Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#11

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #2

On one hand, if there is a new media outlet via new distribution model that's winning the market, fair. So if an online-only news source is taking away traffic and money away from physical newspapers, there's part of me that'll feel sad, but whatcha gonna do. On the other hand though, it's a completely different model in my mind to scrape/link/copy/extract somebody else's hard work and news and editorials; and then b…

News has always enjoyed / suffered a tricky carve-out in our understanding of the interaction between the first amendment and copyright because (by its nature) its value to the public is in dissemination.

So while it's generally not okay to wholesale-copy a news article, it's always been okay to quote it (and, in the concrete and particular case of Google and Facebook, it's also always been okay to point people to it).

So the disruption of the revenue model (surprise; turns out people were only getting the ads as a consequence of buying the paper, they weren't why they bought the paper) is particularly tough because the core activity that is disrupting the model (making news universally accessible and useful) is by itself a public good.

(It's worth noting that the newspapers in this story have to go through the anti-trust door on this topic specifically because [I assume] there isn't any meat on the bones of claiming ownership of the news Facebook / Google are aggregating.)

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#12

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

freediver wrote: post #4

Newspapers allowed Google and Facebook to drag them to their territory of online ad-monetized business models in which they have no way of competing (because of tech discrepancy). This then led to deterioration of journalism and its inevitable transformation into sensationalism and entertainment, again driven by the incentives of the ad-monetized business model, because clickbait makes more ad money. It is a sad stat…

[deleted]

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#13

Post by yawaworht1978 » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

The newspapers have missed the opportunity to monetize for themselves and now need to roll out everything anew.

As they should, today's google amp links are much worse content wise than daily mail articles, and that's one hell of a low bar.

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#14

Post by imachine1980_ » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #10

cageface wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers and magazines have derived most of their revenue from ads since long before Google and Facebook. They're lucky to break even on subscription fees.

Seriously newspapers spent the entire 20th century charging people as much as $100 for classified ads, job postings, real estate listings, etc. Craigslist murdered them and they deserved it . Everything after that has been sour grapes.

Do you realy think the value they give to communities is less than have 100$ job post

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#15

Post by 13415 » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #2

On one hand, if there is a new media outlet via new distribution model that's winning the market, fair. So if an online-only news source is taking away traffic and money away from physical newspapers, there's part of me that'll feel sad, but whatcha gonna do. On the other hand though, it's a completely different model in my mind to scrape/link/copy/extract somebody else's hard work and news and editorials; and then b…

Potentially stupid questions: Aren't there efficient techniques to prevent web scraping? And if Google really scrapes web content from them without their permission, wouldn't that be commercial copyright infringement which falls under criminal law?

That's the thing I don't understand about the current situation.

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#16

Post by jeffbee » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

imachine1980_ wrote: post #14

jeffbee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously newspapers spent the entire 20th century charging people as much as $100 for classified ads, job postings, real estate listings, etc. Craigslist murdered them and they deserved it . Everything after that has been sour grapes.

Do you realy think the value they give to communities is less than have 100$ job post

My local newspaper is a notoriously worthless rag that has probably done more to harm humanity than to benefit it, including starting a major war.

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#17

Post by briffle » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

mdoms wrote: post #9

freediver wrote: post #4

Newspapers allowed Google and Facebook to drag them to their territory of online ad-monetized business models in which they have no way of competing (because of tech discrepancy). This then led to deterioration of journalism and its inevitable transformation into sensationalism and entertainment, again driven by the incentives of the ad-monetized business model, because clickbait makes more ad money. It is a sad stat…

News media organisations were forced into bed with Google and Facebook by a tragedy of the commons. Readership was going to go to those platforms as long as any small proportion of media organisations published there. Smaller orgs like the ones involved in these lawsuits had only two options - publish on FB/G or miss out on a large proportion of readership. > monetize like news were monetized for hundreds of years -…

My local paper was bought by USA Today. They shut down the printing press, and laid off everyone except a literally handful of reporters/staff. Printing is done at another paper they bought in another medium sized town 60 miles away.

They increased the cost of the paper subscription (even online) and force us view the ads, even with a online subscription. Last time I looked at a giant Sunday paper, 3 articles were local, and from the reporters, the rest was from the USA today pool reporters or AP. The other fun thing was cancelling, that requires a telephone call, only during east coast business hours (we are west coast) and then 20 min of them doing anything they could to keep me from actually cancelling.

they can F-ck off and die.

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#18

Post by jimbob45 » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #5

First, there's no mention of the legal theory under which they're claiming damages. Is this something to do with caching, aggregation, AMP, or what? The only thing the article touches on is Google being a monopoly for ads, but that would seem to be a very small part of how Google contributed to undermining the news industry. Also even if these newspapers are successful, does anyone foresee any of the damages actually…

I agree. Any time I see daydreamy claims like "treble damages", I feel confident that someone is getting scammed.

Either newspapers are trying to extort the runaway success of Google and Facebook or lawyers are trying to loot what remains of the newspaper industry. Given the lack of legal basis here, I'm inclined to believe the latter.

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#19

Post by hash872 » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

I'd imagine these lawsuits' chance of success will very strongly hinge on where they are impaneled. A jury in a conservative, working class or populist area will probably be pretty sympathetic to striking back at Big Tech, regardless of how weak the merits of the case are. An appeals court may later throw the verdict out. To my understanding, the US is the only developed democracy to still use juries for civil matters (and even for criminal cases it's relatively rare). I am personally anti-populism, and think that civil cases with large financial stakes should be decided by an (appointed not elected) judge- not a random group of folks who can afford to skip work for two to four weeks.

The standard explanation we all learn in business school is that newspapers had geographic monopolies pre-Internet, so they were able to rake in astonishing profit margins via advertising (like 30-40% margins). Their lunch was mostly eaten by Craigslist, years before Google and Facebook- plus the fact that the effectively infinite number of websites out there drove advertising prices down a ton

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#20

Post by cblconfederate » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #2

On one hand, if there is a new media outlet via new distribution model that's winning the market, fair. So if an online-only news source is taking away traffic and money away from physical newspapers, there's part of me that'll feel sad, but whatcha gonna do. On the other hand though, it's a completely different model in my mind to scrape/link/copy/extract somebody else's hard work and news and editorials; and then b…

The sad thing is that newspapers allow that themselves. They can block out google and FB but they don't want to. It's a similar tragic fate to that of a drug addict. However if content-makers want to overcome this they need to cut off big tech access to their content, at least temporarily.

The frontpage of HN is mostly news articles and some blogs. They get a lot of exposure, a lot of readership. Yet somehow google + FB end up making the money.