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France rules Google must pay news firms for content

reuters.com

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Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#111

Post by samatman »

bgorman wrote: post #94

The problem is that "press freedom" as a right should not mean "The press MUST receive leads through all search engines and the search engines MUST pay for doing so". "Press freedom" historically means that the press can publish anything factual, artistic, or opinion based without fear of government censorship or retribution. We are seeing the EU and various EU countries redefine fundamental terms for entirely differ…

> the country that was the inspiration for the US independence.

The United States declared independence in 1776, and the storming of the Bastille was in 1789.

I'm pretty sure the arrow of causality runs in the opposite direction from what you describe.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#112

Post by satyrnein »

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…

How can someone negotiate a rate without the ability to walk away?

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#113

Post by ocdtrekkie »

imgabe wrote: post #108
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.

The newspapers are providing their data for free to anyone who visits their website, assuming it's not behind a paywall. Google isn't forcing them to do that. If they want people to have to pay for it, make that a requirement of visiting the site.

Many do. However, then Google punishes their search rankings for having a paywall. Forcing them to offer their data for free if they want to show up in search.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#114

Post by Eridrus »

smogcutter wrote: post #29

I get that HN hates journalists, but other than that I don’t see why people are on google’s side here. Is it about personal convenience? If you want to scrape someone else’s work and display it next to your own ads, it doesn’t seem crazy to ask you to pay up.

Maybe you can file this under hating journalists, but it seems like a culturally and politically influential industry trying to extract money from everyone else.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#115

Post by wolco »

jstanley wrote: post #18
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially France has now said refusing to list sites unless they grant the right to do it for free is illegal. Because the only reason Google has the power to demand free access is their monopoly. They have demanded Google negotiate a fair price for the ability to display the news snippets.

Given that the "fair price" is 0, that shouldn't make a lot of difference,

They should offer a revenue share for all ads on the newspaper pages. And force them to use adsense.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#117

Post by matheusmoreira »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #92
matheusmoreira wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

So essentially each country has control of the physical structure within their borders. This is not different from any other technology. Now, a country can then hold anything they control as collateral for any other demand they make: France could block a site from the country, they could seize any assets that site has in the country, or arrest personnel in that country. France has a vested interest in not overplaying…

> France could block a site from the country

That's exactly what will turn the international network into regional ones with tightly controlled borders. Large groups of people simply won't be reachable from the outside. My country blocked WhatsApp for several days when it couldn't decrypt messages for the benefit of an investigation.

> they could seize any assets that site has in the country, or arrest personnel in that country

And then countries will start requiring that all data concerning their citizens be stored on computers located on their soil and therefore under their jurisduction. That almost made it into law here. How many sites are just gonna block the entire country in response to that? How many are going to be blocked for not complying?

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#119

Post by wolco »

_8j50 wrote: post #88
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who benefits whom? Does Google gain more from listing the sites, or do the sites gain more from being listed? (They're selling ads to make money, too, you know.) I would guess that a news site makes more out of having an article listed than Google does from listing the article. It seems a bit unreasonable to make Google also pay. Why not have the news site pay to be listed? They're making money from it, too...

I think you are only looking at the most obvious at the expense of everything else. Ig google is my go to place for news, I would also use them to search for either news related or unrelated terms. If all news sites were unlisted from Google but remained on Bing, Bing's search revenue would increase and Google's will decrease. I don't know who makes more money out of the relationship, that is not the problem here. Ev…

You think people would switch to bing because news sites were delisted? Many of us would be happy to get back non-official news sources back in the first page of google.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#120

Post by noarchy »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #40
jimmaswell wrote: post #4

Europe's not going to stop until the internet is totally burned to the ground, are they?

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.

>Every country wants to impose its own laws on it in order to guarantee the rights of their citizens.

I think that is a very charitable interpretation of what they're imposing, though it may not have been your intent. Rather than "guarantee rights", I think it is just an attempt to assert their powers as governments. Hence the push to collect taxes on internet services, break encryption, and so forth.

But yes, we're heading toward an increasingly-balkanized Internet.

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