News Aggregation Threatened? I'm Gulping Right Now

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyid=2006-01-31T194017Z_01_L31724094_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-NEWSPAPERS-GOOGLE.xml&rpc=22' target='_blank'>http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyid=2006-01-31T194017Z_01_L31724094_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-NEWSPAPERS-GOOGLE.xml&rpc=22</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The Paris-based World Association of Newspapers, whose members include dozens of national newspaper trade bodies, said it is exploring ways to "challenge the exploitation of content by search engines without fair compensation to copyright owners." Web sites like Google and its specialized Google News service automatically pull in headlines, photos and short excerpts of articles from thousands of news sources, linking back to the publishers' own site. Google News does not currently carry advertising. "They're building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content," Ali Rahnema, managing director of the association, told Reuters in an interview. "The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article -- it's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not."</i><br /><br />This is completely off topic, but it's important to anyone that reads this site, or indeed many of the sites out there that follow our posting patterns: quote, link, reaction. I'll be watching the results of this very carefully. Part of me thinks that this is only happening because Google now has very deep pockets, but let's say in a worst-case scenario a judgment is issued that says quoting text and taking an image from another Web page on the 'Net is determined to be illegal...it would radically alter the landscape of the Web.<br /><br />This reminds of a similar issue back in 2004 where <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/08/237214&tid=188&tid=17">Ziff Davis</a> went after <a href="http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:uAFlbGVdxGYJ:67.15.78.45/modules.php%3Fname%3DForums%26file%3Dviewtopic%26p%3D6801+barry+shilmover+ziff-davis&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2&client=firefox-a">Pocket PC Tools</a> (now defunct) for essentially the same reason. Ziff Davis eventually backed off under public pressure, but it was a bit chilling to see that they didn't grasp that Pocket PC Tools was helping by driving traffic to their articles. Let's hope Google wins this one for all of us little guys as well!

[mcsouth]

Why does this seem so familiar? Hmmmmm, let's see...a large industry tied to its past, trying its best to force its own version of monopoly on the buying public, which has indicated its desire to shift to other distribution models. :D

Reading that article reminded me of the RIAA and MPAA desperately trying to hold on to their old distribution models that no longer fit the buying public's needs or desires. To be honest, I haven't bought a newspaper in several years, with the exception of our local small town (5000 folks, or thereabouts) rag. I also do not watch the news on the TV, with the exception being when there is some large, breaking news story, such as Katrina last year.

Bottom line is that I get all of my news from the Internet - it allows me to get my news when I want, I can customize the mix of news to the subjects that interest me, and I can consume the content using a variety of methods - my PC, my PDA, etc.

By the way, why wouldn't you want Google or other news aggregators to grab the teasers from your page? In my case, that's what drives me to new websites that I wouldn't ordinarily visit - if I see a teaser that I want to follow, I go to that site to see the whole story - and if I like what I see, I usually look around that site. That's called traffic, folks! I don't have time to scour dozens of websites to find all of the tidbits that interest me - that's why I visit sites like the Thoughtsmedia sites - you folks do the looking for me! :lol:

[mcsouth]

Just thought of something else....if they manage to make a case of this, what does that mean to any individual or business that codes RSS aggregators, such as standalone clients, or even those built in to a web browser, like Firefox's token support? Are they, like the P2P networks before them, providing tools to allow the average Joe to circumvent the copyright of the content you link to?

Or from another angle, if any of the plaintiffs are shown to support RSS feeds on their websites, are they not encouraging people to "violate their copyright" by using an aggregator software tool to "exploit" their content? Or is the fact that it is only for personal use somehow make it all right?

Oh my gosh! My daughter cut up the local newspaper to use some of the articles and pictures in a school project - now she's "exploiting" their content too! After all, she didn't include the ads in her project!

It's obviously late at night and I'm tired, because my mind keeps taking me in circles on this topic......just when you thought the lawsuits couldn't get any weirder, something like this comes along....[/i]

[Felix Torres]

This is indeed an old issue and one that has already been litigated in american courts. (Not that one would expect a Paris-based outfit to take notice of this.)

The issue at the time was linking and quoting to somebody else's content.
If I remember correctly, the argument that prevailed was that linking was *sending* customers to the original site, not diverting them away.

As long as the original source is linked, not merely abstracted or quoted, they cannot complain. Especially if they are monetizing advertising and profiting by the extra traffic.

The *real* issue here, I suspect, is the same issue that led the EU to squawk about the Google internet library and to align with Iran, China, and the other would-be internet censors to try to force the US to give up control of the internet root: namely that their bureaucrats cannot abide an *uncontrolled* medium of exchange. (In the case of the Internet root domain, it is the lack of regulation/control and *taxes* on the exchange of goods and services, rather than the lack of control over ideas that bugs them on the matter of the online library.)

Here, I think it is a bunch of fading wannabes who are scandalized to see "evil americans" making money hand over fist while at the same time propagating their vile "anglosaxon economic model" and ideas, instead of the good and proper "socially-responsible european model" and ideas. In other words, they want money, they can't earn it competing fairly, so they are threatening to go to mommy (EU courts) to change the rules. Since this appears to have worked against Boeing and Microsoft and Monsanto, there is no reason to expect that the Brusselcrats won't agree to go after Google next.

I imagine Amazon and Apple are also on the to-do list for attack.

Economic nationalism is such a joy to see in action, isn't it? :roll: