German "ancillary copyright" bill: news aggregators may use short excerpts

Readers may remember that last summer this blog reported that German legislators were considering a proposed "ancillary copyright" which would require news aggregators to pay royalties on excerpts of news stories that they link to.
Bloomberg now reports that the Bundestag has agreed a bill which provides that:

- News aggregators may display "single words or very small text excerpts" from to publishers' websites free of charge, however it does not define what constitutes a small excerpt.

- Publishers will be given one year during which they have the sole rights to commercially use their journalistic content. Presumably the above exception applies during this year - perhaps a German-speaking reader could clarify this?

- Mere linking cannot be prohibited.

The bill, which was passed with 293 votes in favor, 243 against and three abstentions, still needs to be ratified by the upper house of the German parliament, the Bundesrat. If it is passed it will be a much weaker version of what German publishers had originally lobbied for, however the European Publishers' Council ignored that in its statement of 1 March, saying that it:

"welcomes today’s decision by the German Bundestag to approve an ancillary copyright for news publishers in law that means that search engines and other aggregators who commercialise publishers' content will no longer be able to do so without permission. The "Leistungsschutzrecht," as it is known in German, will pave the way for commercial negotiations between the parties on the price for the commercial use of publishers' content."

Google has said:

"As a result of today's vote, ancillary copyright in its most damaging form has been stopped. However, the best outcome for Germany would be no new legislation because it threatens innovation, particularly for start-ups. It’s also not necessary because publishers and Internet companies can innovate together, just as Google has done in many other countries."

Predictably neither side appears thrilled with the bill, and this is undoubtedly not the last we will hear of it.

French minister of culture speaks of Google, Amazon and Loi Hadopi

Aurélie Filippetti

Earlier this week Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera featured an interview with French minister of culture Aurélie Filippetti. 

As her surname clearly suggests, Mme Filippetti is of Italian descent. This week she was in Umbria to attend some celebrations in honour of her grandfather Tommaso, who left Italy after WWI to work as a miner, first in Luxembourg and then in France. 

Corriere secured an interview with Mme Filippetti prior to her arrival in Italy. On that occasion, the Minister had the chance to clarify France's position as regards topics which are of sure interest to Google, Amazon, copyright enthusiasts and users of copyright-protected materials alike. 

As was reported by The 1709 Blog last month, France is thinking of following Germany and adopt a piece of legislation which would require news aggregation sites such as Google News to pay royalties on the newspapers' snippets and headlines that they display. As readers will remembers, Google is not particularly happy about this, and has indeed threatened to exclude French media sites from search results if France goes ahead with plans to make search engines pay for content. While the overall situation is heating up in Europe, in Brazil 154 members of the Brazilian National Association of Newspapers have already opted out from Google News. 

En garde Googlé!

Filippetti highlighted that culture is one of the most important resources to European economies and it would be foolish not to develop and sustain it. Hence, if by the end of this year French, Italian and German publishers do not achieve an agreement with Google, in January 2013 France will adopt a law which would require Google to pay royalties on the contents displayed on its News service. The underlying idea is that those who profit from the distribution of contents must also contribute economically to their creation. If this is true for TV networks, the same should apply also to providers, websites and digital platforms, said the Minister.

Not the kind of dumping
Amazon is interested in 

Filippetti also spoke of how internet giants like Amazon are threatening traditional publishers, eg Gallimard. She claimed that, although it is likely that Amazon will soon have a super-dominant position in Europe, the Commission does not seem to care. This is because this seems more interested in contrasting certain behaviours of small publishers who are just trying to cope with Amazon's threatening presence, rather than enquiring on Luxembourg-based giant whose business model is based on distance sales and unacceptable fiscal strategies involving price distribution dumping.

Mme Filippetti also spent a few words on controversial Loi Hadopi (on which see here, here, here, here ...), and said that the fight against piracy is best served not by laws like Hadopi, but by the development of fully licensed services such as Spotify and Deezer, although the royalties currently paid by these services are too low and should be increased.

Following this interview, there seems to be a lot to think about, as those addressed by Mme Filippetti are all topics which are currently at the centre of attention a bit everywhere in Europe ... What do readers think?

Brazilian newspapers opt out of Google News

The ongoing news aggregator v publisher battle has raised its head in one of the world's fastest growing economies: Brazil. Further to Eleonora's post last Thursday reporting on Google in France, now 154 members of the Brazilian National Association of Newspapers (ANJ) have opted out of the Google News service.

Last year the ANJ recommended to its members that they opt out of Google News as they said it resulted in a drop in traffic, and therefore advertising revenue, for publishers. 154 members, making up 90 percent of Brazil's total news circulation, have followed that recommendation and their sites will no longer be accessible via Google News.
 

The president of the ANJ, Carlos Fernando Lindenberg Neto, said that "Staying with Google News was not helping us grow our digital audiences. By providing the first few lines of our stories to internet users, the service reduces the chances that they will look at the entire story in our websites

Google's public policy director, Marcel Leonardi, defended Google's decision not to pay the publishers saying that Google sends four billion clicks to news sites each month.

Google will however still index all ANJ member sites, and The Fast Company reports that all Brazilian news sites will still be available on Google search.  The ANJ has confirmed however that their decision not to appear on Google News will affect general search results as Google's ranking takes into account whether a site appears in Google News or not. Ironically Google Search is the site that Google makes money from as it contains adverts whereas Google News does not. Perhaps if the Brazilian newspapers really wanted to show they were serious they would have taken their sites off all search engine sites that decline to pay them rather than limiting themselves to Google News.

Further, Lindenberg Neto has confirmed that by opting out the Brazilian publishers are losing traffic to their sites, saying that "Google News' presence in the Brazilian market is small. We believe [the loss of traffic] is an acceptable price to protect our content and brands."

As this blogger has acted for Meltwater in a similar battle between news aggregators and publishers in the UK she is clearly in favour of the news aggregators and search engines in this particular case. The public at large seems to have mixed thoughts, varying from wanting to make "freeloading" news aggregation sites hurt, to wondering whether the public will continue to read traditional newspapers when there are many news blogs and independent sites keen to be included on Google News.

The fight between Google and publishers in Brazil represents, to this blogger, yet another example of why copyright laws, as they stand, do not fit with the internet. A new law, distinct from copyright law and drafted with the internet in mind, could help to clear up these kinds of issues.

Incidentally, this blogger found all content for this blog by reading various different sources all found using Google News.

France to make Google pay for its News service?

Once things were easier
for news aggregators

Today Google received a good deal of attention in the press. Firstly, the stock dropped about 9% before trading was suspended, due to premature release of its quarterly earning (with profit declining 20% as total costs jumped and adversing prices continued to slide). Then, news spread (see BBC) that Google has sent a dramatic letter to several French ministerial offices, threatening to exclude French media sites from search results if France goes ahead with plans to make search engines pay for content.

Last month, following a similar initiative in Germany (see Iona's post here), leading French newspaper publishers had in fact called on Hollande's government to adopt a law to force internet search engines such as Google to pay for content. 

Guillaume Frappat, head of economic and digital affairs at SEPM (the French national magazine publishers society), said that German draft law stands as a demonstration that "there is really a problem between the content producers and the filter that is between the content and the viewers."

As pointed out on PC Advisor, SEPM is not the only organisation that wants to enhance discussion in this respect (and possibly obtain payment from Google and similar operations, too). The French union of the daily press (SPQN) is also interested, as news publishers might be hurt more than the magazine industry, explained Frappat, who added: "In general, publishers are interested in all the initiatives that put the debate back on the table ... But we don't want to break the balance between copyrights and innovation." 

Google is upset at possible French legislative initiative, which is viewed as "harmful to the Internet, Internet users and news websites that benefit from substantial traffic" sent to them by Google's search engine.

News aggregation in progress

With print advertising revenues rapidly and constantly declining in the newspaper industry everywhere (revenues are now less than half what they were in 2006), attempts to share some of the profits made by news aggregators seem unavoidable. However, the question whether Google infringes copyright by returning a search result has not been given a satisfactory answer yet.

The rulings delivered by some national courts in Europe (notably those of the Brussels Court of Appeal in Copiepresse - reported on the IPKat here -, and the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in Meltwater - on which see the latest comments here and here) and the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Infopaq I (IPKat report is available here) and Infopaq II (which has been commented here), do not look particularly friendly to news aggregators. 

However, the last word has not been said yet, as copyright enthusiasts are keenly awaiting the response of the UK Supreme Court in the Meltwater saga, which will appear sometime in 2013, probably at the same time when the decision in parallel proceedings in the US is published.