German Publishers Want Monopoly On Sentences 158
Glyn Moody writes "You think copyright can't get any more draconian? Think again. In Germany, newspaper publishers are lobbying for 'a new exclusive right conferring the power to monopolize speech e.g. by assigning a right to re-use a particular wording in the headline of a news article anywhere else without the permission of the rights holder. According to the drafts circulating on the Internet, permission shall be obtainable exclusively by closing an agreement with a new collecting society which will be founded after the drafts have matured into law. Depending on the particulars, new levies might come up for each and every user of a PC, at least if the computer is used in a company for commercial purposes.' Think that will never work because someone will always break the news cartel? Don't worry, they've got that covered too. They want to 'amend cartel law in order to enable a global "pooling" of all exclusive rights of all newspaper publishers in Germany in order to block any attempt to defect from the paywall cartel by a single competitor.' And rest assured, if anything like this passes in Germany, publishers everywhere will be using the copyright ratchet to obtain 'parity.'"
Re:Go away, Baby Boomers. (Score:1, Informative)
Most of Europe, Germany included, did indeed have a baby boom after World War II, much like America did. Baby booms are quite common after devastating conflicts, regardless of who "won". It's society's way of making up for the loss of life, and to handle the grief associated with such losses. We've seen it happen throughout history, not just due to war, but due to significant natural disasters, as well.
And the Nazis weren't the equivalent of America's Greatest Generation. They were from earlier generations. Most of the American leaders at that time weren't part of the Greatest Generation, either, with many of them being born well before 1900.
The Greatest Generation includes people born after World War I, from 1918 to 1945. These were the people who fought in WWII, but many did so against their will, regardless of nation, as conscripts rather than volunteers. Many disagreed with the stances and actions of their political leaders, but would've faced a bullet in the head were they to resist.
Re:A rainbow table of "Headlines"? (Score:5, Informative)
They're specifically looking to monopolize the wordings in online "newspapers", while at the same time trying hard not to extend the scope to anything but their own publications. It's aimed at Google et al. I for one hope that Google will not license the snippets and headlines but instead remove all German newspaper URLs from the index.
Re:From the "copyright ratchet" article: (Score:3, Informative)
French copyright still gives far more rights to the creators than US copyright, and it always has. It was one of the driving forces behind the Berne convention.
Tough, but not as bad as article suggests (Score:2, Informative)
>In Germany, newspaper publishers are lobbying for 'a new exclusive right conferring the power to monopolize speech e.g. by assigning a right to re-use a particular wording in the headline of a news article anywhere else without the permission of the rights holder
This is not quite true. The auxiliary copyright ("Leistungsschutzrecht", draft leaked: http://www.irights.info/index.php?q=node/880 [irights.info]) is mostly aimed against big players such as Google (News) who systematically and continuously reuse headlines, snippets and images from publishers for their own profit (selling ads) without paying (in the publisher's mind: adequate) royalties. The average blogger commenting (and quoting) a certain news story is not meant to be affected... but, of course we know, laws like these tend to get out of hand.