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France rules Google must pay news firms for content

reuters.com

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Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#161
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.

As a search engine user i am glad for that, as websites behind paywall are useless for me.

If i pay for a news site, i would go directly to it, and i would not care about hundreds of other paywalled results that i would not pay for.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#162
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 schadenfre…

Can they instead simply start their own news gathering operation?

They'd get fined heavily for that... Using a monopoly position in one market to enter another...

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#163

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.

Google was still providing full content, just after getting the providers to sign free contracts. THAT was the behavior the French court came down on them for. They were given the option to just provide link and title and chose to try and have their cake and eat it too.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More power than France? Yeah. For one thing, Google is not a French company, so there's no reasonable justification for France to exert any control over them. For another, it seems clear that one of the key lessons of the 21st century is that democracy isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's essentially government by the majority of a population that's almost evenly distributed on the IQ bell curve. In a stark contrast…

> For one thing, Google is not a French company, so there's no reasonable justification for France to exert any control over them. There is ample justification. They are dealing with french citizens on french soil. Google could have chosen to block all of France instead, thereby losing all the revenue it derives from the french people. It didn't.

No. If those French citizens don't voluntarily establish a TCP/IP connection to google.com, they will have no dealings with Google. (Well, that's not entirely true, but it is an entirely separate debate.)

If the French government has a beef with anyone, it's with their own people, who stubbornly refuse to use Videotex or whatever the homegrown French alternative is these days.

You don't want to go down this path, believe me. It will destroy the Internet in mind, body, and spirit.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#165
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially France has said Google, being a monopoly, is not allowed to refuse to provide this service. They must do it, they must pay for it.

Solution: keep running google news, but without the snippets. You search for news, you get a set of mute links to articles from various sources.

Everyone keeps replying to tell you they were forbidden from doing that, but they weren't. They ran with that option PLUS sending out contracts to get the newspapers to license the photos and snippet content for free. It's the second part that the courts objected to.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For one thing, Google is not a French company, so there's no reasonable justification for France to exert any control over them. There is ample justification. They are dealing with french citizens on french soil. Google could have chosen to block all of France instead, thereby losing all the revenue it derives from the french people. It didn't.

No. If those French citizens don't voluntarily establish a TCP/IP connection to google.com, they will have no dealings with Google. (Well, that's not entirely true, but it is an entirely separate debate.) If the French government has a beef with anyone, it's with their own people, who stubbornly refuse to use Videotex or whatever the homegrown French alternative is these days. You don't want to go down this path, bel…

>If the French government has a beef with anyone, it's with their own people, who stubbornly refuse to use Videotex or whatever the homegrown French alternative is these days.

This isn't a gang war for turf, France does not "have a beef" with Google. They have made laws for their country, and are enforcing those laws. Google has the freedom to comply or GTFO, simple as that.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For one thing, Google is not a French company, so there's no reasonable justification for France to exert any control over them. There is ample justification. They are dealing with french citizens on french soil. Google could have chosen to block all of France instead, thereby losing all the revenue it derives from the french people. It didn't.

No. If those French citizens don't voluntarily establish a TCP/IP connection to google.com, they will have no dealings with Google. (Well, that's not entirely true, but it is an entirely separate debate.) If the French government has a beef with anyone, it's with their own people, who stubbornly refuse to use Videotex or whatever the homegrown French alternative is these days. You don't want to go down this path, bel…

I can initiate a connection to any computer on the internet. Are they forced to reply? No. Are they forced to serve french consumers? No.

Same logic applies to things like ad blocking. Publishers send me their content free of charge and then complain when I refuse to "pay" by looking at the noise. They should have returned HTTP 402 Payment Required instead.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#168
As a European, I have to say: The sooner non-innovative media companies die, the better. Replacing Google is hard, but replacing Google News, really is not. Ignoring reality and trying to lobby the EU to an absert extent will harm their business in the long term.

There are organizations with working business models like the German public stations[1] (ARD, ZDF, DW, arte and others), which are publicly funded and thus prepared for the future. These are even trying to innovate, e.g. by providing textual content for the web or by trying for years to create a single unified Netflix competitor for their video content, but they are being shut down with lawsuits from companies like Bertelsmann, too (in a similiar fashion like the story about the public weather data, recently here on HN).

I think at this point these companies have to wake up and realize that their old model is lost. I see four options for them:

1) Get in line and try to find shelter within those publicly funded systems. Use your lobbying budget to accomplish that.

2) Be the best. Find a niche. There will always be room for a few remaining.

3) Team up and create your own system.

4) Die. But don't slow everyone down endlessly trying to rent seek based on the working competition or the threats form US companies.

In the end, I don't see Europe losing anything to the US here, but instead the publicly funded organizations surving. When I look at an other market providing a human right, namely healtcare, I don't see Europe being worse off in the end at all.

[1] These stations do have their own problems: Endless layers of management and administration.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Discrimination means recognizing the difference between things. You're insisting that discrimination is required to be non-discriminatory.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#170

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?

You can't. It's fairly obvious they expect the publishers to come back and claim Google is being unfair and have the courts make up a rate.
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