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Response to Google open letter

accc.gov.au

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Re: Response to Google open letter

#81

Post by mcv »

loktarogar wrote: post #30
thu2111 wrote: post #21

I'm very curious how this law wouldn't violate various free trade deals Australia has struck. Surely a tax that explicitly names only foreign companies is the opposite of free trade? Sure, China has driven a truck through the whole concept of the WTO over decades and so I doubt anything will happen. Free trade deals are very much toothless, on the assumption that they are supposed to make sense on their own terms so…

"Pay for what you use" isn't a tax. Also, AFAIK the government gets none of this money, but I might be wrong on that.

You're right, it's not a tax it's an involuntary contract. Google is required to get a license to link to these news sites, and isn't allowed not to link to them or abandon the whole concept of linking to Australian news sites.

It violates every concept of free trade and free enterprise.

I'm all for sensible regulation and taxing big corporations, but this doesn't sound like that.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#82

Post by infinkaramazov »

I'm Australian, and I created an account just to comment on this issue.

Imagine Google News or the Facebook news feed were normal news websites. If you count their traffic as the amount of times people went to those websites just to read news, their raw traffic would dwarf any other news website in Australia by an order of magnitude.

Journalistic websites have editorial standards, and at least some relationship and commitment to the truth (even the Murdoch ones). A news feed, while algorithmically generated, is for all intents and purposes the front page of a newspaper for many, many people.

There is no editor of a news feed. No one checks that what bubbles up to the top passes basic fact checking standards. Most importantly, there's no consequences for misinformation and conspiracy theories being on the same front page as a story about some construction disrupting your commute tomorrow.

The main gist of the new code of conduct, to me, seems like the ability for news websites to collectively bargain with a multinational corporation that essentially controls the news landscape in this country. We aren't the USA. Our news websites aren't the New York Times and the Washington Post. Unfortunately, the two biggest are owned by fairly evil companies (Channel nine and News Corp). Rupert Murdoch himself controls 70% of the Australian media landscape. When he dies, however, this law will still exist.

We've seen the consequences of a journalistic landscape that exists solely through social media without any significant independent news sources in Myanmar in 2015. Australia won't end up like that, but allowing independent journalism to wither on the vine distorts our ability to participate in democracy.

As a collective, if every single news organisation decided to go on strike from Facebook or Google tomorrow, the amount of money advertisers would pay them would drop off a cliff. Google is scared by this because they know that the value they give to the consumer is the sum of Australian journalism, a tasting menu of all the best stuff that newspapers have to offer. Why, then, shouldn't that sum itself have the ability to bargain against Google and get itself a better deal?

Re: Response to Google open letter

#83

Post by zmmmmm »

RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #70
zmmmmm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why you are saying this when every word I cited is literally copied and pasted from the draft legislation? You have cited section 52M(b) as if that is the only clause in that section, ignoring 52M(a) which I have exactly quoted from. Why are you ignoring that subsection?

> I am not sure why you are saying this when every word I cited is literally copied and pasted from the draft legislation? With plenty of ellipses between them, sure! > You have cited section 52M(b) as if that is the only clause in that section, ignoring 52M(a) which I have exactly quoted from. Why are you ignoring that subsection? There is no section 52M(b) or (a). What are you talking about?

> There is no section 52M(b) or (a).

Apologies, everything I am referencing is within 52M section 2.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#84

Post by [deleted] »

fungi wrote: post #57
jay_kyburz wrote: post #46

This whole thing is really weird. We're bending over backwards to try and accommodate Google being allowed to profit from other peoples content. How about we simply ban Google and Facebook from reproducing news on their own site? And if we are truly believe "A healthy news media sector is essential to a well-functioning democracy." we need to punish both Google and content creators for publishing things that are demo…

> How about we simply ban Google and Facebook from reproducing news on their own site? News Corp is and always has been free to not have its content on Google ( https://www.robotstxt.org/ ). But that's not what they want, they want a Money just for appearing in search results. Seems more like a rent seeking for News Corp. > We're bending over backwards to try and accommodate Google The funny/bizzare bit is we are ben…

[deleted]

Re: Response to Google open letter

#85

Post by renaicirc »

clouddrover wrote: post #56
nl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reading the defenses here in HN, I have become personally partial to conspiracy theories that too many paid commenters are among the crowd here. What do you mean? It's a ridiculous, arbitrary money grab used to fund old the old media mates of politicians. See Mike Cannon Brooke's (as someone who most definitely isn't getting paid by Google) thread to see how insane the rules are: https://twitter.com/mcannonbrookes/…

It's about funding journalism. What's Mike Cannon-Brooke's solution for funding journalism?

I'm sorry, but funding media giants is obviously not a good reason to extort search giants. What is the nuance that I am missing?

Re: Response to Google open letter

#87

Post by realmod »

RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #72
shakna wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The news site giving Google the article. As much as I dislike AMP... Google aren't the ones creating the AMP page.

> While AMP itself isn't a ranking factor, speed is a ranking factor for Google Search. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-amp It's pretty blatantly the case that AMP provides a SEO boost. What hosting service could possibly compete with the speed at which Google can retrieve content from their _own_ servers? That's the whole point of this legislation: to give news orgs means to stop Google from t…

Literally ANY content delivery network would be able to compete with google. AMP sites are sites that the companies themselves build for google(could be any cdn) to just cache.

The news organizations themselves gains a lot from google crawling and indexing their sites (which do cost google money) and now this legislation would also require google to pay them for displaying the title/subtitle of their articles. In what world is that fair or balancing out the relationship?

Re: Response to Google open letter

#88

Post by zmmmmm »

chrismorgan wrote: post #69
zmmmmm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why you are saying this when every word I cited is literally copied and pasted from the draft legislation? You have cited section 52M(b) as if that is the only clause in that section, ignoring 52M(a) which I have exactly quoted from. Why are you ignoring that subsection?

“How you can gain access to [SECRET THING]: you can’t.” “How you can gain access to [SECRET THING]: court order.” Given that (2)(a) says “whether or not it shares the data”, it would be bizarre for (2)(e) to mean: “oh by the way, remember that thing from clause (a) that you don’t share (and that we were totally fine with you not sharing)? You’ve got to share it now”.

I think it's equally bizzare to say in (2)(e) that the platform must provide "information about how the registered news business corporation can gain access to the data" and not have a reasonable interpretation of that be that this means it is required to actually provide access to the data. At best it's horrifically badly worded - at worst, deliberately confusing, as if written by a lobbyist.

I interpret (2)(a) to mean, "whether or not it [currently] shares the data".

If the ACCC wanted this to be interpreted as they have written in their press release just now, perhaps they could try putting those words into the actual bill?

Re: Response to Google open letter

#89

Post by clouddrover »

renaicirc wrote: post #85
clouddrover wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about funding journalism. What's Mike Cannon-Brooke's solution for funding journalism?

I'm sorry, but funding media giants is obviously not a good reason to extort search giants. What is the nuance that I am missing?

Google gets content and advertising revenue, journalists are not getting enough return for their work. It's not sustainable.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#90

Post by chrismorgan »

zmmmmm wrote: post #88
chrismorgan wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“How you can gain access to [SECRET THING]: you can’t.” “How you can gain access to [SECRET THING]: court order.” Given that (2)(a) says “whether or not it shares the data”, it would be bizarre for (2)(e) to mean: “oh by the way, remember that thing from clause (a) that you don’t share (and that we were totally fine with you not sharing)? You’ve got to share it now”.

I think it's equally bizzare to say in (2)(e) that the platform must provide "information about how the registered news business corporation can gain access to the data" and not have a reasonable interpretation of that be that this means it is required to actually provide access to the data. At best it's horrifically badly worded - at worst, deliberately confusing, as if written by a lobbyist. I interpret (2)(a) to m…

I agree it could do with rewording for clarification.
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