.

About the measures taken, for example:

> The measures should be proportionate in order to avoid imposing disproportionately complicated or costly obligations on certain online content sharing service providers, taking into account notably their small size.

For small/micro enterprises this then means that for the DDoS attack you'd need the rightsholders to invalidly notify of large amounts of content that needs removing (each one specifically) which must be done with the intent of killing off the platform. Would that be legal? To submit false claims deliberately to hurt the company?

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#149

Post by IanCal »

devman0 wrote: post #120
IanCal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem though is not that aggregators link to the news articles, but the concern of them containing so much And if Google are making a profit by bringing eyeballs to their site using other people's content, shouldn't it be up to the people who created that content to choose how to negotiate that? They're free to let Google take the content for free / pay Google to take the content if they want, unless there's so…

They already have that freedom. They can post a robots.txt that tells Google to not index certain content.

I don't understand.

If they already have the ability and protection for all of this, what difference does the legislation make? If not, how do they already have this freedom?

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#150

Post by flukus »

Kalium wrote: post #52
eiaoa wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Local and major news sites alike, are cesspoools of intrusive advertising and tracking. They’re so poorly built, with so much advertising, that they hardly even function any longer. But that's an effect , though maybe one that will create a vicious cycle. It's not the cause. The revenue rug was pulled out from under local news websites, and they're struggling to keep the lights on. Advertising and tracking are how…

Local news organizations have always been required to maintain two competencies - advertising and journalism. This predates Google News, Google, and indeed the internet. You're completely right about the absolutely critical importance of a free, open, and brave press. Yet it's possible that this particular business problem, the one you have so wisely and correctly pointed to, is not novel. Newspapers historically hav…

> Local news organizations have always been required to maintain two competencies - advertising and journalism. This predates Google News, Google, and indeed the internet.

3. Distribution.

News organisations like the music industry before them need to realize that a huge part of what people used to pay them for was the reliable distribution of their product. This and the markup on it was where they made their profits and now its gone.

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