<story><title>Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/12/24128363/google-cjpa-news-removal-california</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>notatoad</author><text>&amp;gt;I have sympathy for news publishers&lt;p&gt;i have very little sympathy for news publishers.  I have sympathy for the journalists actually doing journalism, but &lt;i&gt;news publishers&lt;/i&gt; have spent the last couple decades making their websites absolutely unusable, so that unless somebody links to an article externally there&amp;#x27;s almost no point in going to their site directly.  And even after you&amp;#x27;ve followed that link it&amp;#x27;s almost impossible to read an article around the ads, login prompts, and chumboxes.   News websites are terrible, and it&amp;#x27;s their own fault.  Giving them more money to do the thing they&amp;#x27;ve spent so long failing at isn&amp;#x27;t going to solve this problem.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;directly tax the platforms and then redistribute the revenue to a fund created by government for news journalism themselves&lt;p&gt;yes.  and specifically, make sure the fund is actually funding journalism.  a link tax that gets paid out to news sites only incentivizes them to do the bare minimum amount of journalism to still qualify as a news site, and then fill up the rest of the site with SEO clickbait to maximize their clicks for the link tax.</text></item><item><author>zmmmmm</author><text>I have sympathy for news publishers but I worry a lot about the principle of asserting that &lt;i&gt;linking to something&lt;/i&gt; is an act that the link target has proprietary rights to over. At some level, it is almost a free speech issue. If I can&amp;#x27;t refer to what you are saying, without owing you something, you have power over not just my speech, but a power to limit how your work is subjected to criticism and debate. It&amp;#x27;s effectively an extension of copyright law to expand copyright holder&amp;#x27;s rights.&lt;p&gt;Obviously all this is hyperbolic based the actual text of the law. The law doesn&amp;#x27;t directly apply any sort of link tax, and it is shamelessly targeted only at Google and Facebook (to the point that they wrote Facebook in there by name, which is kind of stupid if you ask me). But if you drill into the reasoning it hits at the foundational level on this basic logic, and it&amp;#x27;s pretty concerning if we assume then that this &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; be significantly extrapolated and expanded - as has been the history with all other aspects of copyright in the past.&lt;p&gt;Honestly I would rather that governments come clean and just admit that the problem they are trying to solve is actually a &amp;quot;social good&amp;quot; outcome, and therefore directly tax the platforms and then redistribute the revenue to a fund created by government for news journalism themselves. Trying to artificially construct that through introduction of significant new precedents in copyright law engenders huge risks of unintended consequences and potential future extrapolation and abuse of this principle.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cush</author><text>&amp;gt; news publishers have spent the last couple decades making their websites absolutely unusable&lt;p&gt;To appease Google…&lt;p&gt;Conversely, NYTs site is stellar. It’s fast and gorgeous and the articles are well-written and not full of clickbait and SEO spam. The games have no ads and there’s nothing pushing you to read more. No feed. No algorithm. NYT got the hell away from SEO and focus on the customers, who decide with their wallets</text></comment>
<story><title>Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/12/24128363/google-cjpa-news-removal-california</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>notatoad</author><text>&amp;gt;I have sympathy for news publishers&lt;p&gt;i have very little sympathy for news publishers.  I have sympathy for the journalists actually doing journalism, but &lt;i&gt;news publishers&lt;/i&gt; have spent the last couple decades making their websites absolutely unusable, so that unless somebody links to an article externally there&amp;#x27;s almost no point in going to their site directly.  And even after you&amp;#x27;ve followed that link it&amp;#x27;s almost impossible to read an article around the ads, login prompts, and chumboxes.   News websites are terrible, and it&amp;#x27;s their own fault.  Giving them more money to do the thing they&amp;#x27;ve spent so long failing at isn&amp;#x27;t going to solve this problem.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;directly tax the platforms and then redistribute the revenue to a fund created by government for news journalism themselves&lt;p&gt;yes.  and specifically, make sure the fund is actually funding journalism.  a link tax that gets paid out to news sites only incentivizes them to do the bare minimum amount of journalism to still qualify as a news site, and then fill up the rest of the site with SEO clickbait to maximize their clicks for the link tax.</text></item><item><author>zmmmmm</author><text>I have sympathy for news publishers but I worry a lot about the principle of asserting that &lt;i&gt;linking to something&lt;/i&gt; is an act that the link target has proprietary rights to over. At some level, it is almost a free speech issue. If I can&amp;#x27;t refer to what you are saying, without owing you something, you have power over not just my speech, but a power to limit how your work is subjected to criticism and debate. It&amp;#x27;s effectively an extension of copyright law to expand copyright holder&amp;#x27;s rights.&lt;p&gt;Obviously all this is hyperbolic based the actual text of the law. The law doesn&amp;#x27;t directly apply any sort of link tax, and it is shamelessly targeted only at Google and Facebook (to the point that they wrote Facebook in there by name, which is kind of stupid if you ask me). But if you drill into the reasoning it hits at the foundational level on this basic logic, and it&amp;#x27;s pretty concerning if we assume then that this &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; be significantly extrapolated and expanded - as has been the history with all other aspects of copyright in the past.&lt;p&gt;Honestly I would rather that governments come clean and just admit that the problem they are trying to solve is actually a &amp;quot;social good&amp;quot; outcome, and therefore directly tax the platforms and then redistribute the revenue to a fund created by government for news journalism themselves. Trying to artificially construct that through introduction of significant new precedents in copyright law engenders huge risks of unintended consequences and potential future extrapolation and abuse of this principle.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>akira2501</author><text>&amp;gt; News websites are terrible, and it&amp;#x27;s their own fault.&lt;p&gt;To be fair they were just playing the game Google asked them to play.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; make sure the fund is actually funding journalism&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think you can do that.  Journalism is publishing articles,  sure,  but it&amp;#x27;s also doing research,  arranging interviews,  travelling to get documents,  it&amp;#x27;s a lot of street work,  and a lot of it needs to be paid up front.  How a fund can manage this relationship correctly based on view counts is beyond me.&lt;p&gt;Let alone..  do we want &amp;quot;clicks&amp;quot; to substitute for editorial process?&lt;p&gt;The deeply sad part about all of this is News and Broadcast have traditionally had very strong commission based internal sales operations.  They have the people to go out,  get advertisers,  take their money,  and then just &amp;#x2F;inline&amp;#x2F; all the advertisements.  They spent decades refusing to retrain or retarget this staff for the new market place.&lt;p&gt;Out of all industries that _didn&amp;#x27;t_ have to make a deal with Google Ads,  it was theirs,  and they just completely blew it.</text></comment>