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

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#121

Post by akiselev » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:42 PM UTC

satyrnein wrote: post #112

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?

They do have the ability to walk away - just like users have the ability to walk away from Google. They can cease operations in France and remove themselves from France's jurisdiction (probably the whole EU, including their wonderful little tax haven). They did it to China once, if I remember correctly, after a series of state sponsored Gmail breaches. Don't want to pay? Don't participate.

I'm enjoying the schadenfreud even though I'm terrified of the implications for the rest of tech.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#122

Post by _8j50 » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #119

_8j50 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They wouldn't switch but if you are on bing already looking for news you will use bing more which means google less

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#123

Post by Quanttek » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #100

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…

> Google is discriminatory as it applies to newspapers equal treatments, even if they are in different situations This would appear to be the opposite of what "discriminatory" means.

Quite the opposite. The core idea of anti-discrimination law is simple: Treat people the same where they are the same and treat people different where they are different. Here the example of the rough sleeping tax applying equally to the homeless and those with homes is often used to illustrate latter.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#124

Post by fllsdf » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

Multicomp wrote: post #21

blakesterz wrote: post #5

I think this is the actual judgement? https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/fr/communiques-de-pre... This techcrunch post has more details than Reuters: https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/09/frances-competition-watchd... Abusive practices the agency says it suspects Google of at this stage of its investigation are: The imposition of unfair trading conditions; circumvention of the law; and discrimination (i.e. because of…

> discrimination (i.e. because of its unilateral policy of zero renumeration for all publishers) Umm ianal but isn't saying all publishers don't get paid the opposite of discrimination? If they said some American companies get paid but not french etc I would totally get it.

Inal either but the way the court phrases it in the press release is that google negociated a free use licence with everyone, regardless of their financial situations, using their dominant position on the market to "force" everyone.

A way of seeing this is that it might be fine for the big players for national and international news (Le monde, Le figaro ...) , but probably has a much bigger impact on small news outlet, because if they dont agree they are at a disadvatage obviously, so they cannot afford to say no, but at the same time they might already be in a difficult financial position, and that revenu might have helped.

The key part is that google had no real justification according to the court to treat everyone the same way, and that consitutes discrimination.

It seems a bit weird to me too but you could make a parallel to a school that has a set meal price for every student, regardless of parent income.This would obviously be discriminating towards the poorer students.

Now whether google is a public service the way school lunches are is up for debate but i think it basically comes down to equality vs equity

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#125

Post by wolco » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

boudin wrote: post #102

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...

Google without any content to list will be kinda useless. As a user, a search engine that decides to not list some content for this kind of reason makes it a quite bad search engine.

Without any content? These newspaper make up less content than a needle in a haystack.

If google just listed twitter results that would fill the information void immediately.

If alt publishers were promoted maybe more opinions would be exposed.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#126

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:45 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?

Because they don't want people to learn about a topic by going to Google and entering a search term and then clicking on the links that they are free to use. This workflow inherently routes around publications requiring a subscription fee unless they have something unique to offer. It also tends to drive revenue towards zero whichis an existential threat.

In truth paying for journalism going forward is going to be a difficult problem made more difficult by the fact that most of the money spent on journalism does not go directly to people who produce value like editors, analysts, photographers, journalists but instead goes to buildings and busines people.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#127

Post by Nerdfest » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #86

panzagl wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. In most cases even individual persons should have more power and authority than actual nations.

Individuals? Yeah. Corporations? No. There is a significant power difference between individuals and corporations and it should be balanced by justice.

Damn, did we ever get that one wrong.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#128

Post by simo_dax » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

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…

> Germany is run by a Christian political party. In addition to no longer being able to advocate for Nazi politics in Germany, now you cannot speak about certain facts that have occurred in the past

What did I just read.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#129

Post by mjfl » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:49 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…

> Google tries to bypass the spirit of the law, which is for newspapers to get paid for their content by people using their content, and Google can do so because it's in a monopoly position in search

I don't understand. Google would display titles but not content on their news site, users would have to click through to the actual news website to read the story, and thus the news site would make money off those clicks. You could thus argue that Google was paying for the titles by directing users /clicks to the site?

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#130

Post by wolco » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:51 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #34

trekrich wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should, and when they come back asking for it all to be undone they should say no. Let them swim for a little bit so france does not try this again. This was tried in spain, and quickly reversed.

So what you're saying is Google should have more power and authority than actual nations.

Should easter island be able to demand you pay them because one of its citizens visited your site?

Should you cane a female employee because a nation demanded it?

Nations shouldn't have unlimited power over a company.