Content Owners to Charge Royalties for Searching?

dwarfking writes in with a story that follows up on the impact of recent Google events: "Ok, maybe I'm a little dense here, but isn't this plan more of an impact to the content provider than to the search engines. From the article: 'In one example of how ACAP would work, a newspaper publisher could grant search engines permission to index its site, but specify that only select ones display articles for a limited time after paying a royalty.' So, ok, a search engine company decides it doesn't want to pay royalties and therefore doesn't index the provider's site. Now won't the provider actually lose readers since their articles won't be locatable by search anymore?"

Dumb

[daspriest (904701)]

Sounds like one of the dumbest ideas I have heard, this goes alongside the MPAA and RIAA shenanigans.

Re:Dumb

[Alef (605149)]

Sounds like one of the dumbest ideas I have heard, this goes alongside the MPAA and RIAA shenanigans.

What makes it extra dumb is the fact that it basically is an inverse of Google's targeted ads, if I'm getting this straight. Site owners already pay Google to have their link shown when people search for related material. And now, apparently, some of them expect Google to instead pay them for the exact same thing? Really, really dumb...

Re:Dumb

[Deadstick (535032)]

In fact, it's right up there with Radio Shack's policy back in the TRS-80 days.

They claimed the exclusive right to control mention of their computer in print. If you published a BASIC program to run on it, or an article about how to use it, their lawyer would show up demanding that you pay royalties or desist. Magazines resorted to talking about "S-80 Bus" computers, which was sufficiently generic.

They got their wish, of course: you can read all the computer magazines you want without seeing anything about Radio Shack computers.

rj

Re:Is it, though?

[tomhudson (43916)]

"hese media outfits have very talented economists, financialists, and lawyers working for them. These are people who can accurately predict what will happen if the media companies were to take this course of action. They know how consumers will respond, and they know how it will affect their company's bottom line."

I hope you're just trolling. Most analysts in any field aren't worth shit when it comes to making predictions. That's why there are so many product failures every year, and why for every winner in the stock market, there's at least one loser.

Media people are among the most clueless. Take a look at how many movies bomb, at how many magazines die every year, how many tv shows don't go beyond the first season, how many newspapers are having to cope with declining readership

http://www.naa.org/marketscope/pdfs/Sunday_Nationa l_Top50_1998-2005.pdf [naa.org] Sorry, its one of those darned pdfs.

Sample stats:

1998 - 135,000,000 adult population, 92,000,000 readers
2005 - 150,000,000 adult population, 89,000,000 readers.

So, while the potential market has grown more than 10%, their readership has declined 4%.

Re:Is it, though?

[rm999 (775449)]

Perhaps his point was that 99% of the slashdot readers are judging this decision based off a 3 sentence summary and about 30 seconds of thought (if that), whereas educated people have been paid to put hours of thought into the decision, which may have some sort of long-term or tangential strategy. It's easy to judge the decision, but maybe there is more to what is going on than we know.

At the same time, my first reaction is that this is retarded.

Huh??

[www.sorehands.com (142825)]

Many companies with supposed "very talented economists, financialists, and lawyers working for them" have done things that failed. Look at Sony and their rootkits? In 1986 many "very talented economists, financialists, and lawyers" commented buying a PC software only company, Microsoft, would be a very bad investment. Many people said the same thing about a company that sells over priced coffee -- Star Bucks. A very talented manager at HP ridiculed Steve Wozniak when he designed a personal computer.

Re:Is it, though?

[Mr. Underbridge (666784)]

But is it really "dumb"? I don't have any doubt that these media outfits have very talented economists, financialists, and lawyers working for them. These are people who can accurately predict what will happen if the media companies were to take this course of action. They know how consumers will respond, and they know how it will affect their company's bottom line.

The question, though, is whether those smart people are actually allowed to make the final decision. This is the newspaper indstry we're talking about. The same industry that is *still* making you start an account and sign in to track what you read. This pisses a lot of people (like me) off, who end up not coming back to the site. Not only that, 90% of that information can be tracked by simply logging IP. So they turn away advertising revenue because of a completely antiquated practice.

So no, it's not surprising that companies like that would fail to figure out that search engines are FREE FUCKING ADVERTISING.

Go check out some of the recent articles on Techdirt, this is one of the author's favorite pet peeves. The upshot is that the newspaper industry has its collective head up its ass and completely fails to understand this whole internet thing. The recent developments in Belgium and France, where newspapers have sued google to avoid being cached, demonstrate this principle in action.

If I'm google, I tell them go ahead - your funeral.

Robots?

[TechyImmigrant (175943)]

So using the courts they have failed to get royalties and achieved what they could have achieved with some robots.txt files.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

They just want more money for providing the same service. It is just like the big telecomm companies trying to charge twice for data going over their network (the anti-net neutrality non-sense). What can "publishers" do to prevent indexing? Robot.txt files, of course. But if they somehow feel these simple files telling others not to index their content do not do enough, they can always turn off public access to their content and go to a subscription only model with terms of service prohibiting indexing.

greed...

[wulfbyte (722147)]

is the worlds most common and least forgivable form of stupidity.

Submitter has hit the nail on the head.

[numbski (515011)]

There's really not much more to say about this. Let 'em wallow in their own stupidity, and they'll come around. Sometimes, like children, you have to let someone learn the hard way, and they'll never do it again. :)

"You'll shoot your eye out! You'll shoot your eye out!"

Side note - anyone else lose their login cookie this morning only forced to log back in and fill out a captcha? Weirdness. Worse, I saw no option for the visually impaired to log in either. Tsk tsk tsk....guys, come on. I'm not meaning to toss flames around, but you've got to provide some sort of opt-out link for those who can't see your captcha images. :(

Re:Submitter has hit the nail on the head.

[mrmeval (662166)]

The absolute second a pornographer sued Google they should have ripped anything by them off their server and made sure that would never appear on a Google search again.

Any 'content holder' that whines needs the same thing done to them with no option for reindexing without paying enough to bleed them white or better donating a large chunk of their content to the public domain.

Re:Since when did the world work for Google?

[kimvette (919543)]

If they disagree with how Google works, they should block googlebot, or at minimum, create a robots.txt

Only if the search engines hang tough

[jmorris42 (1458)]

The premise of the submitter only holds if ALL of the search engines hang tough. If only Google tells em to go piss up a rope, they lose most of the news sources and readers start using someone else. One of the failing search sites will pay (because for them the cost will be mimimal.... at the time) and with luck become successful. Then they give all the profits to the news providers and become a .bomb and we repeat the cycle until they are all dead except Google who only derives a small income from banner ads on Google News. See online music P2pP sites become DRMed music providers and then die for a template.

Lawsuit

[ultranova (717540)]

So, ok, a search engine company decides it doesn't want to pay royalties and therefor doesn't index the provider's site. Now won't the provider actually lose readers since their articles won't be locatable by search anymore?

Sounds like rounds for suing the search engine for lost revenue to me !

"Your honor, by refusing to pay our fee the search engine is not only depriving us of our fair due, but also giving an unfair competitive advantage to our competitors. We demand that they add us to their search database and pay our very reasonable fee for accessing our pages."

And if anyone mods me funny, well... that's one naive fellow, then.

Willfully stupid

[hublan (197388)]

From the article:

"Since search engine operators rely on robotic 'spiders' to manage their automated processes, publishers' Web sites need to start speaking a language which the operators can teach their robots to understand," according to a document seen by Reuters that outlines the publishers' plans.

"What is required is a standardized way of describing the permissions which apply to a Web site or Web page so that it can be decoded by a dumb machine without the help of an expensive lawyer."

You mean like robots.txt?

This sounds like willful ignorance. All the search engines mention it as the method to avoid having particular content indexed. They might not read RFCs but a quick peek at the help pages on the search engines in question would've answered this (and squashed the lawsuit) in no time.

I agree

[khallow (566160)]

Instead, it'd be the content provider paying the search engine. I can't imagine a scenario where the webpage is so valuable that the economics would work this way. Further, I don't understand their concern about indexing content. It's not hard at all to block or steer search engines. It strikes me that these publishing companies are either ignorant of the value provided by external search engines and/or delusional about the value of content that isn't indexed by a popular search engine.

Hey! I got a better idea

[iminplaya (723125)]

Let's just shut down the net. Damn thing has been nothing but trouble since the beginning. We probably should outlaw all communications that don't provide more income for the content "owners". That means no more printing, writing, singing, painting, talking...anything. If we don't want to give all our money to these damn people, we should shut the hell up, right?

And put in your earplugs
put on your eyeshades
you know where to put the cork...

Oops, there goes another violation.

Robot.txt is a machine readable permissions model

[mdfst13 (664665)]

"What is required is a standardized way of describing the permissions which apply to a Web site or Web page so that it can be decoded by a dumb machine without the help of an expensive lawyer."

They already have this. It's called the robot.txt file. You can use it to tell search bots not to index you. This just seems to be a richer permissions model, that includes things like caching and excerpting options.

In the longer term, I agree that this hurts content providers more than Google. Overall, it makes the search index less useful. However, it makes the content unfindable. Content that uses this will simply be replaced by content that does not.

Why would Google pay to provide better search results for content? It would make more sense for them to pay for the content direct so that they could have an exclusive. Or for content to pay to appear in the search results, like with Yahoo.

This could cripple content owners who do this

[ConfusedSelfHating (1000521)]

There will always be smaller news outlets who want to get additional daily viewers. They want Google to direct people to their site. If the large news organizations want to opt out, there will always be someone to take their place.

When you look at Google news, you see a brief summary of the news article and then when you click on it, you are directed to that website. The website will earn revenue from their advertising. If they have an attractive and useful website, people may go to their site directly. New unique users. Often I find that after I've read an article I found through a search, I will go to the homepage of the site (through the hacking known as modifiying the URL) and look at their other articles. Most websites would pay Google to have links to them, now some sites want to Google to pay them? Google will just ignore them and their competitors will prosper.

Doesn't slashdot do something similar. Someone reads something interesting on the web and suddenly there's a link to it. I'm sure if some sites wanted to charge a fee to slashdot, they would promptly be ignored.

The idea that comes to mind is revenue stream. Someone working for the news organizations came up with the thought "Google has lots of money, let's take it" and so it began.

Fair enough

[Ajehals (947354)]

This would work fine - *if every content provider did it*. (when I say work fine I mean how the content providers would like it to work.

i.e. Lets say The Guardian the Independent charged a royalty for indexing certain articles. and the Times didn't then when a person searches for something that would under normal circumstances return all 3 content providers articles (say you are searching on current news - or better an archived new story - say the search is for "Falklands War Newspaper Headlines" or something. Instead of getting all three papers returning a result you would get just the one from the times.

Now assuming not everyone knows that certain papers charge search engines for permission to index their content, it will simply look like the Guardian and the Independent didn't report the Falklands War - or whatever you searched for.

Repeatedly this may even turn customers against their traditional sales, especially with more and more people using multiple online papers and buying a paper copy. I mean if you start reading the Times on-line everyday as it is the only remaining fully indexed paper, are you more or less likely to buy it when you decide to get a real copy? I guess it would do wonders for international brand recognition too - I mean if you are not indexed for common searches who is going to know who you are enough to trust you for the occasional bit where you have allowed yourself to be indexed.

Really this is all about the fact that search engines generate advertising revenue for themselves using others content, content providers are now looking and saying -

"hey Google makes X million dollars by directing people to my site and advertising for my competitors, it indexes my content (goggle images / news etc..) so people aren't coming directly to me, maybe If i threaten the source of their content they will pay me and I can finally make some money from this inter web thing without having to actually charge people ourselves!"

I guess this is an attempt to get at the revenue they assumed that they would get from selling content to their visitors directly through online subscriptions which didn't work. (unless you were a specialist or exclusive provider - such as companies providing financial information / stock prices / adult material etc..). It didn't work because others didn't charge, why pay for access to ITV news or CNN online (if they charged) when the BBC or some other organisation offered the same stories (with a different editorial slant..) for free?

What they should be saying is how can I get a search engine to get as many people to my site as possible where I can then try and sell whatever services or exclusive content I want! after all the more page hits the more (theoretically at least) conversions.

Anyway - let them try and charge a royalty - or enforce their rights regarding copyright and prevent thee search engines from making money by including their content in their search engines, it will only harm them.

The internet really is a level playing field, anyone with a good site can get listed on a search engine and get hits - hopefully achieving whatever it is they are trying to do, why do some people want to change it so that it benefits them more? all that will happen is that it will break the way the internet works, or is perceived and damage their own web activities. Plus some content providers simply will never do this (probably at least) the BBC in the UK certainly would find it difficult, so too will other public service information providers (I assume) too so I guess there will always be at least one or two news site out there.

I know I have focused on newspapers here (and that does appear to be the gist FTA) but providers of other content such as music, video, software etc. are in the same position. Problem is the internet using public like getting stuf for free, and probably wont pay for something if they cant have access to it for free for at least a while first.

Ah well, (By the way I'm absolutely

Forget knee-jerk reactions...

[Bender0x7D1 (536254)]

First, we must remember that not all web sites are found through Google. When was the last time you did a search for Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com? Sure, it's nice to be listed but hardly deadly if they weren't - they already have the name recognition.

Now, there is a legitimate downside to being listed on Google News - all of your competitor news sources are also listed - right next to you. If the New York Times runs a piece from the Associated Press, I can see that the Des Moines Register runs the same story, why go to the big name source? The NYT has spent decades and millions of dollars building their reputation and get listed next to other, less-known papers. It serves to dillute their name and reputation.

For those of you convinced that you can get plenty of news from other places and that these print publications can adjust to new business models or die, are you crazy?!? One nice thing about having a huge newspaper is that they generally try to verify their stories, or at least avoid making things up. (I said generally...) When your paper owns buildings and huge printing presses and is sold at every newsstand your reputation means something. If you are a few people working out of a basement, then who cares? As long as you got people reading, you are happy. I like the idea of responsible journalism. It may be less than it was, but if I see it in the NYT I am inclinded to believe it. If it is in some tabloid, I am inclined to not believe it. In a strictly Internet world, how do you tell the difference?

I hope that a good arrangement is made between the press and the search engines, but I don't think the survival of the press is based on them being indexed by Google.

Re:Not as clear cut as it sounds

[ignipotentis (461249)]

I don't see this as making money on other's content. Google does link you back to the main story. It does not display a cached version.

Google is making money on their unique ability to gather, index, and make sense of all of the seperate news articles being created. They can show you news stories about related items from different sources around the world. They are making money on the service which lets you actually see the news from different points of view.

This is very different, and the content creators had nothing to do with this. This is a service on top of their service, and they deserve nothing from it. Google does provde the opt out option either by contacting them, or by simply using the robots.txt.

Re:What's wrong with that?

[Ruff_ilb (769396)]

The problem is that the search engines aren't TRYING to be publishers. The entire point of the search engines is to direct you to the content that you want. Aggregation, caching, and content creation are means to further this end. On the other hand, creation and caching of content is the whole point of the publishers. That IS their end.

Saying that search engines are becoming publishers because they create, aggregate, and cache content to help users FIND content from publishers seems to be just a little off the mark.

Re:What's wrong with that?

[yelvington (8169)]

"The problem is that the search engines aren't TRYING to be publishers."

Sorry, but that just isn't true.

Yahoo quite obviously is a publisher. In fact, Yahoo has formal distribution agreements in place with many news providers, including a number of major newspapers, and pays agencies such as Reuters and the Associated Press a considerable amount of money in licensing fees. The same is true of MSN and AOL.

You may not regard Google as a publisher, but it is. The problem is that Google publishes content that belongs to others.

Google scrapes content from websites and constructs news presentations that include headlines, photographs and summaries that do not belong to Google. It does not secure permission to reuse that content. It doesn't pay the writers or the editors or the photographers or the news agencies.

I'm not at all convinced that the Belgian newspapers are responding to the situation in the right way. But a knee-jerk reaction that Google is good and the publishers are bad is very naive.

If you look at Google's scattered EULAs and TOS documents you'll discover that they are very one-sided. Google can take your content and make pages containing ads. You can not take Google's content (RSS feeds, for instance) and make pages containing ads. If you sign up for Google's advertising programs you're not allowed to disclose certain information about the program to others. You can't put Google Adsense on the same page as any other content-targeted advertising. And so on.

Sauce for the goose is apparently not for the gander. From the Google News terms of service: "For example, you may not use the Service to sell a product or service; use the Service to increase traffic to your Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales; take the results from the Service and reformat and display them, or use any robot, spider, other device or manual process to monitor or copy any content from the Service."

Google has made great hay out of its "Do No Evil" slogan, but some of its practices, such as collaborating with governments that do not recognize the fundamental human right of freedom of speech, make me wonder.

The argument that search indexing is good for publishers has also several problems.

First of all, whether it's good or bad for the publisher isn't relevant to the question of legality. If I steal an apple and tell 40 friends how good it is, the market may actually gain new customers and come out ahead. But I'm still stealing an apple. The question of whether Google's screen-scraping amounts to apple-stealing is one for the courts to resolve, and apparently the Belgian courts have taken a position not friendly to Apple.

Second, the typical Slashdot poster's naive assumption that traffic == wholesome goodness isn't true. It doesn't work that way.

Most newspapers, for historical reasons, have an economic model that is built on advertising by businesses that are trying to reach specific customers in a highly restricted geographic region. This is particularly true in the United States; models vary in other countries, but most have a strong regional press.

Because of the global nature of the Internet, the vast majority of traffic brought in by search engines is of no interest to local and regional advertisers.

"Noise" traffic actually works against the site by depressing clickthrough rates and lowering the apparent effectiveness of CPM-based advertising.

As I said, I'm not jumping onto the Belgian publisher's bandwagon, but I'm also not jumping onto Google's. This is not so simple as that.