From Julia Reda:
Article 11 of the proposed EU copyright reform/expansion
. . . .
Commission proposal
Anyone using snippets of journalistic online content must first get a license from the publisher. This new right for publishers would apply for 20 years after publication.
Example:
The automatic link previews social networks generate when users share links (showing the article headline, a thumbnail picture and a short excerpt) would require a license, as well as anyone analysing news content on the web like news aggregators, media monitoring services and fact checking services.Intent:
The Commission wants to generate income for European publishers by allowing them to charge internet platforms for displaying snippets of their content to users. Stated targets are Google, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, who use such snippets in the course of linking to news articles.. . . .
Consequences
- Likely to fail: This is an attempt to replicate at an EU level an idea that already failed badly in Germany and Spain – only applied more broadly and longer. The German law is likely about to be pronounced invalid in court, while the Spanish one “clearly had a negative impact on visibility and access to information in Spain” (EPRS). Journalists certainly never saw additional remuneration.
- Attack on the hyperlink: Because readers need to know what a link leads to before clicking, sites almost always include a snippet of the linked-to content as part of a link. Any limitation on snippets is therefore a limitation on linking.
- Limiting freedom of expression and access to information: This provision would restrict not just businesses, but also individuals who publish news snippets, e.g. bloggers. Because a neighbouring right, unlike a copyright, doesn’t require originality to apply to content, it would protect even short and uncreative snippets, such as purely factual headlines.
- Boosting fake news: Making it legally risky or expensive to link (with snippets) to news risks disincentivising the sharing of reputable news content. Since “fake news” and propaganda outlets are unlikely to charge for snippets, their content could as a result become more visible on social networks.
- News-related startups discouraged, even though this sector is in particular need of innovation and experimentation to find new business models, ways of reaching audiences, fact-checking and combating fake news etc., as technology advances.
- Small publishers disadvantaged: Aggregators create a level playing field for independent publishers with less brand recognition to reach audiences.
Link to the rest at Julia Reda
An enterprising news outlet would issue a blanket license to everyone while its competitors try to sell them.
It strikes me as amazing that our world isn’t in worse condition than it is because our “fearless leaders” lack the ability to think an idea through to its logical conclusion or even to learn from experience.
Think how much better it could be if they were replaced by people who could.
Or maybe…
…it might be even worse.
Hmm…
It does make it difficult to fictionalize the “fearless leaders.” They’re just not plausible, and yet … I begin to see why people believe in conspiracy theories: they may be more believable than the truth 🙂
So now the mission … which I choose to accept … is to find a way to write a fearless leader every bit as clueless as real ones, without making the reader delete the story from the Kindle. Just imagine a self-destruct gif right here 🙂
Well, you could focus on the real poles of power. Either the entrenched bureaucrats or “the little man behind the curtain”.
I’m often reminded of Larry Niven’s SVETZ stories (“GET A HORSE” ETC) where the titular head of the world government was an inbred idiot with the mental age of an 8 year old. He was real fond of the exotic creatures in his zoo so the Space Agency and the Time Travel bureau were in constant struggle for his attention. And budget increases. Poor Svetz typically got the short end of the stick. Or the long end of the unicorn’s horn. Fun stuff.
Oh damn, more reading material to add to the list 😀
EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
Oh, wait…
this is a print-based idea applied to a digital world. It will succeed in making things much worse for the publishers it’s seeking to protect.
It did in Germany where the publishers ended up (grudgingly)giving Google free licenses to get back into their listings to recover lost traffic.
It did in Spain, where the Government saw what happened in Germany and took away the publishers’ ability to cave in and couldn’t get back the lost traffic.
Now they’re trying to apply the Spain approach to the entire region, thinking that if thry all band together they’ll be important enough for google to cave in.
They still don’t get that Google et al are doing them a favor by giving them free exposure. It’s as if publishers demanded Bookbub pay *them* for the “privilege” of listing them in their newsletters.
While overall this looks like a pretty bad idea, one potential silver lining might be that more news sites might start doing their own journalism again instead of most news articles just being “this other person reported on something, so here let me tell you about what they said”, which seems to be an awful lot of “news articles” lately.
But unless you already check their site you’ll never know – because no links will guide you to them – or to any counter claims. Funny how that (doesn’t) work.
Note that I did say this was a pretty bad idea. People really need to stop conflating “maybe something positive might come out of this bad thing” with “this is a good thing”. The world is not so binary as many people like to believe.
(And most of these “so-and-so reported” articles are totally up front about who they’re repeating, so it’s not like it’s something that requires clicking links. Most people don’t bother reading the original article anyway.)
So noted. 😉
But your ‘potential silver lining’ won’t happen because they’ll have even less money from ads rolling in.
“Most people don’t bother reading the original article anyway.”
Because the title tells them it wasn’t something they cared about. Sadly some idiot(s) seem to think if you had to go to the source to see the title you’ll also have to see their ads.
I won’t because I always run with the ad/script blockers on.
I did have one site demand to know why people block their ads. My reply was that third party ads/script are one of the ongoing ways to get hacked without having to click on anything. (I suggested that if they were willing to give me a written guarantee that they’d pay to have any viruses cleaned off my system should one sneak in while I was allowing unknown third parties to run ads/scripts on my system then I’d be happy to. Funny thing, they never replied …)
Sorry for the rant, I had to ‘restore’ my mother’s system a few times, the problem stopped when I set her system to block ads. 😉
Would be gone in a week tops when Google stopped mentioning ‘any’ of their news sites …
Hmmm, maybe Google could ‘clue them in’ by removing any mention of the EU for a week? 😉
Only a week?
So the EU would be weakening the “Fair Use” idea, although that is not the stated goal of the rule.
I’d be curious to see just how social media outlets are supposed to do license checks on all users who post links. What about someone in the US who quotes a snippet that is taken from a different source (say, MSNBC) that quotes a protected source (Die Zeit)? It sounds dreadfully complicated without actually protecting anyone’s copyright.
My guess would be there would be a blanket content license that people like FB and others would have to pay in order to use a feature like that. Then whichever agency is formed to collect those moneys runs some sort of of automated data scraper to distribute the collected money to publishers. This is how it works for radio stations, music in tv, etc.