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I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this as Murdoch machinations (old media tax extraction - besides, that's settled law here). During oral arguments one of the justices rightly pointed out that Google has a financial incentive in hyperlinking. Consider that Google may summarise a news article and display it in the search results - effectively stealing the ad traffic from the news publisher.

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I'm no fan of Google but it really was the height of hypocrisy for news publishers to demand their content be visible in Google search results while simultaneously complaining that their copyright is being infringed with respect to titles/snippets.

Explicitly allowing crawlers and — perhaps most tellingly, offering specific metadata for SEO optimisations — is tacit permission for the republication of hyperlinks/titles/snippets. If you don't like that deal, just deny Googlebot (et al). It really is that simple.

The settled law is a joke.

(Or in the alternative, as a non-news publisher, I want my cut too.)

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