Publishers demand revenue and recognition from search engines
The Internet has undercut the businesses of newspapers, book publishers and magazines for years and now these media are looking for ways to fight back.
A group representing global newspaper publishers has launched a lobbying campaign to legally challenge internet news aggregation services like those offered by Google.
Web search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, collect headlines and photos for their users without compensating the publishers a cent, according to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), which recently announced that it intends to "challenge the exploitation of content" by the Googles and MSNs of the Web.
In addition, the (WAN) has accused search engines of the “Napsterization” of content, referring to the MP3 audio service that sold copyright protected music over the web without passing profits to artists and record labels.
The move by WAN comes against a backdrop of layoffs, falling profits and shrinking readership at the world’s newspapers. Huge numbers of companies have shifted their advertising dollars over to the Net and polls shows a growing number of consumers obtain their news from the Web.
Websites like Google and its specialized Google News service automatically pull in headlines, photos and short excerpts of articles from thousands of news sources, linking back to the publishers’ own sites. Google News does not currently carry advertising.
They are 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 is for the courts to decide whether that is a copyright violation or not.
The campaign comes as a pending US 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.
Everybody will be watching that case very closely, Rahnema said.
The Paris-based group, which represents 18,000 newspapers, is not discussing what action it may take. WAN executives said in a statement that they want to explore their options and added that they understand search engines help them in one way: aggregating content and packaging it for consumers.
The cabals of 11 publishing associations are looking to gain compensation from internet search engines and challenge the likes of Google, claiming they exploit content producers.
The (WAN), whose members include dozens of national newspaper trade bodies, said it is exploring ways to "challenge the exploitation of content by search engines without fair compensation to copyright owners."
But WAN noted that Web companies also "built their business models in large part on taking content for free."
Larry Kilman, World Association of Newspapers (WAN) director of communications denied the action was too late, pointing out: "Yahoo has official contracts with 99 different media producers." The association wants to collectively discover ways for publishers to "assert their rights to recognition and recompense" over search engines.
A meeting is also being sought with Charlie McCreevy, European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services and Viviane Reding, Commissioner for the Information Society as the first collective steps by the group to look into whether the news aggregators are infringing on their copyrights or brands.
The purpose of this is not to attack Google, but to say that as an industry we do not feel OK with you taking the content and seeing what happens.
It is not intended to shoot one over the bow, it is to take a group of people to look at the issue, and look at what options are open to our members, Rahnema added.
The association is considering action against search engines for copyright and brand infringement, with the group considering action at national and international levels. This is not the first time publishers have threatened Google with legal action The Authors Guild has also threatened the search engine.
Gavin O’Reilly, WAN President and chief operating officer of Independent News & Media, publisher of The Independent newspaper accused search engines of Napsterisation, "Google, Yahoo and other search engines are not some new breed of social benefactors of information – they are assuredly commercial, very much for profit organizations and not the new Robin Hoods." Kilman added, "They are building revenue generating businesses from the aggregation of newspaper content, which the newspapers have had to pay for," likening it to photocopying newspaper stories and then selling them for a profit.
Google, which is facing a similar copyright dispute with the book publishing industry, has worked in partnership with some newspapers, serving ads to the websites of the New York Times and New Zealand Herald, among others.
Google also sells classified ads for the print edition of the Chicago Sun-Times in a pilot project.
The irony is that these search engines exist, largely, because of the traditional news and content aggregators and profit at their expense, O’Reilly said in a statement.
At the same time, the search engines have flourished.
Joining WAN in the association is the World Editors Forum, International Publishers Association, International Federation of the Periodical Press, European Federation of Magazine Publishers, European Publishers Council, European Publishers Council, European Magazine Publishers Association, SPMI, the French association of magazine publishers, SPP, the French national newspaper association, the French regional and daily newspaper association SPQR and French news agency Agence France-Presse.