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Newspaper Lobbyists Take Aim at Google News 331

Posted by Zonk from the get-off-of-our-lawn dept.
Hitokiri writes "Now that Google News is out of beta the newspaper publishers are starting to take notice. It's important to note that no legal action has taken place yet, but still, there seems to be a battle on the horizon." From the article: "'They're building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content,' Ali Rahnema, managing director of the association, told Reuters in an interview. 'The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article -- it's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not.'"
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Newspaper Lobbyists Take Aim at Google News More

Newspaper Lobbyists Take Aim at Google News

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  • Fair Use (Score:5, Insightful)

    by elbenito69 ( 868244 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:21PM (#14611232)
    I'd call it fair use, advertising for the news sources even, but of course I'm probably biased because Google News is just so damn convienent.

    • Re:Fair Use (Score:4, Funny)

      by rmoehring ( 949487 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:22PM (#14611245)
      Quiet down and pay for the rights to see the same AP or Reuters article on 200 different web sites. It's the Capitalist way.

      • you're very confused (Score:5, Interesting)

        by geekee ( 591277 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @08:03PM (#14612498)
        "Quiet down and pay for the rights to see the same AP or Reuters article on 200 different web sites. It's the Capitalist way."

        Since when have you ever paid for an AP or Reuters news story online. The news sites posting them pay for them, and use advertising to subsidize. Google doesn't pay for linking to them and uses advertising to subsidize their non-payments.
        • Google doesn't pay for linking to them and uses advertising to subsidize their non-payments.

          Most people WANT Google to link to them, and even pay Google for the privilege. Why is this different?

        • Re:you're very confused (Score:5, Insightful)

          by thirdrock ( 460992 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @08:46PM (#14612732)
          Google doesn't pay for linking to them and uses advertising to subsidize their non-payments.

          You're not a very accomplished liar are you? Show me one advertisement on news.google.com and you might have a point.

          Since when have you ever paid for an AP or Reuters news story online. The news sites posting them pay for them, and use advertising to subsidize.

          Yes, and they create almost no news of their own. In other words, what Google is showing is that all of these so called 'NewsPapers' are nothing more than distribution channels for syndicated news. Or to put it another way, there is no reason to buy one newpaper as opposed to any other.

          I think the real issue here is that the concept of the 'Newspaper' is dying. With the Internet, news is obiquitous, instantaneous and democratic. One can invision a future where consumers will subscribe to a single news service and then filter by region, topic etc. All journalists will then be working for the syndication companies.

          This turns the whole news business model upside down. Currently, "The New York Times" is a brand that is used to sell advertising space to corporate advertisers. There is a huge vested interest in sustaining this model for a number of reasons.
          1) Advertisers influence the type of news that is printed. In other words, the flow of information is influenced, nay corrupted, by the corporate world.
          2) Huge amounts of money have been invested into these news 'brands'. Changing the model dilutes the value of the brand,effectively causing a capital loss.
          3) Following on from (1), information flow influences political thought. If the newpaper influences political thinking, and advertisers influence the newspaper, then the advertisers (corporations) indirectly influence political thought. This is a powerfull lever that nobody would want to give up.

          YMMV

    • Re:Fair Use (Score:3, Insightful)

      by grogdamighty ( 884570 )
      Yeah, I fail to see how this is really any different from a newstand: headlines and teasers are used to lure you to the publisher's website. Why complain about free advertising?

    • Re:Fair Use (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tomhudson ( 43916 ) <barbara DOT huds ... a-hudson DOT com> on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:25PM (#14611282) Journal
      I'd tell the newspapers to be careful of what they ask for - they might just end up getting it:
      'The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article -- it's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not.'"

      Don't be surprised if at least quoting the first few lines ends up being fair use. Besides, how do they expect their own online content to be seen if it isn't indexed - google could charge them instead of doing it for free. Its not like I'm going to go and find all these news items on my own.

      • Re:Fair Use (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sirnuke ( 866453 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:39PM (#14611430) Homepage
        I wonder if the newspapers have considered that a majority of Google News reader probably won't go to their site unless the user see an interesting article on google news? Why pay for advertising when you can get someone else to do it for you for free?
      • What they should do is put a policy that if a site does not like their content to be indexed, then google will remove it. If they want their content re-indexed at a later date, it will cost them a 10000 dollar maintanence fee.
      • I agree. All that Google does is redirect us to their content. If Google News stopped doing it, I'd probably not be reading a lot of those newspapers (and their content). I'd get a couple of sources like the BBC and CBC and good luck to the rest. I bet they're just as happy getting the advertising money from when I browse their site and see their sponsors. It's not like Google is lifting the entire content of their articles. They would be legitimately pissed then. Google is merely redirecting traffic

    • Robots.txt (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The internet has ways that the news companies can use if they don't want Google crawling them.
      By not stopping Google by using the standard mechanism, I'd agree that it is fair use for Google to use the data they provide.
      • And not just Google. A properly formed robots.txt will let any search engine worth its salt know how you want the site to be treated.
    • I would think that the newspaper sites are getting more visits because of Google News. Perhaps Google can start extorting money from them if they want hits coming from Google. Let's face it, there are several other news outlets that Google can use and therefor send browsers their way.

    • Re:Fair Use (Score:2, Informative)

      by rodentia ( 102779 )

      The relevant statute -- United States Copyright law of 1976 [17 USC 107]:

      Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A [17 USC sects 106, 106A] the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use

      • There is a real question of law here, but I consider that there is a case against Google. Indexing does not fall into any of the protected classes of use, has obvious commercial value and a clear, negative effect upon the value of the copyrighted work.

        The courts have already ruled that Google cache qualifies under this, and have ruled a system nearly identical to Google images is fair use. Providing a thumbnail and a few sentences so that people can find something is almost certainly fair use in keeping

      • I thought it was in beta so long because it DIDN'T have obvious commercial value. If the commercial value is so obvious, how does Google News make money? Also, wouldn't providing such a service potentially bring more viewers to the news site, thus increasing the value of the copyrighted work?

        Lastly, although you're right that indexing is not covered in what you quoted, perhaps they could argue that their purpose is reporting? Shrug.

  • What does Beta have to do with anything (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tweekster ( 949766 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:22PM (#14611247)
    Honestly, Just cause google called it beta before and now it doesnt did not change anything legally. They were still open for legal attack just as much then as now (which is yet to be determined) In all likelyhood they have nothing to worry about since they are simply aggregating data and well that is a use under copyright. Newspapers, quite bitching,. most people wouldnt even read your particular site if it werent for google News.
    • Because google traditionally takes drops beta when its time to start making REAL money off of it ... expect to see some changes in Google News in the future. Maybe newspapers will have to PAY to be on Google News ...
    • If I were Google, the second a company started bitching, I would blacklist them from Google news, AND tell them about it. Then, let the company come grovelling at their feet when their traffic (and ad clicks along with it) drops dramatically. I think that would be the best way to deal with the situation.

      Last I checked, you could opt out of Google News. How many of those companies bitching have done so?

  • Copyright violation? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:22PM (#14611249) Homepage Journal
    Last I checked, citing a few lines from a newspaper article had a term: 'fair use'.

    Why wait this long? Google News has been running for YEARS, albeit with the 'beta' moniker.

    • Re:Copyright violation? (Score:5, Informative)

      by interiot ( 50685 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:33PM (#14611354) Homepage
      The fair use doctrine has been described as a murky concept in which it is often difficult to separate the lawful from the unlawful [stanford.edu].

      Also, most fair-use cases [stanford.edu] fall under comment-and-criticism... eg. it's okay to use one image of Homer Simpson on the Homer Simpson Wikipedia page, because that's one way to identify Homer while commenting about him.

      Also, fair use says that companies that profit off of other's copyrighted work, and especially companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders, is unlikely to have a judge rule in their favor.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Also, fair use says that companies that profit off of other's copyrighted work, and especially companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders, is unlikely to have a judge rule in their favor.

        But Google doesn't profit off of it (yet) and it not only doesn't diminish the profits of the copyright holders, it increases their profits. I certainly go to news sites I never would have in the past because of a link from Google News and eyes on ads is their business model.

      • Re:Copyright violation? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:05PM (#14611651)

        Also, fair use says that companies that profit off of other's copyrighted work, and especially companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders, is unlikely to have a judge rule in their favor.

        Check out Kelly V. Arribisoft. Basically it is ok to copy an entire copyrighted work, for the purpose of republishing an excerpt of that work, in an automated fashion, even when providing those excerpts coupled with advertising is done in order to make a profit. Basically, this rules Google images+advertisements is legal.

        An excerpt that is a thumbnail and a chunk of text, that is a piece of a larger worker is not qualitatively any different and it is unlikely this sort of precedent (including the the handful of other cases that have all reached this same precedent) is going to overturned. In fact every district court in the US, sans one has filed a supporting brief. (I might mention that was the one where those random publishing houses filed against Google books.) Most lawyers and certainly IP lawyers are very aware that Google will almost certainly win a challenge against them, which is partly why no one with a clue files suits against them on these grounds anymore.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Copyright violation? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:38PM (#14611403) Journal
      Last I checked, citing a few lines from a newspaper article had a term: 'fair use'.

      It depends on the use. Quoting a few lines of a newspaper article in the middle of your own text is clearly protected. Stitching together multiple headlines, photos and first paragraphs to make a freestanding "newspaper" is not, although I don't think Google News rises to that level. At any rate, I'm sure they can afford plenty of attorneys.

      The issue is whether the excerpted part loses the overall impact of the whole. The closest ruling that comes to mind is that porn thumbnails were ruled to be sufficiently arousing in their own right that copying them is infringement, not fair use.

    • Probably because Google News wasn't news until it came out of beta. Knowing how archaic most newspapers are when it comes to new technology, I bet they had to read about it on Google News.
    • Why wait this long? Google News has been running for YEARS, albeit with the 'beta' moniker.

      Because Google has lots of money now, and they want to get their hands on it. Rule number 1 in laywer school: Don't sue poor people because they can't pay.

  • Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

    by saikatguha266 ( 688325 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:23PM (#14611251) Homepage
    I thought the courts did decide: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004344.php [eff.org]

    "A district court in Nevada has ruled that the Google Cache is a fair use."

    Or does every industry want to file a separate suit asking the court to decide whether caching that industry's content is fair or not?
  • Now if its similar to /. where a few lines from the article is posted in a headline, and a pic I see no reason for a problem should there be a link back to the original story. This generates traffic and possibly new users to your sites. If however said site is trying to plagarize [SIC] a whole story that is very different.

  • BREAKING HEADLINE!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:23PM (#14611262)
    BREAKING HEADLINE: Newspapers Still Doing Dumb Shit, Continue To Put Selves Out Of Business

  • Google does as paper does (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:23PM (#14611263)
    you mean Google is doing what every media outlet has done?
    Built a news medium on the backs of other people lives, without paying for any of the content. When was the last time the news reporter payed you after publishing an article reporting your car accident, or that you were being sued.

    • Re:Google does as paper does (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Completely agree. In fact... people should sue the media for reporting on them without paying for the content! Then the media should sue Google News for reporting their articles! Then Google News should sue Slashdot for reporting on them! Wooohoo! Make everything louder than everything else! ;-)
    • Hmm, I don't recall any car accidents I've been in where I've taken pictures, then interviewed policemen, passersby, EMTs, and doctors. Then I didn't aggregate their responses, filter out the unimportant stuff, and write a coherent story of what happened. Since I haven't done any of that, I wouldn't expect to be paid as if I had.

      I don't know if whether Google's usage is "fair use" or not. But it's not fair to say that journalists "built a news medium on the backs of other people lives, without paying for

  • Am I missing something? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Am I missing something or doesn't Google News only link to new sites that have free content anyway?
    • No, didn't you know? They have a bot which goes onto password protected new sites, bute forces the password, scrapes all the new articles and media, copies it to their Google clusters, reformats the information into pages which decree that the stories have been investigated, reported, and brought to you by Google.
      • What idiot would think that the stories were "brought to you by Google"? Looking at the current Google News home page, I see "Reuters", "Forbes", "Washington Post", "MSNBC", "TSN.ca", etc.... It's seems pretty clear to me and everyone else that uses the service that Google is cataloging the news, not bringing you the news.
    • "Am I missing something?"

      Yes, the ads, you must be using adblocker or something.
      • What ads? I can usually tell when Adblock has removed something, and it doesn't remove text ads anyway, and that's what google mainly uses, and I see no adds on Google News.

  • I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xstonedogx ( 814876 ) <xstonedogx@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:25PM (#14611279)
    ...that Google's response will be, "If you don't want to be listed, you don't have to be listed. Bye."

    It amazes me how willing people are to shoot themselves in the foot.

    • Re:I predict... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by OrangeDoor ( 936298 )
      Precisely, they could opt out by by saying nobody is allowed to quote their articles. I doubt any paper would choose to opt out of it. This is just a struggling entity flailing around for something to hold onto. It's just them fearing the new technology and therefore fighting against it... (This is my first post on slashdot from a linux machine, it feels like a significant step for me).

    • I suspect (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gr8_phk ( 621180 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:39PM (#14611418)
      "...that Google's response will be, "If you don't want to be listed, you don't have to be listed. Bye."

      It amazes me how willing people are to shoot themselves in the foot."

      I suspect the larger news sources would rather have the practice halted completely. This would force people to go to a major news site (them) rather than google which sometimes leads people to lesser news sites. Slashdot has been linked from a Google headline more than once. Big news sites don't want people to be aware of any alternatives.

      Smaller news sources probably like the publicity Google provides them. Larger news sources probably don't like the publicity Google provides those smaller competitors.

      They don't want to opt out, they want it all to just go away.

    • "Shooting themselves in the foot" is right (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GPS Pilot ( 3683 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:45PM (#14611490)
      Thanks to Google News, I've made hundreds of visits to news organizations' web sites that I wouldn't otherwise have made. And on all of those visits, I've viewed ads for which the news organizations earned money.

      Silly journalists...
      • Yeah; I have too. But you should understand that this is exactly what the big news sources are fighting. We're supposed to visit only their sites. We're not supposed to be told that there are 938 others reporting the story. And we're certainly not supposed to visit those and get alternate takes on the story.

        This isn't about keeping us away from news sites. It's to block our tool for easily finding other news sources than the big ones. In particular, we're not supposed to go directly to the local sour
    • If/When it comes to this it will be interesting to see the responses of the major news sources. Since most news articles seem to be cut/paste jobs of AP and reuters stories, google could easily cut out those that complain and still be getting all the stories. Of course then some of the bigger media outlets could try to pressure the smaller outlets to stop letting google utilize their variants of the AP stories.

      My guess is overall they will have a tough time fighting the text excerpts, but with effort coul
    • PC World as an article on this [pcworld.com] where AFP sued Google for copyright infringement and Google dropped 'em. It appears AFP is just now getting back to the traffic levels they had before the row with Google. [alexa.com]

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @10:27PM (#14613252)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It's been a while since I read it, but isn't this exactly what happened to the print media in Snow Crash?

    Ie, they could not adapt to the new technology, tried and failed to challenge it in the courts, and then gradually became obsolete, to be replaced by the aggregations of thousands of independent news agents?

    I better go get "Greatest swordsman in the world" appended to my business cards pronto!

  • Google just collects news stories and allows people to search them. When the user clicks one they are brought to their website to read the story! It sounds like some good free advertising to me. Stories like this just make me scratch my head in disbelief!

    http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]

  • Not very clever of them. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by microarray ( 950769 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:29PM (#14611317)
    From TFA:"The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article -- it's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not."

    Some companies PAY for a little link to their site to appear when there is a relevant Google search. These newspapers get indexed, and linked to, from a high traffic site, for FREE, and they are complaining. Instead of throwing lawyers at the problem, they should engage their brains for a moment and figure out which option is better for their business.
    • But this is not a little link, this is a whole paragraph + picture + competitors. I don't say it is good or bad but it is not simple to answer without the stats.

    • Re:Not very clever of them. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by amazon10x ( 737466 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:38PM (#14611416)
      I think the reason they are so upset with this is because it makes the competitors more available.

      Let's assume that Bob enjoys reading news on the internet. However, Bob does not know of these things referred to as "portals". Rather than pulling up 10 different windows (using internet explorer (Bob is an idiot, BTW) which makes it worse) for NYTimes, Washington Post, MSN, Yahoo, his local paper, and some others, Bob takes the lazy way out and uses only the NYTimes site because he doesn't like swapping windows.

      Now Bob's friend comes along and tells Bob to go to news.google.com to get his news. Bob acquiesces and reads Google News from here on. Now Bob gets to see hundreds of different news sources rather than just the NYTimes. This is bad for the NYTimes so they sue Google.

      I am not saying I agree with them suing, I believe it is fair use. However, I do see why they're suing.
    • Google should send a bill to the next paper that sues them and demand $X for continued links to their stories and say that if they don't pay then Google won't continue to link to them and drive new readers their way. I can't believe how stupid the (legal department at) the papers are in this.

  • The problem with most newspapers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by w3woody ( 44457 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:30PM (#14611328) Homepage
    I think the problem with most newspapers is that by and large, they are news aggregators, not news reporters. Most local newspapers have a staff of reporters who go out and report local news--but for the bulk of their content they rely upon content that is not written in-house. (Wire services such as Reuters, AP and UPI, along with syndicated columns, form the bulk of most newspapers today--which means that many of the national articles in the Fresno Bee, say, are the same articles that appear in the Washington Post.)

    So while it's sort of simplistic to say that this is all fair use, the reality is that Google News, by making a better mouse trap (dynamic news aggregation) is--probably without even realizing it--competing head to head with local newspapers.
    • I'm a huge supporter of Google News, but keep in mind that newspapers pay top dollar to syndicate UPI, AP, and Reuters - costs that Google doesn't incur. But, considering the aggregation side of what Google does, I think it's completely within fair use. If they started charging to view the aggregate feeds, or hosted the full text of the articles without permission, that would be a much different story.
      • so what? that sounds exactly fair. Google is giving the person a teaser, a tiny bit of the info, useless on its own Reuters etc is giving the whole piece of content. there is a very clear and gaping distinction between the two
    • The key difference being that those newpapers you mentioned actually pay for AP and Reuters content while Google does not pay anyone for news featured.
    • No, it's not competing with local newspapers. National/world news is commodity information. Winston-Salem NC is not likely to write a story wholely unrelated to NC about McMinnville, OR. So, if I look up anything about "Evergreen Aviation", chances are any news items that show up in GoogleNews are going to be in the Yamhill Observer, Salem Statesman-Journal or Oregonian. Not really competing with them, especially if the best sources for looking at ancillary information to whatever GoogleNews pulled up is fr
  • Please piss off and stop crying. I come to your site and read your news while being distracted by your flashy advertising. This would not happen if not for Google News. Honestly, even if Google News advertised on their site and made a few bucks it's not going to harm you more than it helps you.

    The medias reaction to the dropping of 'Beta' only further shows it's gross misunderstanding of technology, and the Internet. This is exactly what is wrong with the commercialization of News Media.

  • Why do I get the feeling... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:33PM (#14611358)
    That by "newspapers" we're talking about the New York Times, the Washington Post, and not much else? It seems that, more often than not, the first link for a particualr news story is a smaller newspaper that doesn't exactly have a nationwide readership, giving their sites (and banner ads) far more traffic than they'd have without news aggregators. The only papers I could see complaining are the ones that already have their own national and/or global distribution channels.

    • Re:Why do I get the feeling... (Score:5, Informative)

      by sheddd ( 592499 ) <jmeadlockNO@SPAMperdidobeachresort.com> on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:58PM (#14611600)
      I imagine you're mostly correct (Big papers hate google, little ones love them)...
      Out of curiosity I googled a bit and the Lobbyist group is funded by The newspaper assn of america which has a bunch of big and small members [newsvoyager.com], one of which is the New York Times... interesting robots.txt on their site:

      # robots.txt, www.nytimes.com 3/24/2005
      #
      User-agent: *
      Disallow: /pages/college/
      Disallow: /college/
      Disallow: /library/
      Disallow: /learning/
      Disallow: /aponline/
      Disallow: /reuters/
      Disallow: /cnet/
      Disallow: /partners/
      Disallow: /archives/
      Disallow: /indexes/
      Disallow: /thestreet/
      Disallow: /nytimes-partners/
      Disallow: /financialtimes/
      Allow: /pages/
      Allow: /2003/
      Allow: /2004/
      Allow: /2005/
      Allow: /top/
      Allow: /ref/
      Allow: /services/xml/

      User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
      Disallow:

  • Google News:Real News :: Google Earth:GIS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stanwirth ( 621074 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:35PM (#14611375)


    Much as I like Google, I've stopped reading the Google News much at all. First of all articles get the /. effect, and it's much the same coverage as you see in the NYT and BBC anyway. Worse, because it has a "popularity" filter on it. If I were in a field that relied on any more accurate coverage of world events, I'd have to go to primary sources anyway.



    I tried Google Earth the other day too, and it has the same kind of "filter" -- eye candy for Africa, but if you have to look at a non-tourist spot, you're pretty much SOL. Since I'm in a field that does rely on more accurate GIS, I use real GIS software and data.

  • let me finish your sentence for you, Mr. Rahnema (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:35PM (#14611380)
    "The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article"

    Let me finish that sentence for you, Mr. Rahnema:

    "...and using it to send viewers to Association member's webpages, bringing us new readers, and generating ad revenue we ordinarily wouldn't have. Sadly, it means we all have to compete against each other, whereas before, we enjoyed regional favoritism. We're absolutely terrified that someone in Boston might find better coverage of a story on the BBC's website, or Washington Post. Or that they can find as much as they want about Elephants, instead of having to read an entire paper, or poke around our site. And they won't pay for the privledge of searching our archives. Especially since much of the time, all we do is parrot an AP/Reuters wire story, word for word....we're terribly concerned about all this."

    Hey, if they don't like it- they can always redirect any hit with a referral from news.google.com to "Sorry, we don't support google news." There's also nothing stopping them from blocking all the googlebot crawlers- either by IP range, or browser ID.

    Except that then they'd loose a lot of viewers, and become a black hole to the world's most popular search engine. So instead, they run to the legislature...

  • "'They're building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content,' Ali Rahnema, managing director of the association, told Reuters in an interview. 'The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article

    A new medium? I think not. I see a photo, a headline and the first three lines of an article which interests me, I click the link and am redirected to the news-site hosting the story. When I get there, I get bombarded with their
    • Having read the article, it seems to me that it's a case of the print media having to modernise or die - and this action is an attempt to avoid doing either.

      Most print publications tend not to offer all (or any) of their print content in the web version of their newspapers, using the website as a means of advertising the print publication or attracting people to take subscriptions to the print publication.

      The problem for those who do, is that a service like google news allows web users to use the newpaper w
  • After seeing this, and scratching my head (as I'm sure most other people have done) thinking 'Why in heaven's name would a news website get in a huss over another website directing traffic at them?', I can only come up with one reasonable conclusion.

    Lawyers doing legal things because they can.

    I've always guessed it was the lawyers who have convinced the *IAAs to keep pushing law suits despite overwhelming evidence that filesharing helps the industry.

    So, it stands to reason that they would push to have place
  • You can either leave Google News alone OR your worthless rag call fall off the earth as far as the rest of the internet is concerned.

    Which part of that choice involves the legal definition fair use?

    You turds need Google a lot more than they need you. Bunch of whiners.

  • Pot, kettle, black. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AnotherBlackHat ( 265897 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:38PM (#14611405) Homepage

    They're building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content,


    Last I checked, newspapers don't pay for the quotes they publish either.

    Isn't news supposed to be the reporting of facts, not a creative work?

    -- Should you believe authority without question?
  • I loved it when the RSS feed from slashdot ended up in the tech section on Google News. Along with articles from the New York Times, I got to read something published by "Pizza Face"
  • Slashdot doesn't use photos, but they often quote a few lines from the articles. Often enough that almost no one RTFA. Looks like the newspaper industry is about as forward-looking as the RIAA and MPAA. This whole Inter-Net thing apparently caught them off guard and they've just noticed it.
  • What sort of idiots turn down the massive number of referrals that Google News is sending their way? Before news.google.com, I would never have had a reason to read an online newspaper from Indiana, but now I do. Hey, if they want to lose my eyes and my ad impressions, I think Google should give them what they want. Fuck'em.
  • The campaign comes as a pending U.S. court case pits Agence France Presse against Google. AFP sued the company last year, alleging that Google News carries its photos, news headlines and stories without permission.

    Cache [eff.org] the latest news on Google. [google.com]

    La France, toujours dérangée avec le logiciel des USA.

  • if i go to a newstand (Score:3, Insightful)

    by circletimessquare ( 444983 ) <circletimessquare@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:42PM (#14611460) Homepage Journal
    i can scan the front page headlines of about 10 different newspapers without buying a newspaper. but if i am interested in knowing more in depth, i'll buy the newspaper

    if i go to google news, same thing: i can scan the front page headlines of about 10 different newspapers without visiting the newspaper's site. but if i am interested in knowing more in depth, i'll click on the link and go to the newspaper's site

    are newspapers now going to prohibit people from looking at newsstands unless they intend to buy a newspaper?

    this is utterly ridiculous. do newspaper sites want no traffic? how the heck do they expect people to find their stories?

  • Other sites (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chowderbags ( 847952 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:42PM (#14611465)
    What about a site like Drudge Report? Or even any blog out there? Sure, they may not be as automated as Google, but will the courts see it that way? I hardly see it as an issue of copyright if a site not only cites a source, but links back to get the whole story. Besides, this is the industry that thrives on AP and Reuters stories to fill most of it's content. Well, that and the random reporters that steal from Wikipedia: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/15/151321 6 [slashdot.org]
  • You might want to log the "referrer" tags of all the pages hits you get and notice what percentage of your traffic is actually being driven to your website by google before you start attacking them

  • How is this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rm69990 ( 885744 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:59PM (#14611609)
    Someone please explain to me how this is any different than Google Search indexing these exact same articles and making the first few lines available through their search engine? Or Google images making these exact same images available from Google's servers?

    Either way, Google is still directing web traffic to their sites. There are a lot of news articles on various sites I would have never read if it weren't for Google news. I don't have time to track thousands of different online news outlets, so Google does it for me. I have even *gasp* clicked on ads after being redirected to the news vendors website. Even more shocking, there has been a few (5 actually) news outlets who's RSS feeds I have subscribed to after reading a few articles of theirs linked to from Google News.

    Oh well, there are no laws against stupidity. This is almost as dumb as book publishers getting in a panic over Google Book Search, which is free advertising as far as I'm concerned. Or do they fear people will be satisfied with the page shown on Google Book Search and not buy the full book? Generally, when I want to read a book, I want to read the full book. The same thing with the news. I don't read the Google News homepage and not go to the full source.

  • How Ironic (Score:3)

    by windowpain ( 211052 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:01PM (#14611617) Journal
    Companies pay pay Google to place (very brief) ads in search results of particular words. Google News uses much more enticing excerpts from news sites that a user must click on if he or she wants to read the full article excerpted. The link clicked on goes directly to the news site's (ad-laden, revenue-generating) page.

    Newspapers have a problem with this? Google should comply with any news source that wants to be excluded from Google News. And then have their salepeople call on them and see if they want to buy Google Adwords on the Google News page.
  • A relevant flash movie with a possible scenario about the future of news aggregation that people might find interesting at two locations. It has been linked to here on Slashdot before, that's how I know about it.
    http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/ [robinsloan.com]
    http://epic.makingithappen.co.uk/ [makingithappen.co.uk]
  • User-agent: Googlebot
    Disallow: /
    You know, if they hired me as a consultant to deal with this problem, I'd probably get a few thousand dollars for typing 34 characters.

  • What would this mean for Slashdot? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Disposable Rob ( 806435 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:14PM (#14611750)
    "'They're building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content,' Ali Rahnema, managing director of the association, told Reuters in an interview. 'The news aggregators are taking headlines, photos, sometimes the first three lines of an article -- it's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not.'"

    Except for the occasional unique content like interviews, doesnt this describe Slashdot? Along with Fark, Digg and countless blogs whose entire sites who report what others are reporting, except they use people instead of Google's crawlers.

  • Town Criers Lobby congress (Score:3)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:28PM (#14611883) Homepage Journal
    The considlated federation of town criers, villiage idiots, and buggy whip vendors, are petitioning congress to protect them against thin sheets of papers printed with daily news and advertisements. These so-called news-papers, made practical by recent innovation in moveable type. The town criers insist that they have spent much effort organizing a network of reliable informants, and that the news-papers are able to undercutting traditional news outlets because they do not have such expenses. Even though the criers are fully attributed, they object as this may cut down on public contact and potential revenue.

    In addition, the villiage idiot objects as these papers also supply a high quality entertainment, thusly potentially destroying the trade of villiage idiot and the untold community benifit such a person provides. The buggy whip manufacturers are concerned as the papers offer non-local cheaper alternatives to the buggy whip, and prints stories about a post-horse power economy which threatens the entire industry.

  • Foreign News Would Love Our Audience (Score:3)

    by comforteagle ( 728960 ) * on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:31PM (#14611914) Homepage Journal
    I run a news crap-filter called 180n.com [180n.com] which allows the reader to determine which of the stories are actually worth reading & 9/10 the sources are foreign news outlets like the BBC, India Times, even Aljezerra. US News Media don't do "news" anymore. They're media outlets the same as Oprah & Survivor. Reel you in with sensational bullshit and try to hold you there as long as possible by promising something worthwhile... just after this break or right after you view these ads for classmates.com!

  • These people are stupider than the RIAA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by voss ( 52565 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:37PM (#14611955)
    I would NEVER read their newspaper websites if it were not for
    Google News. Google news gives them free pagehits which exposes
    their newspaper and their web page ADVERTISERS to a larger audience.

    If I were a newspaper publisher I wouldnt be angry about my newspaper
    being in Google news, I would be angry about my newspaper not listed
    among the first three sources.

    All google news is a News search engine with links to news sites.

    My god Google news is GIVING YOU BUSINESS without charging you....
    Google news has your newspaper websites RELEVANT again...more so
    than TV news. Are you newspaper publishers really that fracking
    STUPID as to punish them for it?

  • Theft, pure and simple (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @07:11PM (#14612192)
    What a crock! You've put the stuff out there for free. Google makes your content a million times more findable. And now your intent is to rob them for being a value added supplier simply because they have a lot of money that you want. Newspapers are the thieves in this, pure and simple.

    If you don't like being indexed, put a frigging robots.txt file on your site and watch how much you'll be saving in bandwidth costs afterwards as your traffic plummets.

    The newspapers not only need to lose on this one -- they need to lose big!

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