France rules Google must pay news firms for content • Hacker News Board

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#71

Post by westurner » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

Website monetization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_monetization

Web Monetization API (ILP: Interledger Protocol)

> A JavaScript browser API which allows the creation of a payment stream from the user agent to the website.

> Web Monetization is being proposed as a #W3C standard at the Web Platform Incubator Community Group.

https://webmonetization.org/

Interledger: Web Monetization API https://interledger.org/rfcs/0028-web-monetization/

Khan Academy, for example, accepts BAT (Basic Attention Token) micropayments/microdonations that e.g. Brave browser users can opt to share with the content producers and indexers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Basic_Atte...

Web Monetization w/ Interledger should enable any payments system with low enough transaction costs ("ledger-agnostic, currency agnostic") to be used to pay/tip/donate to content producers who are producing unsensational, unbiased content that people want to pay for.

Paywalls/subscriptions and ads are two other approaches to funding quality journalism.

Should journalists pay ScholarlyArticle authors whose studies they publish summaries of without even citing the DOI/URL and Title; or the journals said ScholarlyArticles are published in? https://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#72

Post by matheusmoreira » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #62

matheusmoreira wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet was never going to last anyway. Every country wants to impose its own laws on it in order to guarantee the rights of their citizens. Instead of one international network, we'll end up with many national networks with strictly controlled boundaries. I'm fortunate I got to know the true internet. Truly one of the great wonders of this world.

The Internet isn't a magical virtual destination immune to the law. It's a communication technology, and like fax, the telephone, and the postal system before it, it runs within the framework of laws of the countries it operates in.

"The" law? There are as many as there are sovereign nations. Are foreigners subjected to your country's laws when they post on your site? No. Your laws cannot be enforced because those people aren't subjected to it. Like an embassy on foreign soil, you have no actual power over those people.

This very site's terms of service infringes my rights by requiring arbitration. Can I do anything about it by legal means? Who knows? Could I even sue them to begin with? Could they even sue me? Do the terms even matter at all?

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#73

Post by PunksATawnyFill » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

Reventlov wrote: post #57

The actual PDF of the decision is there: https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/sites/default/files/i... The arguments are: - Press freedom is a fundamental right - The press is not in its best state right now in France, so hitting them (for example, removing them from the search result from Google, which is in a monopoly position) is dangerous for the press freedom - Google did not try to negotiate a fair price for…

These claims seem irrelevant, inaccurate, or dumb.

Google News only shows brief abstracts from each article, and drives traffic to the publications' own sites. It's free advertising! How is this at all BAD for the publications?

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#74

Post by Reventlov » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

PunksATawnyFill wrote: post #73

Reventlov wrote: post #57

The actual PDF of the decision is there: https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/sites/default/files/i... The arguments are: - Press freedom is a fundamental right - The press is not in its best state right now in France, so hitting them (for example, removing them from the search result from Google, which is in a monopoly position) is dangerous for the press freedom - Google did not try to negotiate a fair price for…

These claims seem irrelevant, inaccurate, or dumb. Google News only shows brief abstracts from each article, and drives traffic to the publications' own sites. It's free advertising! How is this at all BAD for the publications?

It's not bad, but they are not paying for this content, even if they have an incentive to display these abstracts (people using their tools). The law regarding the « droits voisins » (related rights) says it's a right to get a fair price for people using your content, and that's why Google has to pay if they want to display the content.

As google is in a monopoly position, they can not refuse to display them (without even having tried to find a fair price) as it would hurt press (and, doing so, press freedom, which is a fundamental right in france).

You may think it's dumb, you may think it's not, I'm not debating this, I'm just stating what is the position of the lawmaker and the court.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#75

Post by neilparikh » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

Udik wrote: post #65

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially France has said Google, being a monopoly, is not allowed to refuse to provide this service. They must do it, they must pay for it.

Solution: keep running google news, but without the snippets. You search for news, you get a set of mute links to articles from various sources.

According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22843579 , the court forbid that as well.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#76

Post by eric1293 » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:43 PM UTC

This is typical of France. You must provide this service and you must pay.

I recommend Google cutting limiting its services to France.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#77

Post by Reventlov » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:43 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #63

Reventlov wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the decision covers the fact google search is a monopoly. Not google news. Google, being in a monopoly position in terms of search, can forces newspaper to provide their data for free, which is unfair. If google wasn't in a monopoly (for search), it wouldn't be a problem. So, yes, indeed, Google can stop providing search for the whole France.

> Google, being in a monopoly position in terms of search, can forces newspaper to provide their data for free, which is unfair It should be able to just de-list news sources for French searchers. Again, I can’t see this surviving a non-French EU court. If it did, zeroing resources to crawling French news sites would be a reasonable response. All that said, this is a silly way to go about subsidising local news. If F…

>If France wants its newspapers, subsidise them.

It's already done, let's note.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#78

Post by inetsee » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:44 PM UTC

Udik wrote: post #65

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially France has said Google, being a monopoly, is not allowed to refuse to provide this service. They must do it, they must pay for it.

Solution: keep running google news, but without the snippets. You search for news, you get a set of mute links to articles from various sources.

That's what Google already did. The results include the article titles, but no longer include the snippets that expanded on the information in the title.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#79

Post by panzagl » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:48 PM UTC

Udik wrote: post #65

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially France has said Google, being a monopoly, is not allowed to refuse to provide this service. They must do it, they must pay for it.

Solution: keep running google news, but without the snippets. You search for news, you get a set of mute links to articles from various sources.

That was specifically denied by the ruling.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#80

Post by pdkl95 » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:48 PM UTC

qnsi wrote: post #60

pdkl95 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google News doesn't have ads A traditional abuse of monopoly power is providing a good or service at a loss to gain control of a new market.

No. In traditional sense it's having higher not lower price, forcing buyers to pay more. Monopoly by definition already has 100% of the market

> it's having higher not lower price, forcing buyers to pay more.

Exerting control over a market to raise prices is another traditional method for abusing monopoly power. This isn't what Google is doing re: news.

The method I'm referring to is where Google uses their existing monopoly position in one market (search) to exert control over another market (news publishing). See "predatory pricing", "dumping".

> Monopoly by definition already has 100% of the market

That is one definition. Other definitions are based on having the power to control a market, which doesn't always require having a particular share of a market.