Europe is Planning a Content "Snippet Tax" for Google and Other News Aggregators
Google is facing a tax battle from the European Union with a reform plan that seeks to make news aggregators pay for the news story snippets they display. This means that if Google News wants to show us a snippet or preview of an online article from another site, they will need to pay up.
Understandably, Google is not happy about this proposal. But media giants like Newscorp say that taxes are the only hope to save the news industry that is currently starving for revenue. I guess this is to be expected from the dying mainstream media. In their desperate attempt to remain in existence as the internet takes over, along with alternative media, they are trying to scrape any revenue they can, even if that means getting the state to coerce money from internet aggregators that help get their stories out.
Anyone can go online, and get free news from the Internet without having to buy a newspaper or pay online news sites to get the information. This is bringing the newspaper industry to its knees. More and more people are unwilling to pay for online news services. They can just go to Google News or some other location that has news, like social media sites such as Facebook.
The European Union has been fighting with Google in the past, hitting Google with a €2.4 billion fine over unclear competition this past June. This new battle over taxing news snippets is going to play out for the rest of the year. The latest fine this past June was the biggest the EU has imposed for abuse of market power. Prior to 2017's €2.42 billion number, the biggest fine was for Intel at €1.06 billion in 2009.
The European Alliance of News Agencies says "unauthorised internet use of media content is threatening citizens' sustainable access to quality news content. It is therefore crucial that neighbouring rights be created for news agencies and other publishers, covering all activity".
It seems like they are saying that without the news agencies being paid for news snippets, then it will undermine the sustainable access to quality news. I guess for them, alternative media companies are not able to provide sustainable access or quality news?
What are "neighbouring rights"? This means that sites that do show news snippets or short quotes from copyrighted content, have an obligation to pay in order to share that "neighbors" content.
What this is about is making sure that companies, like newspapers, will maintain their hold on the information they provide, and only allow others to share that information if they are willing to pay for it. This new reform plan is one of many updates being done to European copyright laws that are being applied to the online domain.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) has already said these types of ideas are "ill-founded, controversial and detrimental to all players. It would hurt anyone who writes, reads or shares the news—including the many European startups working with the news sector to build sustainable business models online"
In order for the new "snippet tax" reform plan to pass, 65 of the EU bloc's population would need to support it, as member states are divided with no compromise in sight for this year. France, Spain and Germany support it, while the UK and Nordic countries opposite it. The plan is expected to be approved by EU's Legal Affairs Committee by October 10th.
Publishes want money for the content they release, and don't even want a snippet to go for free, even though that brings them traffic from new markets like Google News. I think if this does pass, Google should just not use the Eurpoean publishers snippets anymore, and see how much their traffic goes down. I suspect those publishers would soon be giving away access to their content.
Do you agree with publishers taxing for snippets of content?
Do you think Google should comply, or refuse?
Do you think Google will win-out if they drop the taxing EU publishers from Google News?
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
References:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/europe-mulls-tax-on-google-for-displaying-news-articles/articleshow/59839895.cms
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-europe-google-news-snippet-tax.html
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It's kind of hard to pick a side in this. On one hand, free access to information is important and so is a level playing field. On the other hand, Google are indeed making a TON of money by practically republishing snippets of other people's contents. They have become kind of a monopoly and a gate-keeper to the internet when it comes to actively looking for information. They should certainly be kept in check, but I'm not certain such taxes have any bearing on that.
My argument would be that the snippets should actually fall into a fair-use category like it is in the US (if I understand the laws there correctly) and Google doesn't exactly make their cash because their service becomes valuable because of the snippets. Their service becomes valuable when it actually sends you to a publisher or a website, so Google are providing value to the publishers as well.
A solution I would be in favor of would probably be for the publishers to be able to explicitly state if they want to be included in Google's snippets. Oh, wait, but that exists already. You can tell Google's crawlers that you don't want your site indexed and then your snippets (or your website) will not appear in search results. If you want to be in the search results, you should allow the snippets, right?
I think your suggestion that the snippets of EU publishers would be skipped might not be a possible implication of this ruling, because I don't know if snippet usage is going to be illegal for sources based in the EU or for visitors based in the EU regardless of the source or a combination of both.
If indeed it will be possible for Google to display snippets to people that are in let's say France for French content that comes from servers located in jurisdictions where snippets are fair use, this would actually hurt local French news outlets and would favor outside sources. It might also provide very good opportunity for website owners that could publish content in languages spoken in the EU to exploit. If that's the case, I'm sure many publications would open out of EU subsidiaries (or at least move to out of EU servers) so they can keep their place and snippets in the search results and cater to EU audiences. Which would be a pretty lame paradox.
While I'm not really a fan many libertarian positions, with the internet being international and wanting it to be free, I tend to be against most types of regulations that might limit its usefulness as this seems to be the case with this one. Also, different countries putting in different regulations is slowly eating away at the internet's international appeal and the equality of all netizens.
Yeah, it's a cash grab for a dying breed... As you said above, they get the traffic benefit of being on the search engine, and only a snippet is shown. That's the point, to see if people are enticed by a snippet to actually want to learn more by going to the actual full content. These regulations will just hurt them more. Charging for news is pretty dead... Thanks for the great feedback as usual.
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As with any law trying to be passed, you have to look deeper.
Because the name on the tin is often opposite of what's inside.
The giant media has never made money.
You have to view the MSM and the giant advertisement firms as the same entity. They are there to sell you the narrative. They are there to make your picture of the world. And they have the deepest pockets.
They will continue to pump out propaganda well passed the time they are financially viable.
The death throws of a dinosaur are dangerous to all around.
But, why this tax on boogle? Boogle isn't really making money. It is losing tons. (If you have ever tried to host video feeds yourself, the costs are staggering.) Is this going to be spun into a public service, that the public should pay more for? Or is it a money transfer from the CIA to keep a dying industry not look like they are dying (too obviously)?
Indeed, it's tough to make money in media with news. Rich people own them as a means of keeping the status quo and establishment. Perception management as they say.
Yeah watch out for a berserker lashing out trying to remain relevant, hehe.
They are just spoiled cry babies, asking daddy to steal for them. They are done. Their business models are outdated, whether they adapt and reconvert or we will be hearing about them in history books.
Haha! Nice!
Newspapers are going to be obsolete in a few years time,the industry is dying. Only about 10 maybe 15 years ago the trains would be full of people reading newspapers,magazines or books on the way to work. Now everyone is glued to some sort of electronic device.
Yup, the fade will grow. But they want their news content from online sites to be paid as well ;)
They will certainly try to,it's just pure greed.
You would think they have enough money now.
If not for internet, especially at this point of time, NEWS channels will go out of Business. The news itself has sort of become too centralised and can publish anything and everything, as Trump says Fake News.
They will repent taxing Google and as you said their traffic will go down probably 40% to 50%, no questions asked. If Google and others decide not to share news content.
Yup, their days are numbered, counting down...
Damn... It is the time for new ways of bringing news to the masses... As many of my favourite Belgian news sites gets more and more articles which you only could read if you pay for a subscription, I tend to go elsewhere to read the news... (At least here in Belgium) there are alternative, completely free new news companies who are writing high quality news-content as well. Their articles are not always as all-encompassing (I don't know the English word for it, in Dutch: allesomvattend, uitgebreid) but you get the most important points + official sources to read more about the topics... I think the old newspapers with their subscription pages will slowly die if sites like google will not show any of these snippets anymore! I would say, let them fade away and let there be some new, more modern (maybe blockchain-based) newsplatforms!
Nice to see you report on the pay for news services in your own country. That shows how other people fill in and still provide the info. No one owns information. That's a silly human delusion.
The internet is the future, of all the other news medias are going to die sometime. I don't think it is worth persevering outdated technologies.
Preserving outdated tech can be useful for movies :) Like the 80s tech in Stranger Things, or old 1930s car ;) But yeah, newspapers, wasting paper...
I'd never normally side with news publishers but in this case they are on the right side. They are paying to produce or distribute their content. Google, which can easily afford to pay, is profiting off their investment and work.
If a newspaper can't generate enough money with their paid subscriptions and advertisers, why should they ask google for money? Doesn't make sense. The only way they can survive is by publishing high quality reports and generate more revenue from paid subscriptions. Keep it simple.
yeah, any content they want people to pay for can be behind a paywall
I had different subscriptions with newscorps usings a paywall, but what really annoyed me was they still had to rely on advertisers. How can a news corporation be independent if at the same time they are dependend from advertisers? They could learn from netflix.
Google is profiting from their work. There is no reason Google can't afford to pay them or, if a particular paper has an issue while another doesn't, respect their wishes and omit that content.
I get what you mean ;)
Without centralized state or pseudostate news, how do you control the population? This unholy alliance between state and media is second only to that between the state and the banks.
End it already.
Hear hear!
The death throws of a dying parasite.
Pretty much ;)