Facebook, Google and Australia

[OutByEaster?]

2 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

I just know I really dislike Facebook. 

Most people really dislike Facebook - but whether or not we put in place laws that completely change the way the web works just to spite them is another thing entirely.

If this is a problem between Murdoch and Zuckerberg, they should be in court, not manipulating governments to try to force each other into difficult positions.

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

Yes, that is the key point. It's not about general small users (say VT) "fair usage" policy - like VT has a rule about "always provide and link and an extract" because of that very reason - it is fair usage to use a quote in context (for a small operator like VT) and provide a link to the bigger article, to help the original author. But when you have a huge scale operator hoovering up basically everyone's articles and showing the aggregated content as "todays's news, get it all here" they are distorting the market to gain revenue at the expense of others.

Thank you, yes, that's the point I'm trying to make (less succinctly!).

[OutByEaster?]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

Yes, that is the key point. It's not about general small users (say VT) "fair usage" policy - like VT has a rule about "always provide and link and an extract" because of that very reason - it is fair usage to use a quote in context (for a small operator like VT) and provide a link to the bigger article, to help the original author. But when you have a huge scale operator hoovering up basically everyone's articles and showing the aggregated content as "todays's news, get it all here" they are distorting the market to gain revenue at the expense of others.

But how do you make that distinction in law?

It's like having a shoplifting law that only applies if you steal something that someone has arbitrarily decided has to be at least as valuable as a toaster - the law should either say shoplifting is illegal or not - the punishments can by all means be measured by the scale of the crime, but you can't define the crime itself by scale surely?

 

[blandy]

15 hours ago, bickster said:

If anything the News outlets should be paying FB for generating clicks on their sites, earning them revenue

No definitely not, IMO.

There''s really an argument or discussion about scale here.

It benefits both parties, say the SMH and F/Book if F/Book (or Google) trawls through the internet with their bots and posts up stories from the SMH on F/B. The SMH will get some traffic from those wanting to read more. F/B will get traffic because people go there to see the latest headlines (as determined by the work of SMH journos etc).

But the scale comes in when the balance is uneven. Because for all that some traffic will go to the SMH from F/B, a lot will never go there, they will read the headlines, see ScoMO is a knob and then read the Telegraph's take, then the ABC take, then look at the Sports scores. the SMH will therefore also lose some traffic they might otherwise have had. And the balance is off kilter. Facehole is reaping in gazzilions, then squirrelling it away and the Papers are on their last legs. regulation should be used to stop market distortion, it should not be the case of free for all, and the biggest, strongest gets all the spoils.

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Most people really dislike Facebook - but whether or not we put in place laws that completely change the way the web works just to spite them is another thing entirely.

That's not it, IMO. Most people really dislike (say) the Big Banks. Should the Government fail to regulate big banks, because that would mean small businesses would also be regulated - so no, the legislation should be about the Big Operators, not everyone. IMO you have to deal with the too big to fail, too big to be controlled behemoths. They are a blight and they are making democracies worse through their heft and behaviour and practices and their arrogance.

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

But how do you make that distinction in law?

It's like having a shoplifting law that only applies if you steal something that someone has arbitrarily decided has to be at least as valuable as a toaster - the law should either say shoplifting is illegal or not - the punishments can by all means be measured by the scale of the crime, but you can't define the crime itself by scale surely?

How do you only charge income tax on people who earn over a certain amount?

[OutByEaster?]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

That's not it, IMO. Most people really dislike (say) the Big Banks. Should the Government fail to regulate big banks, because that would mean small businesses would also be regulated - so no, the legislation should be about the Big Operators, not everyone. IMO you have to deal with the too big to fail, too big to be controlled behemoths. They are a blight and they are making democracies worse through their heft and behaviour and practices and their arrogance.

I absolutely agree - but I don't think that's what this is. 

I think if you have a law it should apply to everybody or every company that exists within your society. 

 

[blandy]

It's not a criminal thing - it's about requiring big business to pay for something they do, to contribute to the costs of smaller businesses whose work they use to make themselves money. It's about stopping market distortion.

[OutByEaster?]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

How do you only charge income tax on people who earn over a certain amount?

You don't, you charge income tax on everyone - but the payments trigger at certain amounts. 

The law is that everyone is liable for income tax - the way in which the law is applied can be set appropriately.

The point being that there is a tax office operated by government that monitors absolutely everyone and every company at a massive expense in order to make sure tax gets collected at the appropriate level. 

There's nothing being suggested here that resembles that other than "once Facebook have paid these four media companies we'll make it go away".

[KenjiOgiwara]

7 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Most people really dislike Facebook - but whether or not we put in place laws that completely change the way the web works just to spite them is another thing entirely.

If this is a problem between Murdoch and Zuckerberg, they should be in court, not manipulating governments to try to force each other into difficult positions.

This is more of a question I guess, even if I'm not that good at wording it.

News reporting is the bread and butter for these companies. The equivalent for Facebook would be active accounts. So if a company started a Facemash mk2 and automatically took people and information from facebook to compete, I'm sure Facebook would make a legal battle out of it. Now I know there's privacy laws and stuff that comes in at that point, but the general premise stands I feel. Facebook would also at that point hide behind governmental legislature to keep status quo. Is it really such an unreasonable case they are facing here? They are making billions and billions publishing information that doesn't belong to them on a platform it wasn't intended. 

If someone has found a way to exploit a system beyond what was intended, is it unreasonable to change the laws to adress it? 

[bickster]

21 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Okay, you have given examples of music royalties, so let me relate it to that scenario. If I had a friend who was somehow stupid enough to really want to listen to me sing an Oasis song, and he paid me 1p each Saturday evening and came over to my house to listen to me, then I would *technically* need to be paying royalties, but in practice nobody would give the tiniest of shits about this. If, on the other hand, I managed to turn 'karaoke singers going into people's houses' into a viable business, and it started to have a material impact on music sales and streaming numbers, then people would start to care about it.

Not true, PRS does not cover private performances in unlicensed venues

[blandy]

3 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

You don't, you charge income tax on everyone - but the payments trigger at certain amounts. 

The law is that everyone is liable for income tax - the way in which the law is applied can be set appropriately.

The point being that there is a tax office operated by government that monitors absolutely everyone and every company at a massive expense in order to make sure tax gets collected at the appropriate level. 

There's nothing being suggested here that resembles that other than "once Facebook have paid these four media companies we'll make it go away".

Yes. That's why the legislation is badly worded.

The income tax point was exactly that - when someone earns enough, they contribute. It's easy enough to define a line.

It's perhaps of interest that in France and in Aus, Google has said "yeah, fair cop, we'll pay". By reacting as they have Facebook has really upped the anti, when they could have said "yeah, us too" and avoided a fight.

You're right that (in Aus) it's largely the Murdoch empire which is benefitting and has managed to get the Guvmint to stay strong, but it's like Dominoes - this will hopefully happen across the world and lead to a bit of a rebalancing.

[OutByEaster?]

1 minute ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

News reporting is the bread and butter for these companies. The equivalent for Facebook would be active accounts. So if a company started a Facemash mk2 and automatically took people and information from facebook to compete, I'm sure Facebook would make a legal battle out of it. 

But Facebook have decided not to make their customer account information shareable - they don't want to share it.

News reporting companies actively want Facebook to share their stories, it's good for them, it gets them a wider audience and it gets them click through traffic, they don't want Facebook to stop, they want them to carry on but pay.

Facebook has a choice if the law is in place, they can either pay or not, that's up to them, they aren't a public service - the oddity here is that by deciding not to pay and not to link, they're being vilified, it just seems strange to me, like it's the wrong fight.

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

So if a company started a Facemash mk2 and automatically took people and information from facebook to compete, I'm sure Facebook would make a legal battle out of it.

Not sure what you mean here?

Are you suggesting this new entity steals Facebook's data? IF so yes, That would be illegal and FB would have a case.

Or are you suggesting this new entity lures people away from FB to their new platform? If so, FB can do shite all about it, thats competition in the market place

[HanoiVillan]

6 minutes ago, bickster said:

Not true, PRS does not cover private performances in unlicensed venues

Okay, fine, then substitute some variant of the situation in which royalties would apply but nobody would be arsed to insist on them. The specifics are not really the point.

[OutByEaster?]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

Yes. That's why the legislation is badly worded.

The income tax point was exactly that - when someone earns enough, they contribute. It's easy enough to define a line.

I think where we're in disagreement here is that line - it is easy enough to define a line, but it doesn't look like anyone wants to do that here - they seem to have just picked two social media companies and a small handful of publishers and said - this will now be a law for these people but not for anyone else - now go away and sort out amongst yourselves how much you want to give each other - that doesn't sound like law or regulation to me.

I'm not against a properly managed state system applied based on something like page views or whatever, for a "link licence" with fees set appropriately, so VT would pay a tenner a year and Google would pay a hundred million and then that money would be distributed to publishers on a tiered system they'd apply for so that The Sunday Times gets £1m and The Edinburgh University student rag gets £20, with a chunk of the remainder going into the coffers of the treasury.

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

28 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

But how do you make that distinction in law?

It's like having a shoplifting law that only applies if you steal something that someone has arbitrarily decided has to be at least as valuable as a toaster - the law should either say shoplifting is illegal or not - the punishments can by all means be measured by the scale of the crime, but you can't define the crime itself by scale surely?

 

Looking this up, which I probably should have done earlier in the conversation, the regulation makes clear that it only applies (at least initially) to Facebook and Google. From the Q & A's:

'1.2.Which digital platforms would be covered by the code?

Digital platforms must participate in the code if the Treasurer makes a determination specifying that the code would apply to them. The Government has announced that the code would initially apply only to Facebook and Google. Other digital platforms may be added to the code if they hold a significant bargaining power imbalance with Australian news media businesses in the future.'

from: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/DPB - Draft news media and digital platforms mandatory bargaining code Q%26As.pdf

[bickster]

7 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Okay, fine, then substitute some variant of the situation in which royalties would apply but nobody would be arsed to insist on them. The specifics are not really the point.

There isn't really a scenario that exists. If music is played in your business, be that shop, office, pub, club etc you are legally responsible for paying PRS. If music is used on another platform, film, TV, online, whatever, you are liable to pay royalties,

PRS will come after you if they find out, they are notorious for it

And for the record I don't agree with PRS.

[KenjiOgiwara]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

Not sure what you mean here?

Are you suggesting this new entity steals Facebook's data? IF so yes, That would be illegal and FB would have a case.

Or are you suggesting this new entity lures people away from FB to their new platform? If so, FB can do shite all about it, thats competition in the market place

I ment both. In the sense it's all text and coding and by doing it they are stealing customers as well. Just like Facebook is doing.

[HanoiVillan]

Just now, bickster said:

There isn't really a scenario that exists. If music is played in your business, be that shop, office, pub, club etc you are legally responsible for paying PRS. If music is used on another platform, film, TV, online, whatever, you are liable to pay royalties,

And for the record I don't agree with PRS.

'If music is played in your . . . office' - is there any regular enforcement on this? I have never seen or heard of it. Seems like a good example of a situation in which there is no practical enforcement.

Anyway, this is going off topic.