Try as I might, I can’t understand the premise that underlies the demand from publishers that Google News owes them a royalty for indexing their content, presenting the title and summary, and sending visitors to their sites. It doesn’t create a premise, legal or otherwise that they would be obliged to pay a fee to the content producers for presenting their content in summary form.
Let’s look at the logic behind the players in the transaction.
- Consumers want news and information. They use Google News because of the diverse selection. It is in essence, not the end product, but the high-utility filter for consumers to find what they are looking for, much like all search.
- The content producers want visitors to discover their content. Google News does that for them. Without charging them, Google is a feeder for their content that attracts the traffic they seek.
- Google News serves Google by providing one more high-value utility for consumers that reinforces its brand. Like it’s search and email, as well as a host of other services, it provides this free of charge to consumers. It isn’t providing the content, but merely its location.
Consider a mapping analogy.
Let’s say that cash strapped municipal and State governments looking for additional funds decided that Rand McNally, map producer, owed them royalties for indexing and documenting their exact whereabouts; showed all the roads leading in and out of their locations, and provided summary descriptions of each locale. Couldn’t they argue that a lot of capital and effort goes into building great cities and States and that Rand McNally should pay them for the privilege of telling consumers where they are and how to get there? After all, who could have anticipated the boom in interstate travel, and since people really need maps and Rand McNally exploited that need, they should share the wealth in fairness.
Newspapers tried unsuccessfully to embargo content in the early days of radio and TV news. Ever since they have accepted that local radio and TV news departments used newspapers as a news lead source.
If the “fair use” principle applied, they would have made the case in a compelling manner. They haven’t and most likely can’t.
Ken Doctor suggested in a recent piece that maybe instead of pushing fair use we consider fair share. He says,
"So fair share would simply recognize that the first stage of web monetization has been, well, a bit simple. There's little nuance to it, with way too much value accruing to the search and aggregation players, and far too little to the content producers. There's nothing particularly evil about this; it's just what happened."
It's true, but I don't believe the burden falls to the search engines and aggregators to adjust the balance through compensation to content producers. If Google isn't charging consumers for this service, and they are within the legal limits of fair use, then why would they be obliged to pay anyone for it?
Ken argues that because Google is incredibly successful at selling billions of dollars in ads that they should share the wealth, after all, they are benefiting from the arbitrage of search utility for consumer attention and content producers are providing the content that is searched and presented in snippet form.
Here's the rub in that argument. Even if Google sold ads on Google News, fair share is a modified interpretation of fair use with a compensation component. To be fair it would have to apply to every site on the web AND all forms of media. Would it apply just in cases whereby the snippet aggregator monetized the host environment? What if there are intrinsic benefits that accrue to the aggregator, but no direct monetization? Whose responsibility is it to create such a complex system for measuring, calculating, collecting and distributing proceeds?
Sorry Ken, it ain't gonna happen. There isn't a moral or ethical imperative that binds Google or any other search engine or aggregator (including the newspapers' sites) to subtract income from their service to compensate producers of content. Even as a voluntary gesture it would be wrong-headed for them to offer anything. That would only prolong bad strategies we've seen and stifle innovation so desperately needed.
Journalism that truly serves the common good will not only emerge, but I believe will be better than ever imagined under the old system of traditional media. Giving capital to the old infrastructure won't get us there. New media organizations will hire many displaced journalists as well as new ones. The new media structures probably won't resemble anything we now know. That doesn't mean they won't be better. It will take time and many incumbent players will shrink or disappear.
I can understand newspaper companies’ frustration with losing market share and facing heavy numbers of closures. I can’t understand their logic that Google is somehow obliged to make up their losses by paying them for sending traffic to their sites.
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