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back to article Germany sets date for Google vs newspapers smackdown

Google and the German newspaper industry will fight it out in a public hearing on 30 January, Angela Merkel's government announced today. The two sides will battle over whether Google should pay copyright fees to newspapers for linking to their content and publishing excerpts on Google news in a open session in the Bundestag …

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  1. Robert Helpmann??
    Childcatcher

    Ancillary Copyright

    The publishers group wants Google to pay it for what it calls "ancillary copyright".

    A quick search shows this legislation was passed this year specifically to milk Google for all it is worth combat the unsanctioned use of copyrighted material. Given the government is walking in lockstep with the newspapers, I give 3 to 1 against Google if it goes to trial.

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    1. Ole Juul
      Reply Icon

      Re: Ancillary Copyright

      I give 3 to 1 against Google if it goes to trial.

      And it's going to be fun to watch too.

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  2. M Gale

    Google already flipped a big "FU" at the Chinese government and pulled out of there over censorship issues.

    What's the reckoning they'll do a quick calculation, find out they'll pay more in fees than they'll lose by getting out of Deutschland, and take the fiscally appropriate action?

    As I've said before on the subject, it's like some newspapers are wanting Google to pay them for sending more traffic their way. It's not hard to set up a robots.txt barring the Googlebot from trawling their site.

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    1. Tom 35
      Reply Icon

      If they block Google with a robots file then they will not have any cake at all, forget about eating it too...

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    2. cs94njw
      Reply Icon
      WTF?

      /agree. It all seems a bit tenuous. Google shouldn't quote news from their websites... or at least... not enough to stop the user visiting the website.

      If they're not using robots.txt, they've only got themselves to blame.

      But if they want their cake, and to eat it, then it's difficult to sympathise.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Alternate services for these countries?

    Maybe we could have some alternate search services for these countries, a solution where users could search for National news on a nation-specific portal; Google would pay copyright fees for the content in that portal and charge the newspapers for each click.

    In applying a charge to each side of the transaction we would allow some sort of market balance to determine the relative values, the newspapers would effectively be paying for advertising with "content"... oh wait, itsn't that sort of how it works already :P

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    News papers lol - a class of the future.

    "newspapers" were something people used to have when only a select few people were allowed to give their opinion on current events.

    With the advent of the internet in the late 20th century and the freedom for all to give comment or report the news, the value of 1 persons opinion dropped considerably, nevertheless the institutions know as the "Press" fought hard to try and maintain their monopoly on news reporting, not through value and expert writing but through copyright legislation.

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  5. nuked
    WTF?

    Why is linking to a story, and promoting a click-through by providing an excerpt, bad for newspapers?

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  6. Slap

    "Sie haben uns zum letzten Mal geschlürft" would be more grammatically correct for the tag line.

    Although substituting geschlürft with gesaugt would have more comedy value for the google translation crowd.

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  7. Wookie
    Thumb Up

    Google has had a free ride for far too long. Net neutraility rules created a monster that everybody has thought was this great cuddly ideal - freedom wrapped in advertising. Let big internet companies like Google, Amazon etc have to pay rent on their bandwidth usage. Tax them into the stone age. Its an unpopular train of thought but hey its 6am and Im an unpopular guy,

    Thumbs up for the Germans.

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    1. M Gale
      Reply Icon

      "Let big internet companies like Google, Amazon etc have to pay rent on their bandwidth usage."

      You'll find that once a service provider grows big enough, and contains enough content, they tend to arrange peering agreements rather than pay directly for bandwidth.

      And why not? Surely content is king? And who will they pay rent to, anyway? They ARE the upstream provider.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why bother?

    Why is Google bothering to make the effort? Take the newspaper out of Google, and let them advertise like everyone else. They'll soon want back.

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    1. Ole Juul
      Reply Icon

      Re: Why bother?

      Take the newspaper out of Google . . .

      The night before the hearing.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why bother?

      The publishers want to compel Google to list their content in search results (arguing that exclusion would mount to Google abusing its monopoly position) AND they want Google to have to pay for the privilege.

      Nice legislation, if your lobbyists can get it for you ...

      What the article conveniently fails to mention is that apart from Google's public campaign there is a strong movement opposing the Leistungsschutzrecht (LSR) , but of course barely anyone in the established media, who all hope to profit from the LSR, is properly reporting about this opposition. Instead you'll find tons of articles praising the LSR while liking Google to a dealer in stolen goods or just plain calling them thieves.

      Some alternative information (sorry, all German):

      http://leistungsschutzrecht.info/

      https://netzpolitik.org/2012/wissenschaftler-gegen-leistungsschutzrecht-gefahr-unabsehbarer-negativer-folgen/ (scientists opposing LSR, warning of incalculable negative impact)

      http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/jugend-gegen-leistungsschutzrecht100.html (youth [organisations] opposing LSR)

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  9. Christian Berger

    Schlüfte?

    What? Or to be more precise: Was?

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good luck Germany. Maybe Google should just provide links like a search engine rather than scraping content to create their own news section. Seems fair.

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    1. KjetilS
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      That is basically what they're doing.

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  11. Alan Denman

    Alternative news wins it.

    Surely Google could argue the other way round.

    If there ain't any news to find who's gonna remember the dinosaurs?

    I've pretty much forgotten that the Times exists

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    1. WK
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Up

      Re: Alternative news wins it.

      If only the Sun and the Daily Mail would take their tripe behind a paywall too. I'm sick of seeing that sensationalist crud on GoogleNews.

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Let's follow the argument

    The newspapers claim that Google would not be so successful if they did not provide the content that Google thrives upon. I wonder how much they would estimate the worth of the content they provide compared to Wikipedia.

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  13. Richard Altmann
    FAIL

    Sie haben schlürfte uns zum letzten Mal

    "schlürfte" not djöman, i think, neither hebwru

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