Getting news content back under control may be governmental aim
Getting news content back under control may be governmental aim
It looks like a desperate move.
The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to require Google and other aggregators to pay for reproducing content from news websites. Her cabinet on Wednesday agreed on a draft law that would impose a fee even for tiny snippets of text. Web activists are outraged.
Google News, of course, looks not unlike the homepage of a standard newspaper. It is divided into sections, some articles have short teasers to pique the interest of readers and photos illustrate the stories of the day.
If Chancellor Angela Merkel gets her way, however, that may soon change in Germany. Her cabinet on Wednesday agreed on a draft law that would require Google and other news aggregator sites to pay publishing houses a fee when they take snippets of articles for reproduction on their site.
“Publishers should be better protected on the Internet,” reads a statement from Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger posted on the homepage of Germany’s Justice Ministry. “They will now receive a tailor-made copyright law for their online presence.”
Essentially, the law is an attempt to ensure that German news websites receive a share of the profits Googlemakes by selling ads on its news pages. Many publishing houses in Germany, led by media giant Axel Springer, have complained that aggregator sites essentially make their money by leveraging the work of others. Merkel’s coalition government, which pairs her conservatives with the business-friendly Free Democrats, has been preparing a draft version of the law since 2009. ‘Must Accept a Price Tag’
“Our children learn that, if they want something, they have to ask first,” German tabloid Bild, an Axel Springer publication, wrote on Thursday. “That is something that Google and co. should do as well. Those who use the work of others must accept a price tag.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-lawmakers-propose-charging-fees-to-aggregators-like-google-a-852965.html
Perhaps the dead tree press should remember that last sentence, every time they lift the work of citizen reporters and bloggers, without so much as a single word of attribution to the source, let alone a payment.
This really does smack of desperation for a dead tree press that can no longer sustain itself in the face of internet competition, so calls on governments to protect it. On the other hand, the loss of total control of the output of news by governments and the ability to sanitise it to suit their own agenda means that Governments are likely to favour such a request with prejudicial eyes.
http://parker-joseph.com/pjcjournal/2012/09/04/getting-news-content-back-under-control-may-be-governmental-aim/
