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

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#141

Post by travisoneill1 » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

Reventlov wrote: post #74

PunksATawnyFill wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How would this hurt press freedom? You are still allowed to print what you want. Press freedom is not an entitlement to an audience.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#142

Post by droithomme » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

Reventlov wrote: post #45

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> France has said Google, being a monopoly, is not allowed to refuse to provide this service If it’s not providing the service, it’s no longer a monopoly. Assuming this will survive European appeal, which I don’t, one could yank all resources and cap e.g. bandwidth to Google News France. The aim isn’t to cripple the product. It’s to limit costs on a statutorily lossmaking product.

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 fact google search is a monopoly

Except it's not. I never use Google, I use DuckDuckGo. If DDG fails I try Bing. I have google and facebook domains blocked from access in my system because I don't like their tracking. Lots of other people search without Google. Google is simply not a monopoly in the search game.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#143

Post by zajio1am » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #14

fab13n wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's exactly what they did last year when the law came into force. Then newspapers could fill a form begging Google to accept their content for free, which most of them did. I don't know what this post refers to, haven't had time to check yet.

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.

> Because the only reason Google has the power to demand free access is their monopoly.

That is not really obvious

Consired situation where Google is not a monopoly and there is active market with search engines and each search engine needs to establish contract with each news site.

Now consider case where one search engine that already has contracts with half of all news sites is negotiating a contract with a news site that already has contracts with half search engines.

Who gains more from such contract? I would guess that the news site, becase such contract would directly lead to higher ad revenue, while for search engine it would lead to better search results that may or may not lead to higher ad revenue, but the effect would be most likely sublinear.

Therefore, marginal utility of contract is higher for news site and it is possible that in negotiation search engine could got payments from it.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#144

Post by edmundsauto » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

franczesko wrote: post #118

Google needs to finally stop being a parasite - both on the economy and other people's work. The content is not theirs. Pay up and support the ecosystem, if you want to use it.

It looks like the decision also said Google aren't allowed to remove the results.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#145

Post by droithomme » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #113

imgabe wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The newspapers should pay Google if they want to be listed.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#146

Post by bgorman » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

simo_dax wrote: post #128

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.

Germany is an example of how European countries do not have as strong protection for freedom of religion and freedom of speech in the US.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#147

Post by edmundsauto » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #132

franczesko wrote: post #118

Google needs to finally stop being a parasite - both on the economy and other people's work. The content is not theirs. Pay up and support the ecosystem, if you want to use it.

How exactly is Google the parasite here? They are only providing links to content since the publishers didn't want them to provide snippets or previews. So literally the only thing that Google is providing is a link to the content on the publisher's site.

It's more than a link, it's a snippet with the tldr of the article. Google's purpose in doing that is to answer the user's query without directing them to the news site.

Users love this -- I know that I do! But France is basically saying, if you want access to our population, you'll have to play by our rules. I think that is also fair; Google certainly plays by local rules elsewhere.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#148

Post by anfilt » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

While I an not a fan of google for a lot reasons this decision is pretty wacky.

This ruling says google must provide a service, but they must also pay those who use it... How does this make any sense. It’s akin to the government forcing someone to stand at a street corner shouting and advertising for someone. However, every-time a persons goes into the business because your advertising you must pay that business...

Like can google just pull out France? I don't see how anyone could negotiate under such insanity?

Like the bigger issue is BS like AMP that will take traffic away from the sites. Why is that not a concern... Where as indexing things is an old idea. Like if you applied this to card catalogs, phone books, and heck references in papers this ruling makes no sense.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#149

Post by droithomme » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

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,

I disagree. I think a fair price is below zero. The news sites should pay Google if they want their sites listed.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#150

Post by neil_s » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

I think seeing this as an antagonistic situation between Google and the news sites is less than ideal. Google provides value to the news sites by driving traffic to them, and Publishers provide value to Google by helping provide more complete search results. If we could help the Publishers have more sustainable ways to make meaningful revenues off traffic once it visits the site, they wouldn't be trying to bite the arm that feeds them traffic. But instead of the news industry and the government trying to find ways to sustainably pay for news in an "information abundance" economy, they're turning their sights to a company that happens to have a large wallet but has already demonstrated it would get more value out of simply turning off news (like in Spain) than paying for the content because the fair value of showing the snippets or even the article links is far too low to it.