02-01-2006, 04:00 AM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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News Aggregation Threatened? I'm Gulping Right Now
"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."
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.
This reminds of a similar issue back in 2004 where Ziff Davis went after Pocket PC Tools (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!
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02-01-2006, 04:33 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 37
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PHP Aggregators
Gulp... some CMSs and php scripts have built in RSS aggregators too. One that I've used is Drupal, which allows you to configure a number of RSS sources, which then featches and caches and displayes them all on one page.
In fact, my site, Shuttertalk uses an open source php script which does the same thing, which I use for digital photography news.
I justify it as providing a service to my readers by allowing them to see the latest goss on one page, instead of having to visit six sites every day. If they want to read more, they jump to the originating website and see the full article. I don't make any pretenses about owning the content - there's a big heading saying "Digital Photography News Feeds on the Web".
I'll be following this one with interest....
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02-01-2006, 06:34 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 194
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I think that they are not after what we (you guys and me as well) do.
They are more against the aggregators that just republish their content as part of a search service. Something like the google customized page in which you can place the RSS feed of everybody.
The results are the same. It drives movement to their sites. But sometimes these guys just fear that many users are just busy reading the beginning of the stories instead of going there for the full content.
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02-01-2006, 01:22 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 359
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I think as long as a valid link to the original content is provided this shouldn't be an issue. Its when things get ripped out of one page and then distributed without any type of recognition is what should be looked into.
I have to wonder how far and granular they are going to take it?
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02-01-2006, 01:31 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 53
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They're getting concerned about dropping reveunes
They're losing readership for their print addiotions which means less ad money and see online as the way to boost revenue - and will try to get money any way they can. They probably want to negotiate a flat fee to act as a clipping service; plus the see Google as a threat to their future as it expands beyond search (GoogleNews anyone?).
What Google should do is blackout all of their memeber sites for a week - if that drops hits significantly they may rethink their position. It's the online version fo sending all your ships to see for w few weeks when the locals complain too much aboutr sailors - let tehm feel a hit to theirwallet and the hearts and minds soon follow.
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02-01-2006, 02:23 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,520
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As far back as I can remember (my memories begin to loose resolution around grade 8) quote other sources has always been legal as long as you provide suffient acknowledgements.
Hopefully this kind of issue will be dealt with on a case by case basis. I believe there is certainly a way to provide the service that ThoughtsMedia provides and be within acceptable legal parameters. But on the flipside, there's also a point where an aggregator service goes too far.
Besides, the exerpts that ThoughtsMedia clip always seem like "teaser" and not the summation of the matter. And I mean teasers in a good way.
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02-01-2006, 04:05 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 135
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It sounds like fair use to me. Google, for example, does not do more than quote the first two or three lines of one article and then links directly to it. Beneath that is a link to all similar articles. Because it does link directly I can only see that it benefits the news source. I have a limited time at lunch to scan the news. Google News is always where I look for the widest variety of coverage.
Sometimes I can not read the entire on-line article bewcause I have to "join" a news service, or subscribe. No thanks to that. Ii that case who is cutting whose nose off to spite whose face? Certainly not Google.
Ken
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02-01-2006, 05:56 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 412
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But Goggle does copy photographs, and that's not right if they are doing it without permission.
And if they are copying and storing more than a Fair Use amount of property, that would be wrong, too.
For instance, what if I started a new website and I copied the first two paragraphs of ever post and every article here at PPCThoughts? How would Jason feel about all that work being used without his permission and without compensation? What if I were able to afford a bigger, better, shinier server farm to host all this content, so that traffic was drawn away from PPCT to my servers and Jason lost substantial revenue because he lost all the browsing eyeballs?
I'm not in favour of draconian copyright protections, but I always saw fair use as more of an ad hoc usage, not an entire business model for copying thousands of paragraphs and photographs every minute.
K
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02-01-2006, 06:13 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 135
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Karen,
I don't see Google doing that. The headline points directly to the source and the photo points to another source. You can not get enough information from the few words Google does post to get more than an idea of whether you want to read the article or not. That fits my description of fair use.
KJ
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02-01-2006, 06:16 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Karen
What if I were able to afford a bigger, better, shinier server farm to host all this content, so that traffic was drawn away from PPCT to my servers and Jason lost substantial revenue because he lost all the browsing eyeballs?
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But if you put me out of business with your Pocket PC Thoughts clone site, you'd have nothing to quote when I was gone. ;-) Relationships like this are symbiotic, not parasitic. I have a good example of a parasitic content cloner though that I'll put in the front page soon.
Besides, if it's a quote + link, that means traffic for the site. When we've been featured on the Google News homepage, it's meant 10,000+ extra visitors on a good day. These companies should be thanking Google, not attacking them.
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Linear Mode
