ACAP Blog
World's Press Asks Google To Respect Copyright
Reported by WAN -IFRA from Hyderabad
The newspaper industry's representative association made an impassioned
defense of copyright to Google's chief attorney on Thursday, calling for "a
more rigorous and unambiguous acceptance" of publishers' rights to decide
how their content is used.
"Being able to make a commercial return is essential to justify investment
in content – whether we are talking news or education or entertainment – and
that depends on having the mechanism to choose how that content is
distributed, used and paid for," said Gavin O'Reilly, President of the World
Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), in a debate at the
World Newspaper Congress with David Drummond, Senior Vice President and
Chief Legal Counsel of Google.
"That is why copyright was invented 300 years ago – and when you consider
the breadth, depth, richness and diversity of 21st century media, it has
been a stunning success – and that is why copyright remains as relevant
today."
But Mr O'Reilly added: "what is clear is that, collectively, we haven't made
copyright work properly on the web, and that is down to we content creators
who have, perhaps foolishly, failed to enforce our copyright."
Mr Drummond denied that Google violated copyright. "This is not a question
of Google not respecting copyright. This is a fundamental disagreement when
you're applying copyright rules on the web," he said, adding that the idea
that indexing sites was a violation "flies in the face of how the web has
been built and how it operates."
But Mr Drummond said Google was interested in working with the newspaper
industry, and announced that Google was launching a separate crawler for
Google News, so that publishers can give one set of instructions on how
their content should be treated in Google News, and a different set of
instructions for Google Search.
He pointed out that Google News offers publishers a billion clicks a month
and massive traffic, which he called "a source of promotion undreamed of
just a few years ago."
Mr O'Reilly said: "Unfortunately, the pat answer always seems to be, 'don't
complain – aren't I giving you traffic?' As if I could take traffic to my
bank manager. But shouldn't I have the right to determine – as a fair trade
for my own content – whether I want traffic or something else? Leaving aside
the thorny issue of dominant market position that Google enjoys, why should
I just be forced to accept Google's business model of site referral as the
only online model?"
"I want to say that I am not advocating charity here. We publishers don't
need hand outs or crumbs from Google's table. What we want is a more
rigorous and unambiguous acceptance on copyright, an acknowledgement of our
right to choose our own business model, a more transparent technical
mechanic, and perhaps, less of the rather tired, 'fair use' rhetoric."
He called for adoption of the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP), a
new protocol back by WAN-IFRA and others in the industry that allows
publishers to describe how their online content can be used in a way that
the news aggregators' automated indexing crawlers can read.
"Some dismiss this, including Google – saying that the existing Robots
Exclusion Protocol does the job just fine. But, if you're listening to us,
it just doesn't do it for publishers, and we publishers need something more
than essentially a binary 'yes/no' for the management and commercial
exploitation of our valuable content."
"If Google are genuinely pro-copyright, then they must be pro-ACAP, or at
least pro its goals, as all ACAP seeks to do is to make copyright work on
the web, by creating an infrastructure that is universal – not
proprietorial, not owned by any one individual business, not confined to
specific media, not telling anyone what their business model should or
shouldn't be, but making it easier for them to choose. An open standard
available to everyone and at no cost to the user."
More on ACAP can be found at http://www.the-acap.org
Also participating in the debate were: Kees Spaan, President of the Dutch
Newspaper Publishers Association and Chairman of the Copyright Working Party
of the European Newspaper Publishers Association, and Dae-Whan Chang,
Chairman of Maeil Business Newspaper and TV in Korea.
The debate was the closing session at the World Newspaper Congress, World
Editors Forum and Info Services Expo, the global summit meetings of the
world's press, which drew more than 900 publishers, chief editors and other
senior executives to Hyderabad, India. Full coverage can be found on the
WAN-IFRA multiblog at http://www.wan-ifra.org/blogs/wanindia2009 , on the
Editors Weblog at http://www.editorsweblog.org , on the Shaping the Future
of the Newspaper blog at http://www.sfnblog.org , or on Twitter by using
hashtag #wanindia09.
Read Gavin O'Reilly's remarks at http://www.wan-press.org/article18338.html
Read David Drummond's remarks at http://www.wan-press.org/article18339.html
Posted: 04/12/2009 14:02:43 by
Tessa Thier | with 0 comments
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