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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Gotta say that sounds like a big win for the tech companies. Once some of the big media companies lose their nerve like this, it's over – because even if this legislation is passed, the tech giants probably won't lose a cent and will have these organisations right where they want them. Kind of ironic that the outcome of an attempt at slightly shifting the power balance away from Google, Apple and Facebook has basically ended up with news organisations handing over millions for something that was previously a free service.
(Happy for someone to explain if I've misunderstood what's happened here, but that's my impression.)
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
Say what?  My read is that Google is the one paying out. Signed a $30M deal with 7 and same with 9. The news organisations are getting the money, not paying it out.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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I'm confused as it sounds to me like Seven West and Nine are signing up for a service in which their work gets promoted by the search engine. But you may be right – can anyone else read between the lines here (or find a link that spells out the deal more clearly)?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/15/seven-west-media-signs-multimillion-dollar-deal-with-google
| Quote: | Seven West Media is the first large Australian media company to sign a multimillion-dollar agreement with Google for its content to be displayed in a new product called News Showcase, with Seven describing the deal as “fair payment”.
[...]
The Seven agreement won’t be sealed for a further 30 days and the company would not comment on reports it was worth more than $30m a year.
News Showcase is a feature on the Google News app that puts publishers’ content in panels, providing more information and content than is found in search results or snippets. The search giant said Australian Showcase partners had more than 1m views of their content in the first eight days of its operation. |
Edit: found a link here which puts it more plainly – yep, looks like your understanding is correct:
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/australia-says-content-laws-already-working-after-nine-google-deal-reports-14215672
| Quote: | Australia on Wednesday said promised laws forcing tech giants to pay media outlets for content had already succeeded after reports that publisher and broadcaster Nine Entertainment Co Holdings Ltd agreed on a licensing deal with Google.
The Alphabet Inc owned company agreed to pay Nine more than AUS$30 million (US$23.25 million) a year for its content, two of Nine's newspapers reported, citing unidentified industry sources. The deal would be formally signed in the next two weeks, the newspapers said. |
That is a great relief, I have to say.
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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Agreed. Well done to Scomo and da Berg for bringing Google to heel.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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And now everyone has lost their mind because Facebook has removed news.
I have some sympathy for their approach, media organisations put the icon on their own articles on their own sites encouraging people to share news articles. The also started their own Facebook accounts in their organisations name to help push their content to wider audiences.
Why should Facebook pay media organisations when it's the media getting the benefits?
Interestingly it's not just actual news sites that have been impacted but also government departments and spurious/satirical news sites like the Betoota Advocate and The Guardian
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-18/bom-health-authorities-betoota-caught-in-facebook-news-ban/13166394
People squealing need to understand that Facebook is not a public service. Sally McManus squawking that union members now can't get their news via Facebook.
That short sharp lockdown may actually result in a change of thinking. If Facebook refuses to pay and just blocks news like it just proved it can do, it's not the loser.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Why are you pretending that the media companies get the benefits? It is beyond reasonable doubt that the gigantic Facebook corporation (more than 20 times bigger than all the media companies put together) is the one which gets all the benefit.
Well, who is surprised? They steal other people's copyrighted content and don't pay for it. No wonder they are doing everything they can to bully Australia into cowardly submission. Facebook is mortally afraid that if one small country stands up to it and doesn't get punished, some of the others will stand up to it too.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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eddiesmith 
Lets get ready to Rumble
Joined: 23 Nov 2004
Location: Lexus Centre
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| So media outlets don’t use it to push their stories out there to a larger audience with links back to their paywalled sites? |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Tannin wrote: | Why are you pretending that the media companies get the benefits? It is beyond reasonable doubt that the gigantic Facebook corporation (more than 20 times bigger than all the media companies put together) is the one which gets all the benefit.
Well, who is surprised? They steal other people's copyrighted content and don't pay for it. No wonder they are doing everything they can to bully Australia into cowardly submission. Facebook is mortally afraid that if one small country stands up to it and doesn't get punished, some of the others will stand up to it too. |
Expain to me how Facebook steals content? When people share links, the people go the source, I've never seen any content rebadged as Facebook news. All media and news publishers have their own free Facebook pages used to market their content and attract clicks.
I genuinely don't understand why Facebook should have to pay organisations who choose to put their content on Facebook, I've clearly missed an important point somewhere
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Of course they do, Eddie. But ...
(1) The benefit they get is much smaller than the benefit Facebook gets. They do it anyway because Facebook will steal their stories no matter what they do.
(2) Their ability to spruik paywalled content is very limited. Google, for example, has some fairly onerous rules restricting paywalled stuff from ranking highly in searches.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Almost good, but these satirical sites need better writers.
| Quote: | Facebook confident that no-one in Australia has ever heard of a browser
The Machiavellian strategists at Facebook have delivered a killer blow to the Australian government’s plan to make internet giants pay for shared media, by ensuring no one in the Antipodean nation can access news unless they somehow know about the existence of websites. |
https://newsthump.com/2021/02/18/facebook-confident-that-no-one-in-australia-has-ever-heard-of-a-browser
The Gliberals were years ahead of them. Their strategy to keep people from accessing websites involved wrecking the NBN!
I like the anti-competitive power of big tech companies about as much as I like protectionist notions of creativity and expression. Need to think about it more.
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Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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I'm still no clearer how Facebook was supposedly "stealing" content and making money off it at the owners expense, but their willingness to stop having News on their site in Australia would indicate if they were making money out of it, it was money they can clearly do without, at least here.
It's had exactly zero impact on me, most of my Facebook use is in a browser. I'll use the App in the phone for quick viewing usually sitting somewhere waiting for something.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^I'm naturally inclined to your view, but I don't want to go all in yet because I don't mind protecting investigative journalism and quality writing. However, news media have spun this to get handouts for mostly delivering rehashed press releases that were forwarded to them by someone else and failing to adapt to the present digital reality, like the music barons before them.
Five minutes ago Netflix was supposedly going to destroy the movie industry; yet, there has never been a better time to be a young person entering film because the new model has grown the industry, lowered protectionist barriers, and enabled more people enter it. It changed because technology changed and rewrote its business model, and people's habits changed with it.
Gone are the old-fashioned film industry conmen. Greatly reduced are the middlemen picking winners and controlling our playlists. Sure, there are new conmen and middlemen, but the situation is infinitely better than it used to be.
There are always people wanting a handout because reality has changed and they feel particularly special and valuable, and should be exempt from changing with it.
Also, people who claim there's no longer any money in writing are wrong. Flat wrong. What they mean is: there's no money in my preferred kind of writing. Well, welcome to the real world, where people take imperfect jobs and adjust their careers to meet someone else's demand.
If I were a tech company, I wouldn't pay a penny for any of the information from the media that really comes from press releases and publicly-available feeds. Even supposed 'investigative scoops' are mostly supplied by political operatives. That leaves 10% of novel work worth paying for.
But that's really a tax that governments can no longer collect themselves and redistribute to public communication and the arts.
Issues concerning tech company monopoly powers, content moderation, poker machine-like algorithmic reinforcement that turns people's brains to mush, etc. are different matters altogether.
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
What's really funny is that this legislation is coming from the Libs, some lefties suport it because they hate large private monopolies, other lefties think it's all a Murdoch plot, most sane people don't understand the fuss.
IMHO all the organisations bleating about the impact on them have just got a wake up call. Facebook isn't a public utility. They've allowed community groups etc to creqte pages because it suited them, not because they have any community obligation.
People and organisations sooking need to wake up and realise they've been lazy, had a free ride for years in marketing their product on Facebook and it just stopped.
Zuckerberg could decide tomorrow to pull the plug completely and join a Tibetan monastery. He has no obligation to continue.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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eddiesmith
Lets get ready to Rumble
Joined: 23 Nov 2004
Location: Lexus Centre
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| It has bipartisan support as well doesn’t it? Although it didn’t stop Albo having a crack. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| stui magpie wrote: | ^
What's really funny is that this legislation is coming from the Libs, some lefties suport it because they hate large private monopolies, other lefties think it's all a Murdoch plot, most sane people don't understand the fuss.
IMHO all the organisations bleating about the impact on them have just got a wake up call. Facebook isn't a public utility. They've allowed community groups etc to creqte pages because it suited them, not because they have any community obligation.
People and organisations sooking need to wake up and realise they've been lazy, had a free ride for years in marketing their product on Facebook and it just stopped.
Zuckerberg could decide tomorrow to pull the plug completely and join a Tibetan monastery. He has no obligation to continue. |
Yeah, a lot of people seem to be lashing out at whatever bogeyman to sate some sort of generic anger at the world. I have no time for Facebook, but this is a stunt to get handouts for bad business models and failed media investments.
The problems with Facebook include (1) monopoly advertising power, (2) deficient moderation, (3) unethical behavioural manipulation, and (4) criminal mob coordination. The first issue is a problem with all dominant companies and as fixable/unfixable as any other monopoly case. The second is eminently fixable; just start dialling up the penalties for deficient moderation. The third is a society-wide problem way beyond Facebook, and something we need to understand better scientifically. The fourth is also a new phenomenon we're trying to understand; basically, it's the digital version of village mobs whipping themselves into a frenzy and burning witches at the stake.
I sympathise with a lot of this article, but still can't find a clear explanation of the Australian proposal to know if he's understood it correctly:
| Quote: | None of this should have been a surprise. Back in September we wrote about Facebook publicly saying that if Australia went forward with its ridiculous attack on the open internet, and instituted a "news link tax" on Facebook and Google, that it would block news links on Facebook in Australia... and basically everyone ignored it. So, yesterday, when Facebook announced that it was no longer allowing news to be shared in Australia (and relatedly, no longer allowing the sharing of Australian news services on Facebook), it should not have been a surprise.
And yet... it seemed to make tons of people freak out for all the wrong reasons. Almost everyone started blaming and attacking Facebook. And, look, I get it, Facebook is a terrible, terrible company and deserves lots of blame for lots of bad things that it does. But this ain't it.
We can argue about whether or not Facebook is "compatible with democracy" but the simple facts of the situation are that Australia -- pushed heavily by Rupert Murdoch -- has decided to put in place a plan to tax Google and Facebook for any links to news. The bill has all sorts of problems, but there are two huge ones that should concern basically anyone who supports a free and open internet.
First is the link tax. This is fundamentally against the principles of an open internet. The government saying that you can't link to a news site unless you pay a tax should be seen as inherently problematic for a long list of reasons. At a most basic level, it's demanding payment for traffic. There are two entire industries out there based entirely around trying to get more traffic from these companies: "search engine optimization" and "social media management." The reasons there are those industries is because everyone else in the world has figured out that having prominent links on search engines and social media is valuable in its own right and that it's up to the sites that get those links, and the corresponding traffic, to make use of it.
But here, a bunch of lazy newspaper execs who failed to adapt and to figure out better internet business models not only want the traffic, they also want to get paid for it.
This is like saying that not only should NBC have to run an advertisement for Techdirt, but it should have to pay me for it. If that seems totally nonsensical, that's because it is. The link tax makes no sense.
And, most importantly, as any economist will tell you, taxing something doesn't just bring in revenue, it decreases whatever you tax. This is why we have things like cigarette taxes and pollution taxes. It's a tool to get less of something. So, in this case, Australia is saying it wants to tax links to news on Facebook, and Facebook responds in the exact way any reasonable economist would predict: it says that's just not worth it and bans links. That's not incompatible with democracy. It's not bringing a country to its knees. The country said "this is how much news links cost" and Facebook said "oh, that's too expensive, so we'll stop."
Contrary to the idea that this is an "attack" on journalism or news in Australia, it's not. The news still exists in Australia. News companies still have websites. People can still visit those websites.
Indeed, the people who are saying that this move by Facebook is somehow an "attack" on news or an attack on Australian sovereignty seem to be admitting more than they'd really like: that they think Facebook must be a dominant source of news in the country. |
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210217/22383446265/bizarre-reaction-to-facebooks-decision-to-get-out-news-business-australia.shtml
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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