
The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy - zdw
https://mondaynote.com/the-media-industry-and-the-make-google-pay-fantasy-1b4de36e3b04
======
paol
I'm a lot less worried about the "link tax" clauses than the copyright
liability clause. Not because the link tax is a good idea but because it's a
spectacular own goal that is mainly going to hurt the idiots who lobbied for
it.

Giving companies direct liability for policing copyright in user-uploaded
content is a much bigger disaster, on two separate fronts, both highly
damaging:

1) Implementing youtube-style content id will be a huge burden for small
companies. Youtube reportedly spent tens of millions on it over several years.
This tilts the field in favor of large incumbents even more than it already is
by nature. While the amount of content to screen is really small, human-driven
filtering is a possibility, but as soon as you need to scale up you're
screwed. Any startup in Europe that needs to do this is a no-go from now on,
IMO.

2) Back to that multi-milion content ID system: it sucks. It sucks really
badly. It over-reports infringement left right and center. Now imagine what it
will be like when youtube is liable _a priori_ for every false negative; any
sane legal department is going to demand a minimal number of false negatives
at any cost. Now imagine what that will do to the false positive rate. Now
imagine what the false positive rate will be when every site has to bodge
together a similar system, with neither google's money nor google's technical
expertise.

The second point has been missed by most criticism of the Copyright Directive,
and to me it's the biggest problem of all. I fear the wasteland that will
result. Are we going back to the point where only a handful of content
producers exist and everybody else should be content just consuming it?
Welcome to the 20th century, Europe.

~~~
milesskorpen
I'd hope (?) that one outcome is 3rd party sass companies which are willing to
do this screening (ala Sift Science) and potentially even insure to handle the
risk (ala Climate Corp, which offers farmers insurance based on the outcomes
of its models). If the EU has these laws, this could be a solid business
model.

~~~
drb91
Yes, this can make jobs, and also some individuals very wealthy, but this is a
net loss for the users of the internet: just another channel controlled by
profit-seeking corporate motives.

------
vesinisa
The very idea that the aggregator (Google) should pay the advertisers (news
sites) for directing traffic _to_ them is just patently absurd. By common
sense, it should be the other way around. Sadly, the traditional media has a
massive conflict of interest here, so the issue passed at least in my part of
EU with little to no ado.

But once the member states start enacting the directive to legislation, the
manure will surely meet the propeller. No amount of regulation can change
fundamental economic facts. Once Google News starts going black around EU, and
the search engine traffic & revenue disappearing from the publishers, I am
sure they will be soon very eager to license their content at zero cost, or
less.

~~~
reaperducer
Is Google News really that big a deal for publishers?

Considering all the places where they voluntarily put their content (Facebook,
Twitter, Apple News, etc...), is the loss of Google News really a problem?

I don't see anything magic about Google News that isn't done better (Apple
News), or more thoroughly (Twitter) elsewhere.

~~~
ma2rten
They are referring to news snippets that show up in Google Search (not the
Google News app on your phone). Those are one of the most significant sources
of traffic for publishers.

~~~
skybrian
Even for a web search, Google News doesn't show snippets at all anymore, just
headlines and thumbnails. (This is in the "Top Stories" widget and on the
"News" tab.)

It looks like the snippet is still there for generic web results, but that's
further down the page for a news search and probably not a big driver of
traffic.

------
mailslot
Local and major news sites alike, are cesspoools of intrusive advertising and
tracking. They’re so poorly built, with so much advertising, that they hardly
even function any longer. Even if Google links to a news site, I won’t click.
It’s probably 30 secs for my new iPhone to partially fail loading, abruptly
reload, and then auto play video I didn’t ask for... while covering the
article with more ads that I have to click to dismiss.

Reading about the latest headlines is like sitting in a timeshare
presentation, only it drains my phone battery and crashes my browser.

It’s a shame that the media is so bad at producing media. The quality is down,
the delivery is terrible, and they want more money.

~~~
eiaoa
> Local and major news sites alike, are cesspoools of intrusive advertising
> and tracking. They’re so poorly built, with so much advertising, that they
> hardly even function any longer.

But that's an _effect_ , though maybe one that will create a vicious cycle.
It's not the cause. The revenue rug was pulled out from under local news
websites, and they're struggling to keep the lights on. Advertising and
tracking are how everyone says you need to make money on the internet
nowadays, and they're just following the example set by Google, Facebook, et
al.

Focusing too much local news site's advertising and tracking practices is
missing the elephant in the room.

If local news is left to die, there will be little to no media oversight or
local government. _What happens in state legislatures is important, etc._ If
you require all these small organizations to have _two_ competencies, you're
going to get a lot more government corruption.

~~~
Kalium
Local news organizations have _always_ been required to maintain two
competencies - advertising and journalism. This predates Google News, Google,
and indeed the internet.

You're completely right about the _absolutely critical_ importance of a free,
open, and brave press. Yet it's possible that this particular business
problem, the one you have so wisely and correctly pointed to, is not novel.
Newspapers historically have found a variety of ways to fund their operations.
I hope they can continue to exhibit the entrepreneurial spirit that helps keep
a vibrant press free!

~~~
flukus
> Local news organizations have always been required to maintain two
> competencies - advertising and journalism. This predates Google News,
> Google, and indeed the internet.

3\. Distribution.

News organisations like the music industry before them need to realize that a
huge part of what people used to pay them for was the reliable distribution of
their product. This and the markup on it was where they made their profits and
now its gone.

~~~
eiaoa
> News organisations like the music industry before them need to realize that
> a huge part of what people used to pay them for was the reliable
> distribution of their product. This and the markup on it was where they made
> their profits and now its gone.

A viable, independent media is vital to a well-functioning democracy. I just
realized that the implication decision behind of all this talk (about how the
new media need to find a viable business model) is that our system of
government shouldn't stand unless some of its vital organs are profitable in a
dog-eat-dog capitalist system. Capitalism is given a higher priority than
democracy.

~~~
flukus
> our system of government shouldn't stand unless some of its vital organs are
> profitable in a dog-eat-dog capitalist system

Plenty of countries get around this with independent but government funded
media, the BBC in the UK, ABC in Australia, etc. I guess NPR is probably the
closest thing in the US. They do a better job at reporting the news than most
commercial providers and their sites are a lot less crapware infested (but
getting worse), compare this
([https://www.abc.net.au/news/](https://www.abc.net.au/news/)) to just about
any commercial news organisation.

The only problem I've ever had with the ABC is that it's crap at local news.

~~~
eiaoa
> Plenty of countries get around this with independent but government funded
> media

Yeah, that's kinda what I was getting at. I don't recall the conversation
advancing in that direction very often.

> The only problem I've ever had with the ABC is that it's crap at local news.

I honestly think local news is the main problem. I'm not super pessimistic
about the NYT, the WSJ, or the Washington Post. They have the prestige and the
reach to attract lots of subscribers and/or patrons, and they're big enough to
invest heavily in technology. It's the small local and regional papers that
worry me. The staff per eyeball to cover all their beats is probably a lot
less favorable, and they don't have much prestige to draw on to attract other
support.

------
tsunamifury
I think the author has a good grasp of the situation that is more important
than the average person understands. Murdoch knows his empire is waning and is
attempting to ingratiate himself to government officials by becoming an
unofficial mouthpiece of several conservative governments. His coup d'etat
would be if he is able to turn that relationship official in some regions,
pass laws to make his content mandatory to publish, them extract a link tax
from the distributors. An irony of ironies considering he will build that on
the back of ideogolgy that fundamentally criticizes this strategy.

Note: An exceptionally well written analysis that shows the author has a good
understanding of both product and business motivations. It is so rare to see
writing like this in the era of outrage journalism.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _His coup d 'etat would be if he is able to turn that relationship official
> in some regions_

“In Germany, a comparable anti-snippet law was rendered powerless by a group
of publishers who did the math and offered their content for free in exchange
for the usual stream of clicks sent back to them” [1]. In summary, this law
has made having access to Google more valuable.

[1] [https://mondaynote.com/the-media-industry-and-the-make-
googl...](https://mondaynote.com/the-media-industry-and-the-make-google-pay-
fantasy-1b4de36e3b04)

~~~
tsunamifury
I don’t think you understand. He would make it mandatory to list his content
and to pay.

------
buboard
I think if pressure from "traditional" publishers keeps going, google is going
to put plan B in action and go on to actually own the news as well. It's not
hard for them to build an "uber for news" for journalists, editors and the
common man, as in fact they have been subsidizing the open web with adsense
for decades anyway. Maybe the next google reader will be about google's own
news.

~~~
bepotts
The problem with that plan is that if Google were to release such a service in
the EU, the EU would then fine Google for using their search monopoly to prop
up a service in another industry (News). The EU did something similar when
Google used their search monopoly to promote Google Shopping.

EU is gonna EU.

~~~
buboard
Sure, but if google decides to pull out of european news, someone else might
find it an attractive idea. And , considering that (if this passes) EU will
have made it impossible for a european company to do that, it will be
somewhere outside the EU.

------
c16
What's stopping Google from refusing to pay the news sites, thus de-indexing
them from Google entirely? If the relationship is "pay me for my content",
then refusing to serve links to their media is absolutely within their rights.

Only the publishers have something to lose here.

~~~
wmf
The next step is probably a version of "must carry" for the Internet where
Google is required by law to index news and required by law to pay for it.

~~~
yholio
The analogy is quite difficult. A television station is a well defined legal
and technical object with a licensing regime, a standardized image format etc.
A cable network is, by definition a transmission infrastructure designed to
carry a number of such signals.

A "news website" and "news agregator" are... what exactly? Since search
traffic is so valuable, publishers would modify their sites readily to fall
just under the legal threshold for news sites in order to get picked up by
Google's non-aggregator of non-news sites. It's virtually impossible to craft
definitions that are simultaneously not trivial to circumvent by Google and
also have no impact on established, unrelated internet content.

------
sarcasmic
As usual with upcoming legislation, FUD predominates in the conversation. A
reasonable person may be used to parties with vested interests to exaggerate
or misrepresent facts, but it's unfortunate when parties from whom you may not
expect a clear bias continue to perpetuate uncertainty and doubt.

Article 13 states that the measures to seek rightholder approval for user-
submitted content "shall be effective and proportionate, taking into account,
among other factors" the nature and size of services, whether they're a small
and medium business, the sheer volume of material uploaded, and the cost
burden of such an effort.

Furthermore, it refers to a precise definition of the sort of enterprise that
is to be impacted by this regime -- those that provide "public access to a
large amount of works or other subject-matter uploaded by its users which it
organises and promotes for profit-making purposes", exempting a variety of
others. This leaves ample leeway to require a more rigorous scheme from hosts
as big as YouTube while being more lenient with a hobbyist forum.

Article 11 states that the copyright protection of journalistic articles from
aggregators will expire at the end of the following year from the article's
publication. It reaffirms the right of publishers to decide how they wish to
profit from their work -- if they choose to make it available for the
aggregator at no cost, that is their right as well.

~~~
qaq
OK could you point to anything that outlines actual criteria for
classification because the language you included from Article 13 in your
comment is not restrictive in any manner.

~~~
sarcasmic
Original text [1], changed by amendments [2]. Relevant definition:

Amendment 150, Proposal for a directive, Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 4b
(new):

> _' online content sharing service provider' means a provider of an
> information society service one of the main purposes of which is to store
> and give access to the public to a significant amount of copyright protected
> works or other protected subject-matter uploaded by its users, which the
> service optimises and promotes for profit making purposes. Microenterprises
> and small-sized enterprises within the meaning of Title I of the Annex to
> Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC and services acting in a non-
> commercial purpose capacity such as online encyclopaedia, and providers of
> online services where the content is uploaded with the authorisation of all
> right holders concerned, such as educational or scientific repositories,
> shall not be considered online content sharing service providers within the
> meaning of this Directive. Providers of cloud services for individual use
> which do not provide direct access to the public, open source software
> developing platforms, and online market places whose main activity is online
> retail of physical goods, should not be considered online content sharing
> service providers within the meaning of this Directive;_

[1] [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52016PC0593) [2]
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&langua...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P8-TA-2018-0337)

------
ummonk
Youtube will arbitrarily deprioritize, demonetize, or remove content from its
platform, and as with all of Google, the appeals process is slow and
questionable. Since it exercises so much curation power over the content on
its platform, it should likewise be liable for said content. Protection from
liability for content on your platform should only be extended to platforms
that actually act as common carriers.

------
Kurtz79
"Traffic of news sites depends heavily on Google."

It seems counterintuitive to me, at least for my use case.

I rarely search for "news", I have a handful of websites to which I usually go
to for them.

I might search the name in Google if for whatever reason it doesn't show on
the top results when I start typing the name on the search bar, because I'm
too lazy to use bookmarks.

Do most other people use aggregators or "search" for news?

~~~
vorpalhex
Yes, I use aggregators so I don't fall victim (as easily) to echochambers of
my own design. All sources are biased, but at least you can hopefully get some
idea of the truth by reading differently biased sources.

~~~
eiaoa
> Yes, I use aggregators so I don't fall victim (as easily) to echochambers of
> my own design. All sources are biased, but at least you can hopefully get
> some idea of the truth by reading differently biased sources.

I'm not sure if that makes sense as a strategy. By relying on aggregators
(that aren't human curated like Apple News), you're just getting the sources
that do the best SEO. If your aggregator does algorithmic curation, they'll
build an echo chamber for you.

I think if you want to avoid falling into an echo chamber, it's best to
identify a couple of high-quality news sources with different perspectives,
and read them unselectively. Say two national newspapers with different
political orientations, an international newspaper, and a local newspaper.

------
ma2rten
Most news sites have comment sections. I am wondering if someone could post
copyrighted material on purpose in the comment section and use the new EU law
to sue publishers.

~~~
nine_k
IIRC, according to the new regulations, anything that a user uploads must be
pre-screened for copyright violations _before_ being made public.

~~~
deckar01
This makes complete sense to me. There is no reason that posting content to a
platform that millions of people could see should be free or instant. Other
publishing platforms take responsibility for their content, and it costs them
money that Google isn't spending, because it would rather spend it on legal on
the back end.

I wonder if any platform has ever created a moderation system that can acheive
this scale. I imagine it would require captcha like screening process with
multiple tiers of moderator specialization and appeals.

~~~
cr0sh
> There is no reason that posting content to a platform that millions of
> people could see should be free or instant.

So if someone is on a particular platform, such as the one we're currently
using, and they post a base64 encoded image, or article, or whatever...

...you really want every possible comment screened, paid for, or be delayed in
some manner so someone or something can check that the data is legit?

That can't work; sure you could probably figure a way to work around the
base64 encoding and automate things, but what happens if people start using
other more difficult encoding systems to publish such content in text-only
forums?

Yes, this is reducto-ad-absurdum territory - but these kinds of directives
would have to apply to every kind of user-generated and posted content system,
including mostly or wholly text-only boards like this one.

~~~
deckar01
I am not talking about automating things, but rather setting up a system of
self-governance. What if posting a video required you to review other peoples'
videos to earn the right to post? And if you deviate from the majority opinion
you get penalized? Like captcha, this would solve a problem by aligning
incentives and solving a massive problem with a massively distributed
workforce of real people doing small tasks.

~~~
mkl
There is no conceivable way random consumers can identify whether a random
video violates someone else's copyright. Every consumer would somehow have to
be familiar with every video in existence, and who owns it, who they've
licensed it to, and all those people's identities on every platform.

Imagine if making your comment here required you to investigate the
originality of several other comments and whether the posters may have posted
similar things elsewhere under other names, or licensed someone else's
content, or violated someone else's copyright. Would you still bother posting?

~~~
deckar01
If you can't trust a user to identify copyright violations in someone else's
work then you probably should blindly host content created by that user
either. I think people would learn how copyright works so that they can prove
it and earn the right to post on a platform with massive distribution.

------
azurezyq
And article 13 is not only for Google... Copyright scanning is hard and there
government requires 100% recall, which can only be achieved by shutting down
the site.

IMO the government receives the criticism and just redirects the fire towards
big ones.

------
HissingMachine
After numerous sites will have to block access to them for users coming from
Europe, even if it is for a short while to implement tools to comply with
these regulations, people will not start to hate them, they won't start hating
Google, Youtube or whatever site they are barred from accessing, they will
start to hate the EU. Anti-EU sentiment will get a big boost and they can't
blame anyone else than themselves, good job and good luck bureaucrats.

------
throw2016
This article is a one sided look at how publishers benefit from Google without
considering the other side, at all. This is not helpful for informed
discussion.

If Google is 'helping' these publishers then the counterpoint is these
publishers are also 'helping' Google by making the content at their cost in
the first place. Without their content what will Google search? Wikipedia,
blogs?

Without news content google search users will not get news context about their
search queries so the search engine will lack a critical perspective and
become lower quality, which will take billions of dollars of value off Google,
lower its value to users and make room for other options.

Let's not pretend Google is not benefiting from news content. And since people
clearly value news content producers can generate value outside of Google, and
Google will need to pay to make money from that content or do without.
Targeting a predatory model will make space for better models and ideas to
emerge.

~~~
Kalium
> If Google is 'helping' these publishers then the counterpoint is these
> publishers are also 'helping' Google by making the content at their cost in
> the first place. Without their content what will Google search? Wikipedia,
> one person blogs?

The whole rest of the internet, which among other things contains a sizable
number of media outlets that are not subject to these protections?

Frankly, Google is better-equipped to walk away from news providers than the
news providers are to walk away from google. Google has done this before,
even.

You are, of course, _absolutely right_ that there is room for another business
model here. In fact, one might posit that there has been room for decades!
Surely it's possible that there could be a business model whereby consumers
get access to the news they value for a reasonable price, producers of news
get paid fairly, and profit-extracting aggregators are kept to the slimmest of
financial margins. Surely it would be better for consumers (who doesn't like
supporting journalism, so critical to a free society?) and journalistic
outlets (who obviously would love to be free of Google's iron yoke)!

It's curious that no good replacement has arisen when the opportunity and
incentives are so clear! Perhaps in Spain, where Google News does not operate
on domestic newspapers and has not for years? But I'm sure that's merely my
failure to understand how Google sucked all the oxygen out of the room and
prevented those incentivized to do so from creating something better. Can you
help me understand what I've missed?

------
megaman8
Seems it's much easier to get some legislation passed than actually fix your
business model. Everytime I come across an interesting news article and want
to make a 10c donation, there's never an easy micropayment way to do it.
Furthermore places like the wall street journal block their content and ask
you to pay hundreds of dollars. I'm not going to pay hundreds of dollars just
so I can speed-read a single article for 60 seconds.

Come on, media industry, get with the times and understand your target
customer.

~~~
scarejunba
The WSJ has gotten with the times. They’re doing well with their approach.
It’s what their customer wants. I like their model.

------
zzzcpan
> By pushing to the “link tax”, publishers are shooting themselves in the foot
> three times over.

I don't think that's true at all. Beyond some short term traffic loss there
are no negative consequences for the media industry if Google leaves this
space. I suspect that's what big publishers actually aim for, they understand
Google is not likely to pay and want to control how users discover news
themselves.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The challenge publishers are fighting is effectively scabs in a union strike.
If news publishers block Google, the one (or few) publisher who chooses not to
gets all the traffic. And the problem with news is it's easily copied and
redistributed. So the real reporters and journalists could all block Google
and Google may try to sustain itself on pushing blogspam instead.

It's very possible that only government regulation which forces participation
(such as the link tax) can actually work.

~~~
vorpalhex
> It's very possible that only government regulation which forces
> participation (such as the link tax) can actually work.

Why don't we just make Google give every news org a few million a year then?
Why pretend it's anything else but Google directly paying for the news?

Side point, if news subscriptions were reasonably priced (upfront pricing, and
billed monthly instead of this odd weekly nonsense), they would probably not
care at all about Google.

~~~
ForHackernews
> Why don't we just make Google give every news org a few million a year then?

That sounds sensible enough to me. As an example, Canada taxed blank CDs and
CDR drives and distributed the revenue to their music industry.

~~~
cronix
Interesting, I hadn't heard of that. They assume people only store audio on
cds? So individuals/companies that were storing data on cd's were supporting
the music industry?

~~~
ForHackernews
[https://torrentfreak.com/canada-increases-music-industry-
sub...](https://torrentfreak.com/canada-increases-music-industry-subsidy-on-
blank-cds-081213/)

I'm not Canadian so I don't know the details, but it doesn't seem like a
terrible model to me.

------
lifeisstillgood
What are these "future tools" that Google is investing millions in for the
industry? I am not sure what they could do to help? Putting back the search
term in each click through?

------
Animats
On the copyright front, arguably Google should be liable if they "monetize"
pirated content with ads.

------
ForHackernews
If I were a policymaker and I had to choose between saving a free and
independent press and saving a big advertising company, I know which side I'd
be on.

~~~
adrianN
Google provides a lot of traffic to the websites operated by the free and
independent press. If they don't manage to monetize that traffic sufficiently
then that's their problem. Google obeys robots.txt, if they don't want to be
indexed it's easy to achieve this.

I really don't understand why Google should pay for what they do.

~~~
Nasrudith
It is a permission culture mentality. It doesn't matter that you are making
them money by say buying their hardware and painting it neon green to resell -
you made more money from their work so they feel entitled to another cut.

------
JustSomeNobody
How does this conversation go? I mean, seriously, were people sitting in a
room thinking, ok, so Google gives us free advertisement, but what if we were
to get them to _pay_ us to advertise for us? And everyone just nods and
agrees? What the heck?

Greed. Everywhere. You just can't escape it. I'm so disappointed in people
these days.

