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Response to Google open letter

accc.gov.au

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Re: Response to Google open letter

#91

Post by kevincox »

infinkaramazov wrote: post #82

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 c…

For Google at least they have the option to opt-out. They can add a robots.txt file to prevent indexing. It isn't clear to me why special legislation is required to give the media companies bargaining power. They already have the power to say no if they don't think the arrangement is fair.

(For facebook it is less clear, because you can't really force people to stop sharing your links)

Re: Response to Google open letter

#92

Post by [deleted] »

vermilingua wrote: post #59
loktarogar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The government gets this money back in a) “business lunches”, gifts, etc; b) guaranteed industry “jobs” when their political careers end, which is far in the future due to; c) endless re-elections, as the entire media in this country exists as a Liberal Party PR firm.

[deleted]

Re: Response to Google open letter

#93

Post by zmmmmm »

RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #65
zmmmmm wrote: post #40

This is a very disappointing response from the ACCC. It seems to be extremely misleading in its own right. > Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services Google did not state this. The ACCC - the supposed detached "fair" regulator, in charge of creating this code, just made something up to suit their own ends. > Google will not be required to share any additional user data with A…

> > Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services > Google did not state this. Google did say that this legislation would: > put the free services you use at risk in Australia. That's implying that either the services would go, or they would no longer be free.

> That's implying that either the services would go, or they would no longer be free.

No it's not ... it just implies they could be harmed (damaged, degraded). For example as Google's letter goes on to explain in detail, things like "...Google Search results and YouTube will be worse for you". Google actually wrote these harms into their letter. To pretend an alternative interpretation is viable when they explicitly elaborated their meaning right after they wrote that sentence is highly misleading.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#94

Post by jacquesm »

detaro wrote: post #67
RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services > Google did not state this. Google did say that this legislation would: > put the free services you use at risk in Australia. That's implying that either the services would go, or they would no longer be free.

That doesn't mean that the law explicitly requires that. Just that Google thinks running the service for free might not be viable.

No, that's just Google's way of trying to mobilize the general public to work their case for them. A little bit of blackmail.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#95

Post by [deleted] »

zmmmmm wrote: post #63
RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Google will not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news businesses You misquoted the legislation. It says that the digital platform must provide to the news organisations: > a list and explanation of the data that the digital platform service collects (whether or not it shares the data with the registered news business) A _list and explanation of_ the data. Not the data itself. > The AC…

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?

[deleted]

Re: Response to Google open letter

#97

Post by renaicirc »

cwhiz wrote: post #73

I am for any law or policy that hurts Google. And I really don’t care whether it’s fair or unfair. I’m not sure any two companies have caused more worldwide carnage, in the history of the world, than FB and Google.

I'd say News Corp (Fox News, Sky News, NY Post, etc.) ranks pretty high on the list of damaging companies, and this law was clearly written to benefit them.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#98

Post by jacquesm »

When Murdoch and Google duke it out using the Australian people as their human shield I find nothing to be happy about and plenty to be sad about. Both parties here are disingenuous about their stated positions, both are rather cynical in how the perform their negotiations. In the end the public, no matter what, will end up the loser because neither of these parties has their best interest at heart. Murdoch just wants money, Google wants to get as much content as they can for free and meanwhile whatever they agree on will be paid for by the public in one way or another. This is a disgusting spectacle at many levels.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#99

Post by Krisando »

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…

re: bananaface

> I don't like the news media but they can't just "not appear" on Google's results. Google has way more leverage than them. Their choices are: accept Google stealing your content and giving you some traffic in return, or die. It's like saying, "you're free not to farm on your feudal overlord's land." Where else are you going to go?

>

> The problem isn't a matter of rights, it's that Google has too much power. Individuals can't exert any leverage, they have to accept Google's terms. I don't think that's healthy, it's quite dangerous actually. The only way to address that is a collective intervention.

The leverage is that you stop using Google to get news, no?

Re: Response to Google open letter

#100

Post by throwaways885 »

clouddrover wrote: post #89
renaicirc wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe news isn't sustainable in the long run anyway. Independent journalists (who CAN survive on 50k-150k in ad revenue) are the future.
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