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

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171–180 of 181 posts

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

#171

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…

> No amount of regulation can change fundamental economic facts.

You know, you should take a course in law. Usually they're given by people with relatively high positions in the justice system. And then, not in the first class, but say the 10th lesson, ask the professor.

"Do tell, prof, do you think lawmakers actually do a good job ?"

And I would expect you then get a 45 minute rant about just how inconsistent, unrealistic, constantly violating basic legal principles, ... lawmakers are. Including several horror stories.

One example given was equality between men and women. Now don't get me wrong, I'm 100% in favor of equality. In marriage, this is pretty new. Unfortunately there's entire books full of laws about how to apply the previous non-equal rules to children, houses, debts, cars, fines, ... and so on and so forth. And the marriage equality law, surely it tells judges how all the other applications of marriage and divorce law now applies, right ?

Heh.

No it doesn't. So we get decades of inconsistent, per-state, ... judgements that get criticized for being, well inconsistent, cruel, corrupt, ... by those very same lawmakers.

Fun, isn't it ?

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

#172
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have the freedom to tell Google to go away, but they don’t have the freedom to extract money from Google. They needed the legislature for that.

What do you mean by "freedom to extract money"? Charge and negotiate? If they don't have the right to negotiate fees for commercial use of their content, that sounds like quite a large missing part that needed adding. Can you explicitly put down a case of something they couldn't do, but now can, and why you think that's a concern? Because I honestly just don't understand the point that people are trying to make with…

They’re making google to pay them by force of law. It’s really that simple.

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

#173
post #43

Most news sites have comment sections. I am wondering if someone could post copyrighted material on purpose in the comment section and use the new EU law to sue publishers.

All of the news site comment sections that I know of are pre-moderated.

Perhaps moderated to prevent hate speech, but I would be strongly surprised if they have a way to moderate against copyright infringement.

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

#174
post #55
post #43

Most news sites have comment sections. I am wondering if someone could post copyrighted material on purpose in the comment section and use the new EU law to sue publishers.

IIRC, according to the new regulations, anything that a user uploads must be pre-screened for copyright violations before being made public.

Which is interesting because that would be unconstitutional in my country (the Netherlands, a member of the EU).

Article 7 of the constitution states that censorship can only happen after the fact, there can be no pre-screening before publication.

I wonder how they will implement the new regulations considering this.

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

#175
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, the EU has a formal definition of a SME: "The category of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is made up of enterprises which employ fewer than 250 persons and which have an annual turnover not exceeding 50 million euro, and/or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding 43 million euro."

The other method is to rearrange the business model to introduce shell SMEs or affiliates that pay licenses for subdomains (or what have you) to corporate and have very small actual roles aside from being the unregulated party. The EU added restrictions related to the data itself to prevent outsourcing the liability in the case of GDPR, it will be interesting to see how well they can define and prevent structuring in…

This line of reasoning (and accepting that it exists / thinking it is normal) is why we're in this mess in the first place.

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

#176
post #156
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ne…

You are aware this is exactly what happens under DMCA?

Yes, and that is ok in the US. We're talking about Europe, where the legislators at least pretend to care about the people they're making laws for.

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

#177
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "freedom to extract money"? Charge and negotiate? If they don't have the right to negotiate fees for commercial use of their content, that sounds like quite a large missing part that needed adding. Can you explicitly put down a case of something they couldn't do, but now can, and why you think that's a concern? Because I honestly just don't understand the point that people are trying to make with…

They’re making google to pay them by force of law. It’s really that simple.

Then they cannot currently be able to stop Google taking their content for commercial use, right?

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

#178
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you'll be able to fill out a form and get an email a day later, "We're sorry, we've reviewed your case but have decided against you (because we have no reason to ever take any risk)" The DMCA is a shining example of just how well these appeals processes work...

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…

> Right holders shall reasonably justify their decisions to avoid arbitrary dismissal of complaints.

Isn't "not wanting to take the legal risk" reasonable justification?

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

#179
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re making google to pay them by force of law. It’s really that simple.

Then they cannot currently be able to stop Google taking their content for commercial use, right?

They sure can, that’s what robots.txt is for.

They want google to continue to index them, and to be paid for that. They have 0 leverage to pull that off, so they’re using the legislature to accomplish it.

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

#180
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they cannot currently be able to stop Google taking their content for commercial use, right?

They sure can, that’s what robots.txt is for. They want google to continue to index them, and to be paid for that. They have 0 leverage to pull that off, so they’re using the legislature to accomplish it.

I think this is going a bit in circles so I assume I'm not being clear, I'll try and be more precise.

There's nothing in the legislation that forces google to index them.

You are saying that companies can:

1. Already stop google indexing the content for commercial use

2. Already negotiate with google for payment for commercial use of the content

What is the additional thing that this is forcing, in your view?

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