Comment by rbehrends | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rbehrends | Hacker News Reader

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The analysis of Article 11 is misleading. The actually relevant part is in Article 11 (3), which incorporates (by reference) the usual limitations and exceptions to copyright [1], including the right to quote. This is necessary, anyway, because the Berne convention mandates that right [2].

Article 11 targets news aggregators and search engines. Unlike blog posts or newspaper articles, they generally cannot benefit from the right to quote [3]. Article 11 has two goals. One, it aims at protecting pieces of a work that are generally too short to enjoy regular copyright protection; second, unlike the usual practice in continental European copyright law, it grants ancillary copyright to publishers, not authors, for easier enforcement of these rights.

Note that this does not mean that I endorse Article 11 (I do not and actually consider it harmful and the result of misguided lobbying), but we should be clear what we are actually talking about.

[1] Article 5 of Directive 2001/29/EC.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_quote

[3] As the Wikipedia article above summarizes it, "the resulting new work is not just a collection of quotations, but constitutes a fully original work in itself".

...what Article 11 is really about is that the European contentmafia wants to collect taxes from Google. We've already seen how that played out when Spain introduced something like this on the level of national law. IIRC, Google retaliated by taking Spanish media companies' content out of the index which is something that advertising clients of those media companies were less than pleased about, and a deal was quickly reached between Google and them, saying that Google didn't have to pay.

So, what it will really do will be to create a monopoly enshrined in law, that news aggregation and search is a business you can only be in, if you already wield Google-esque influence over the world of media.

Which is wrong. It's just wrong, on so many levels.

To raise a counterpoint, the point where I though Google as a Search engine started being "a bit evil" was the point where it stopped redirecting users to search result websites, and instead started displaying content on its own pages, in the form of snippets, thus reducing traffic to those cites.

I don't deny the util of being able to see movie times without having to click through, or a businesses contact details, but the effective redirection of traffic with reduction in site's ad revenue of whatever feels 'wrong'.

from a user perspective that seems like a complete win. I'm not quite convinced the marginal value of offering that data is worth any kind of compensation. Movie times seems like something movie theaters would want to give out for free and that ideally there would be a standard feed format for that data.

News blurb also seems rational to me. If I only need the headline I shouldn't have a go to the site. The headlines will be all over twitter and Facebook as people share with their friends so it's hard to see how Google is doing any harm here. If I want to read the details then I'd click through to the site.

Heck i come to HN and scan the headlines and only occasionally click through to the actual article. This topic for example I have not clicked through. Does that make HN evil?

> Heck i come to HN and scan the headlines and only occasionally click through to the actual article. This topic for example I have not clicked through. Does that make HN evil?

No, because copying titles is a very normal way to refer to something. Heck, even quoting is, as long as its done in proportion. But caching entire websites (such as Google Cache)? Copyright infringement. If it weren't for the fact that it is caching and therefore OK. Usenet providers attempted to argue usenet servers are also just caches, but I'm not sure if/how far that one has flied.

Google cache is not infringement, because Google respects robots.txt and because it only caches content made freely available by the publisher. Advertising is a business model, not part of the license agreement of a non-consentwalled website.

Don't get me wrong, from a user point of view it is. Nonetheless, it impacts the business, no-doubt. A movie theatre may want to embed adverts for other films down the side of its listings, it may have other reasons for wanting people to actually visit its site.

Google isn't doing harm from a user perspective, but it palpably is doing harm from a content provider's point of view by screen-scraping the content and repackaging it as its own.

I walk into the shop, I see some newspapers with headlines on them, I decide to buy the paper, or I don't.

If I don't I'm not 'stealing' anything.

If a publisher wants to show the headline story to prospective customers in the shop, it can -- google will display the headline, and if people are interested they'll click, just like they'll buy the newspaper in the shop if they want to read below the fold.

If the person isn't interested they won't click / won't buy the paper.

If the publisher doesn't want people in the shop seeing the headline, they put it inside their publiccation. Online they simply mark it as unavailable to google (robots.txt or whatever).

Now if the argument is that search engines have no right to read your site and display the headlines without explicit invitation, I'd argue that operating a web server is the invitation to all, and robots.txt is the bouncer saying "you aren't allowed in". Google and other search engines obey robots.txt / the bouncer.

  User-agent: Googlebot
  Disallow: /belowthefold/

> I walk into the shop, I see some newspapers with headlines on them, I decide to buy the paper, or I don't. If I don't I'm not 'stealing' anything.

Are you doing this on an industrial scale and building a large ad-supported business from it. More importantly, are you standing outside the shop saying 'don;t go in there, old chum - I can tell you what's going on'.

> More importantly, are you standing outside the shop saying 'don;t go in there, old chum - I can tell you what's going on'.

Sure are. https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3295/2365794657_6a9a3f2d19_b.j...

Why would I need to buy the News & Star, or even go into the shop, now I know what's happening?

It's quite easy for a publication to not appear in the following section of google's site

https://i.imgur.com/RoFQrN1.png

Either a simple robots.txt (a sign telling school kids they aren't allowed), or a username/password (members only), or even close the shop completely.

The newspapers have headlines and the start of stories on display in shops, trying to attract passers by to their wears. You can even read the first few sentences of the cabinet meltdown in the telegraph, far more than you can on google, all without paying the newspaper owner, or indeed the shopkeeper, a penny.

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BBYXHY/english-newspapers-on-a-she...

The headlines are put out there for everyone to see to entice people to come in and spend money. If the shop or newspaper proprietor doesn't want people reading the headlines without buying, they can not put them on display (robots.txt), or cover them up, like on these (ex) publications

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/B4B6/production/...

What they can't do is charge people for looking at the headlines on the advertising board they put out in front of their shop.

And that's fine. I think it is perfectly reasonable to have good display a headline and first sentence snippet. What isn't reasonsble is if Google were to mine the story for info and display the whole lot on their site, rather than on the newspaper's site.

Yes, but at the end of the day it should be all about the user, right?

For example when considering the cost of water pollution we don't try to balance the interests of the owners of paint factories with the interests of people who drink water. Instead we consider if the cost of compliance with new antipollution laws will be worse for people who use paint then the cost to them of drinking polluted water.

It is all about the user in the long term. Google dominating and closing the internet is very problematic. In the long term, we could have users that do not go out of Google and just accept whatever Google give them as THE answer.

Maintaining a healthy ecosystem and competition is good in the long term.

There are many things that are forbidden even though the consumer might like them in the short term (ex: selling lower than the cost for retailers to kill all attempt of competition).

> selling lower than the cost for retailers to kill all attempt of competition

Which specific law are you referring to?

Anti-dumping laws vary by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

It should be about facilitating a sustainable long-term balance.

In your analogy, Google is the owner of the paint factory, yes? If not, why not?

What’s wrong is that entire kingdoms were built around “snippets”; low value content that is simple and short and doesn’t really need anything more than a table (movie times) or a few short sentences (recap of events aka “news”).

Somebody still has to write them. (Although AI is catching up.)

> it aims at protecting pieces of a work that are generally too short to enjoy regular copyright protection; second, unlike the usual practice in continental European copyright law, it grants ancillary copyright to publishers, not authors, for easier enforcement of these rights.

So it wants to expand copyright coverage and give it not to creators but to those who profit on them. Why should anyone accept that? Copyright is already crazy overreaching, it should be reduced, not expanded. This corrupt control grabbing should be completely repealed.

I sell my stuff via Walmart. I have no problem if Walmart is given the legal right to prosecute shoplifters, since (likr a publisher) they already paid me for my work.

Not a good comparison, since expansion of copyright is always going to be about censorship, violation of free speech and so on. That's the nature of copyright itself. Giving publishers more censorship power? No, thanks!

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