By me in City AM…
I’ll post it here later but in the meantime head over there
Copyright and money: spot the difference
The Times and Google: what changed?
Quite a lot has been written recently about The Times allowing Google to index some of its content. Some of the coverage has suggested this is a capitulation by The Times which had previously taken allowed very little indexing.
I think they’re missing the point. The most interesting part of this story is that The Times “will begin showing articles’ first two sentences to search engines” (according to Paid Content).
This is a big change of stance by Google. Back when I was involved in the ACAP project they resolutely refused to contemplate anything which would allow a site owner to determine what part of an article might be visible in search results (the so-called snippet). Nothing in the robots.txt protocol gave site owners the ability to specify their preferences to this level of detail and, although ACAP did, Google refused to engage with it.
So the story here is not about The Times capitulating, mainly because they clearly have not. The story is that Google have met them in the middle and agreed on a way of indexing which is agreeable to both of them.
This is exactly the sort of thing which ACAP was meant to achieve, and if Google have softened their rigid approach to the way they’re prepared to operate, it is only a good thing.
For The Times it means they can use Google to help, not hinder, their business strategy. For Google it means their users see a large and visible gap in search results being filled.
I think that’s what you call a good outcome.
The Guardian: a dating site which runs a newspaper on the side
Digital first, redundancies second, profits last
Just over a year ago The Guardian announced its new strategy to go “digital first” and move its efforts away from print towards the internet. My post about it at the time was titled, perhaps a little cynically, “throwing in the towel”.
Their plan was to increase digital revenues to £91m in five years, and manage the decline in print revenues along the way.
So, how’s it going?
They announced some figures the other day and they are bleak. Operating losses have increased to £44.2m – a massive 42% increase since they announced their digital first strategy. Newspaper sales are in freefall (down 10% in a single year).
They are responding by reducing editorial budgets and laying off journalists.
Digital advertising revenue is a little ray of light; it has grown by 26% since last year. That sounds impressive until you notice that the new total is just £14.7m. Annually. From a weekly audience of 5.8m people. The surprise isn’t how much they are making but how little – last year it would have been just over £11.5m.
The total digital revenue is a much less awful £45m (up 16.3% but still a long way off their goal of more than double that). The extra money comes from sites like their weirdly successful Soulmates dating service, as well as other unspecified revenues.
Not much of those “other” revenues appear to be from people actually paying for their content – they have only managed to find 17,000 people willing to pay £9.99 a month for their iPad app. Hardly surprising when the same stuff is available for free on your iPad using the built-in web browser.
So it would seem that on the digital side, they make more than twice as much from other services than they do from their editorial websites. Which makes the newspaper website seem like a rather expensive loss-leader for a profitable dating site.
No wonder they’re responding by cutting editorial jobs – how many dating subscribers does a war correspondent persuade to sign up?
Sadly, all this is obvious and predictable, except, it seems, to the Guardian. If they want to be a newspaper, a journalism business, a crusading power and influential voice, then making journalism profitable is key.
The fact is that if you keep making huge losses and have no source of income to pay for them, you’re doomed.
Even if you have the special status of the Guardian, and so can ignore normal commercial realities and make irrational investments in your least profitable products, at some point simple maths will catch up with you. Other newspapers making similarly irrational decisions at least have people with deep pockets backing them.
So the Guardian’s plan seems, still, to be to hang on and hope that at some point their huge online audience turns into a decent business.
Perhaps they’re hoping the hundreds of millions of pounds of content they give for free to millions of commercially worthless readers will result in an exponential rise in lonely hearts reaching out across cyberspace using their peculiarly out of place dating service (certainly a new twist on the idea of “freemium”).
History and common sense suggest that neither thing is very likely. Anyone building a turnaround plan on simple blind hope has, by definition, to be prepared to suspend their rational faculties before they can pursue their plan with gusto.
That’s what they did when they announced their new strategy last year. As the results become clear, though, they need to perhaps try to relocate a few rational thinkers and start making sensible decisions.
They don’t have long. Their figures state that they will shortly have £300m in the bank, having disposed of some assets such as radio at a considerable discount to their book value.
Even if things stay the same for the next few years, unlikely given the unbroken and decades-long failure of the free content model for newspapers, it means they have a little under seven years before they run out of money.
If they keep increasing losses at the current rate, it will much much sooner. And if they think that online advertising is going to cover the £44m gap to get them back to at least breaking even then I’m afraid the fantasists are still running the company strategy.
If things do start to turn around it’s still going to be a race against a dwindling cash pile before anyone can say the problem is fixed, all the more so if they continue to rule out the seemingly innocuous idea of asking people to pay for their most expensive and valuable asset – their content and product.
In the meantime, redundancies all round. Which, with 650 journalists, might not be a bad idea anyway.
But one simple bellwether of success for newspaper companies is their ability to invest in journalism. It is their raison d’être, a simple expression of their success and mission.
When they start to cut this investment merely to try to flatter the bottom line it’s a sure sign that the end is nigh.
Lets hope a bunch of lonely people turn up soon to save the day!
Debating copyright changes? How inconvenient! Lets not bother.
Wherever we stand on the issue, one thing we all know is that copyright law is subject to intense and extended debate. Some say it should be relaxed, some say it should be tightened up, but the law doesn’t actually change without a big debate.
But what is this?
“28ZA Power to add or remove exceptions to copyright
(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations amend this Chapter to
provide that any act is or is not an act which may be done in relation to
copyright works notwithstanding the subsistence of copyright.(2) Regulations under this section may—
(a) make supplementary or transitional provision;
(b) make consequential provision, including provision amending
any enactment or subordinate legislation passed or made before
this section comes into force.(3) The power to make regulations under this section is exercisable by
statutory instrument.
The UK is proposing that the Secretary of State (aka a here-today-gone-tomorrow politician) should be able to alter copyright law whimsically, adding or removing exceptions to copyright by means of a Statutory Instrument. These are a mechanism in UK lawmaking whereby changes can be made without a full debate and vote in Parliament.
There are lots of circumstances where SIs are the best way of achieving things, especially when things need to be done fast, but copyright law is not one of them.
Copyright exceptions are compulsory requisitions of property. Unlike compulsory purchase orders, if the government decides to give your content away via an exception, you’re unlikely to get paid anything at all. Your ability to stop people using your stuff in ways you don’t like is reduced and if the exception happens to cover something your business depends on, you’re stuffed.
In other words, exceptions need very careful consideration, not a rubber-stamp from a minister who, on recent form, is extremely unlikely to have a clue about the issues.
If that sounds dramatic, consider recent form. Exceptions have been proposed for “data mining” (which involves copying and processing vast quantities of other peoples stuff and which is well served commercial market). And for education, which as well as being an important social function is also a thriving market. The recent Hargreaves review was prompted, according to David Cameron, by Google telling him our laws are too strict. And according to copious recent evidence, as well as many people close to the process, the Intellectual Property Office, which is supposed to advise ministers on IP law, has become the vehicle for the personal ideological views of some of its civil servants.
Now someone (a civil servant no doubt) has tried to sneak a massive and hugely impactful new power for ministers into, er, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill – that well known home of copyright legislation.
Copyright isn’t a thing for ministers to dish up as a sort of free gift to companies and causes which they want to help. It is someone else’s property, and exceptions should be as narrow and sparing as possible. They should always be subject to a full debate and the onus should be on the government to prove the overwhelming benefit to society which justifies robbing people of their property.
I’m not saying that the case for exceptions can’t be made, I am saying that it needs to be done openly and subjected to a full debate and scrutiny. Something which Statutory Instruments are specifically designed to avoid and parliamentary democracy is supposed to achieve.
Sneaking this in to an unrelated bill is just a way to side-step debate and discussion – not only about exceptions to copyright but about this change too.
There’s democracy in action!
A Sergey update: we misunderstood him
Sergey Brin has posted a response to the Guardian’s interview with him. (He posted it on Google Plus which means I have been on Google Plus twice now! Watch out Facebook!)
One clarification is particularly relevant to my previous comments:
I became an entrepreneur during the 90’s, the boom time of what you might now call Web 1.0. Yahoo created a directory of all the sites they could find without asking anyone for permission.
…
Today, starting such a service would entail navigating a number of new tollbooths and gatekeepers.
This is the most explicit I have seen Google be about one of their fundamental disagreements with things like copyright. He objects to the need for permission. He sees the need to get permission from someone else as fundamentally at odds with entrepreneurialism. It’s easy to see how that view is incompatible with the whole idea of copyright.
It’s also a clear enunciation of why Google is in a poor position to lead this debate. It’s obvious that a business which depends on the agreement of someone else, particularly in the IP field, would be advantaged if they could just do as they pleased regardless of whether that person agreed or not. Many businesses would love to be freed from regulatory and commercial restrictions, simply be able to ignore the rights and interests of others when they are inconvenient. That doesn’t make it right, though, even when the restriction makes it harder or even impossible to do certain kinds of business and “innovate” in certain ways.
The “tollbooths” and “gateways” which Sergey objects to have, in relation to copyright anyway, always been there. The law has never said it’s OK to just copy, keep and exploit anything you want, regardless of whether you have permission. If, as a consequence of the legal reality being ignored, some people have set up systems which technically restrict what the law has always restricted anyway that’s more likely a response to their interests being damaged than a fundamental shift in anything. Reality, you could say, is finally biting.
In truth, unfair advantages lead to unfair outcomes. Google is a massive and mind-bogglingly rich company, run by some of the most mind-bogglingly rich young scamps in the world, and the largest and most powerful aggregator of content and data ever seen. It has become so by exploiting content created by others. Even if this has by-and-large been done with tacit or “implied” permission, the idea that it doesn’t require permission in law or in reality, has never been true. So when some people decide that they don’t like it anymore, and prevent their content and data from being accessed by Google, it might not suit Google but it also is fundamentally wrong to present it as a threat to anything other than Google’s commercial interests.
Permission is the bedrock of copyright and so of professional creativity. When Google argues that their service and others should be exempt from the need for permission, they are arguing not for the interests of society at large, or entrepreneurs, or innovation, or free speech. They’re arguing for the interests of their shareholders.
Google should stop whinging and instead go out there and do some deals which work for their suppliers as well as themselves.
Policy makers, in the meantime, should take note.
The internet wants to be open, but some internets are more open than others
Sergey Brin of Google had a discussion with The Guardian and talked about his vision for the future of the internet, alongside his concerns about threats to that vision.
It’s an incredible insight into his (and Google’s) world view, which seems to be from a truly unique perspective. There is nobody else who sits astride the internet like Google and it seems that from the top, the sense of entitlement to be the masters of all they survey is strong.
Take this quote, from towards the end of the piece:
If we could wave a magic wand and not be subject to US law, that would be great. If we could be in some magical jurisdiction that everyone in the world trusted, that would be great … We’re doing it as well as can be done
I’m not sure what this “magical jurisdiction” would be but it doesn’t sound like Sergey wants it to be based on US law, and there’s no sign that Google has any greater love for any other existing jurisdiction. I wonder if he’s thinking that perhaps it should be a Google-defined jurisdiction? After all, Google is fond of saying that the trust of users is their key asset – they presumably consider themselves to be highly trusted. I wonder if the magic wand is in development somewhere deep in their bowels? Perhaps one of their robotic cars can wave it when the time comes! Google can declare independence from the world…
But why should we trust them? There’s almost nothing they do which you can’t find fierce critics to match their army of adoring fans. Without deconstructing them all, surely the point is this: whenever a single entity (be it a government, company or individual) has complete control over any marketplace, territory or network, bad things tend to happen. Accountability, checks-and-balances, the rule of law, democratically enacted, are all ways of trying to ensure that power does not achieve its natural tendency to corrupt.
Google asks us to just trust it. And many people do.
Another quote:
There’s a lot to be lost,” he said. “For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it.
The phrasing is interesting. Is is really true that because data in apps is not crawlable it is “lost”? I use apps all the time, and the data appears to be available to me. I don’t think the fact that it’s not available to Google means it’s “lost” (except I suppose to Google). Defining something that is not visible to Google as “lost” suggests not just that Google considers that it should be able to see and keep everything that exists online, but also that they have an omniscient role that should not be subject to the normal rules of business or law. Like people being able to choose who they deal with and on what terms. Or being able to choose who copies and keeps their copyright works.
The “lost” app data could, of course, easily be made available to Google if the owner chose. Brin’s complaint seems to be that Google can’t access it without the owner deciding it’s OK – there is a technical obstacle which can’t simply be ignored. Yet all they have to do, surely, is persuade the owners to willingly open the door: hardly a controversial challenge in the world of business. It’s called doing a deal, isn’t it?
Here’s what he had to say in relation to Facebook
You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive.. The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.
Another telling insight. Too many rules stifle innovation. Rules are bad.
Hard to agree with even as a utopian ideal (utopia isn’t usually synonymous with anarchy), but even less so when you consider the reality of dealing with Google. I have visited various Google offices at various times and have always been asked to sign in using their “NDA machine” at reception. Everyone has to do it. You have to sign an NDA simply to walk into their offices. The first rule of Google is you can’t talk about Google. Hardly the most open environment – they are the only company I have ever visited which insists on this.
Of course, Google is no stranger to rules either. They set their own rules and don’t offer room for discussion or adjustment. When they crawl websites, for example, they copy and keep everything they find, indefinitely. They have an ambition to copy and keep all the information on the internet, and eventually the world. Their own private, closed, internet. This is a rule you have to play by.
Even if you ban crawling on some or all of your site using robots.txt, they crawl it anyway but just exclude the content from search results (this was explained to me by a senior Google engineer a few years ago and as far as I know it has not changed). If you want to set some of your own rules, using something like ACAP or just by negotiating with them, good luck: they refuse to implement things like ACAP and rarely negotiate.
“You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive”
Here’s an interesting story. A while ago, Google refused to include content in their search results if clicking on the link would lead a user to a paywall. They said it was damaging to the user experience if they couldn’t read the content they had found with Google (another Google rule: users must be able to click on links they find and see the content without any barriers or restrictions). However it also meant users couldn’t find content they knew they wanted, for example from some high-profile newspapers like the FT and Wall Street Journal.
So Google introduced a programme called “First Click Free“. It set some rules (more rules!) for content owners to get their content included in Google search even if it was “restricted” behind a paywall. It doesn’t just set rules for how to allow Google’s crawlers to access the content without filling in a registration form, but also the conditions you have to fulfill – primarily that anybody clicking a link to “restricted” content from Google search needs to be allowed to view it immediately, without registration or payment.
This is a Google rule which you have to play by, unless you are willing to be excluded from all their search results. Not only is it technically demanding, it also fails to take account of different business models and the need for businesses to be flexible.
Unfortunately it was also wide open to abuse. Many people quickly realised they could read anything on paid sites just by typing the headline into a Google search.
Eventually Google made some changes. Here’s how they announced them:
we’ve decided to allow publishers to limit the number of accesses under the First Click Free policy to five free accesses per user each day
They have “decided to allow” publishers to have a slightly amended business model. Publishers need permission from Google to implement a Google-defined business model (or suffer the huge impact of being excluded from search), and now they are allowed to vary it slightly.
For a company which objects to the idea of having to play by someone else’s rules, they’re not too bothered about imposing some of their own.
Which brings me back to trust. If Google want a world in which they have access to scan, store and use all “data” from everywhere, where they don’t have to play by the “restrictive” rules or laws (like copyright) set by others – even their own government – don’t they need to start thinking about their demand for openness both ways round? Rather than rejecting rules which don’t suit them (such as “US law”) shouldn’t they try to get them changed; argue and win their case or accept defeat graciously? Shouldn’t they stop imposing rules on those whose rules they reject, ignore or decry?
Google is a very closed company. Little they do internally is regarded by them as being “open”, and they build huge and onerous barriers to protect their IP, secrets and data. Even finding out what Google know about you, or what copies of your content they have, is virtually impossible; changing or deleting it even harder.
They ask us to trust them. We would be unwise to do so, any more than we trust any monopolies or closed regimes which define their own rules. It wouldn’t matter so much but for their huge dominance, influence and reach. They have, it is said, personal data on more than a billion people all of whom are expected to trust them unquestioningly.
Surely the first step to earning, rather than simply assuming, that trust is that they need to start behaving towards others in the way they demand others treat them.
Openness cuts both ways, Sergey. How about starting by practicing what you preach and opening Google up fully?
It’s OK everyone, turns out everything’s fine
I went to an interesting talk today. Mike Masnick, founder of Techdirt, was presenting his report “The Sky is Rising”. The report says, in short, that based on analysis of “the numbers”, the market and opportunity for content and entertainment is growing. “We’re living through an incredible period of abundance and opportunity, with more people producing more content and more money being made than ever before” as the report puts it.
The predictions of doom often heard are just the “legacy” entertainment industry trying to cling to the past, according to Masnick, whose report suggests something very different.
I hope the report is right because I think the important thing is that the opportunity gets bigger overall and a bigger creative sector is able to invest more in making more content products to serve an expanding market – in other words exactly what Masnick says is happening. We should worry less about whether the future winners are the same as the past. I haven’t read the report because I hadn’t heard of it before today but I will and you should. I guess time will tell if it’s right.
The interesting bit for me was that the talk was billed as being about copyright but Mike didn’t really address that to begin with. I was interested in what copyright had to do with it – after all copyright enables you to decide who can use your stuff, it doesn’t tell you what you should decide. It lets you to choose your business model rather than forcing one upon you. On that basis it would be logical to assume Masnick is a supporter of the copyright status quo.
The answer was a bit confusing (but it’s clear at least that while he supports copyright he doesn’t do so wholeheartedly or uncritically).
Masnick used the example of VCRs in the 1970s as an example of an attempt to stifle innovation (the VCR) by the incumbent industries (the MPAA) using copyright law as their weapon, and the great opportunity that opened up to the movie industry as a result of losing that case.
He went on to talk about free speech being threatened by copyright when sites containing infringing content alongside non-infringing content are closed down. Along the way he mentioned a site which closed when it was sued but later, after it was shuttered, went on to win its case(I think he said it was called Veoh but that one seems to be alive and well). He also mentioned the availability of out-of-copyright books on Amazon (relatively high) versus in-copyright but very old books (relatively low).
I think he was trying to say that copyright law at present is too restrictive, and that where it is loosened good things happen, although he strayed from his preference for “evidence based policy” with the anecdotal answers he gave – and of course there are many similar anecdotes on the other side of the argument. To be fair, trying to prove a negative is hard and so finding evidence that things would be better or worse in a different environment is hard.
Perhaps I’ll find a fuller answer in his evidence-based report. However, it struck me that a pretty good answer had already been presented by him earlier in his talk.
According to him, everything is on an upward curve. Opportunities for creators, consumer spending, consumer choice, the ease with which someone can become a professional creator, the amount of content produced and so on. The problems are the nice ones to have – discovering content in this flood of choice and so on. If that’s true – and I really hope it is, even it conflicts with what I see – it’s great news and, more importantly, isn’t it also evidence that copyright law isn’t acting as a barrier to all these innovative new players?
Proving a positive is so much better than speculating about negatives, and on the basis of what Masnick told us it would seem he has already done so. Everything in the garden, according to him, is already rosy. So rather than worry about all the imagined opportunities that copyright supposedly restricts entrepreneurs from pursuing, shouldn’t we be thinking about the bigger market he says it has created and thinking up ways to exploit it and grow it still further?
Lets play a word game
Consider this quote from The Guardian:
A cross-party committee of MPs and peers has urged the government to consider introducing legislation that would force Google to censor its search results to block material that a court has found to be in breach of someone’s *********.
Or these ones, from the parliamentary committee itself:
Where an individual has obtained a clear court order that certain material infringes their ********* and so should not be published we do not find it acceptable that he or she should have to return to court repeatedly in order to remove the same material from internet searches.
and
Google acknowledged that it was possible to develop the technology proactively to monitor websites for such material in order that the material does not appear in the results of searches. We find their objections in principle to developing such technology totally unconvincing. Google and other search engines should take steps to ensure that their websites are not used as vehicles to breach the law and should actively develop and use such technology. We recommend that if legislation is necessary to require them to do so it should be introduced.
not to mention
Whilst damages for breaches of ********* are never as good as preventing the breach in the first place, the maximum level of damages that has been awarded is too low to act as a real deterrent. We recommend that the courts should have the power to award exemplary damages in ********* cases, if necessary by giving the courts that power through legislation. In deciding whether to award exemplary damages the courts should take into account the financial situation of the media organisation concerned.
How about this one from Tim Berners-Lee
It’s mine – you can’t have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I’m getting in return.
What do you think they’re all talking about? What word have I asterisked-out?
If you’re guessing “copyright” you are, sadly, wrong. However it fits, doesn’t it?
They are, as you probably guessed, talking about “privacy” or personal data in one form or another.
The reason they can so easily substitute for each other is because they’re so similar. Copyright, like “privacy” or personal data belongs to someone. They choose how much of it to put in public and on what terms. They choose how it can be exploited by others and they have the right to prevent it. They are both protected by laws which are intended to protect the personal, commercial and moral rights of the owners.
Yet despite the obvious parallels between copyright and “privacy” they seem to often be regarded in almost opposite ways. While preserving the sanctity of “privacy” (whatever that actually means) is uncontroversial – even the normally shrill Cory Doctorow says “I like the idea of strong privacy legislation” – the idea that copyright should apply to the internet in anything other than the most rudimentary fashion creates a huge and impassioned outcry.
Perhaps this is to do with the fact the copyright is so often associated with big companies, who are easily and casually reviled – sometimes just for their big-ness. Anti-copyright activists often take aim at Disney or Newscorp and accuse them of trying to prop up an outdated and unfair media monopoly.
It’s harder to be so absolutist at the other end of the scale. Everything I have ever written, every photograph I have ever taken is covered by copyright. The same applies to you. It could also be my living. But protecting it online is virtually impossible. Anyone who has tried to get a picture or video removed from websites, sometimes many websites, knows the impossibility of the task. Getting compensation is a virtual impossibility. The idea that someone might ask before using my stuff is almost comically naive. Getting paid by even a tiny minority just a fantasy.
So where do my privacy rights (good) end and my copyrights (bad) begin? Is it when I publish something? Is it when I try to make money from it? Is it when I do a deal with a media company to use my work? Is it when I get successful enough that I collaborate with other creators, work together to be more successful and become, as if by magic, a company rather than just a person (media companies, after all, are just ways that creative people organise themselves to create more success).
For me, what is good for one is good for the other. Copyright is personal, just as much as it is corporate, and it’s the engine of so much economic and cultural good. The polarised attitudes highlight how dishonest and unsophisticated the debate has become.
Copyright is property. Someone created it, invested time, intelligence, creativity and probably money in it. It belongs to that person, and they have the right to choose whether or not to share it.
If they do, it’s a good thing: it advances our culture and our knowledge, it inspires others to create more things, it moves us forward as well as entertaining and delighting people. We should want to encourage more things to be created and shared and copyright does this.
Those who create and share should be able to expect a reward just as those who seek to protect their privacy expect to be able to prevent it being invaded.
Copyright needs to be better protected, and that means having practical means to do so as well as the laws to base them on.
The German solution for newspaper revenues: two cheers, two boos
The German government is planning to introduce a new right for newspaper publishers to charge ISPs, search engines and aggregators for use of their stuff.
Two cheers, I suppose, because newspapers need all the help they can get when it comes to making money online. They have been pushing for this for a long time and it will provide a much needed new revenue stream.
But two boos, too, because it doesn’t fundamentally solve anything and in my view it risks making some things worse.
The logic, as I understand it, of this solution starts with the observation that consumers ARE paying for content online, they’re just not paying content companies.
Everyone buys a service from an ISP, for example, who makes money from providing users with access to content. Aggregators and search engines are exploiting content and making money from it by selling ads, but not giving any to publishers.
So the solution, in a similar vein to the blank tape levy of old (popular in some parts of Europe), is to collect money centrally from the businesses which are making it and then distribute it to the deserving content owners.
The reason it makes me uneasy is because it uses collective licensing as a primary revenue stream. You don’t sell your product to anyone, you just sit back and let a collective body go and and sort-of tax them, then bank the cheques when they come in.
That’s fine for secondary revenue streams (people photocopying your newspaper for example) where there is no practical alternative, and it works well in many different guises.
The problem in general with using collective licensing as a primary revenue stream is that doesn’t create many incentives to really innovate or invest. If your money comes rolling in from the levy more-or-less regardless of what you do, what is the incentive to differentiate your product and fight for the most customers and most attractive offer?
If you want to negotiate your own deals with aggregators. operate on different terms with different search engines, play one ISP off against the other, offer more rights in return for more money (and less to someone else) or do a whole range of the things successful businesses do, it is made harder or impossible with centralised, possibly mandatory, certainly regulated, licensing in place.
Now in this case I have a lot of sympathy with the German publishers, and they have clearly made their case well to the government.
The sad truth is that there is no primary revenue stream to fight for – advertising isn’t enough, paid models for newspaper content are notoriously hard to make a success of and few if any search engines or anyone else have any reason to negotiate and share revenue.
So given a choice between two inadequate and seemingly stagnant revenue streams what other options do they have? Securing some sort of revenue from those who financially benefit the most from their content seems a lot better than nothing.
But better yet would be to tackle the real root cause of this problem: the protection unfairly given by law to so many of the internet players. The failure of a true market to emerge for content products and companies online is a consequence, largely, of bad law and until it is tackled things won’t substantially change.
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the European E-commerce directive and other laws like them need to be substantially overhauled and re-balanced. Unfortunately that is beyond the scope of national governments, in Europe at least, so the best that can be done is to try to minimise the impact of the bad laws with new, slightly less bad ones.
It’s better than nothing. But a lot worse than a true and vibrant market for content products in the digital realm – and could inhibit that market from emerging if the collective approach becomes too entrenched.
What the Germans have here is a bird in their hand, in place of several thousand in the bush. But they’re all sparrows: not very nourishing either way.
The fact that newspaper publishers will soon be looking longingly at the resulting revenue in Germany is a sign of how bad things have got, not that this is really much of a solution.
Back to BO.LT
I wrote before about BO.LT, the startup which is seemingly built on a cynical exploitation of the worst aspects of the Digital Miilennium Copyright Act.
BO.LT emailed me today to tell me about the exciting new features they will be launching soon – apparently it will make it easier to “discover interesting things” and “get lost in millions of pages of content that people liked so much that they had to keep a copy”
Don’t worry, all the old functionality is still there, copying fans! (By the way, leaving aside the obvious copyright issues, does their new approach remind you of anything? They sent a picture with their email showing their new interface – I wouldn’t want to infringe their copyright by posting it here but from what I can tell it’s basically the same as Pinterest. Surely they’re not just jumping on another bandwagon?)
They seem to have brought their site down while they reconfigure but I was able to log in and just noticed on their newly blank homepage the box you see below.
Just a reminder about copyright. It means “the right to copy”. Something which bo.lt clearly does not have in a huge proportion of cases – despite the liberal use of the word “copy” as if it’s generally OK.
The good news is that their initial idea seems to have been a failure. The bad news is it looks like they’re staying in the business of showing contempt for copyright. Lets hope it’s no more successful this time…
Copyright Blog 