Facebook, Google and Australia

[OutByEaster?]

4 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

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

That's an appalling piece of legislation - this law applies to you if you can get bigger than Australian news media businesses?

It may as well say if Rupert considers you a threat.

 

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

is there any regular enforcement on this?

Yes absolutely there is, it is a regular occurrence. Our company got pulled up on it a number of years ago. We have the PRS stickers in the window to prove it. If PRS find out that music is being played in a workplace they will come after the company until they pay. 

There is even talk that they are going to come after taxi drivers for playing the radio in the car.

[KenjiOgiwara]

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

'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.

Hate to be that guy, but this is off topic.

 

[blandy]

1 minute ago, OutByEaster? said:

That's an appalling piece of legislation - this law applies to you if you can get bigger than Australian news media businesses?

It's badly worded, but it's basically "you two, negotiate with News publishers and agree a price. If you don't agree within 3 months, then it'll be arbitrated". The sentiment is right, the execution is pretty crap. I guess though the idea is to get the parties to sort it out under threat of a law being put in place - i.e. the draft regulation is maybe not actually ever going to be implemented, it's just a threat at the moment of "we will come for you if you don't..."

[bickster]

6 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

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.

You can't prosecute Shop B for enticing formerly loyal customers of Shop A into their shop by offering something different.

[OutByEaster?]

Just now, blandy said:

It's badly worded, but it's basically "you two, negotiate with News publishers and agree a price. If you don't agree within 3 months, then it'll be arbitrated". The sentiment is right, the execution is pretty crap. I guess though the idea is to get the parties to sort it out under threat of a law being put in place - i.e. the draft regulation is maybe not actually ever going to be implemented, it's just a threat at the moment of "we will come for you if you don't..."

That makes a lot more sense than what's being reported. For me, it's increasingly clear that this isn't a matter for governmental interference - if "the major Australian news publisher" wanted to take legal action against Facebook he should have done it through the courts - I very much get the feeling that "favours" have resulted in governmental involvement. 

 

[KenjiOgiwara]

3 minutes ago, bickster said:

You can't prosecute Shop B for enticing formerly loyal customers of Shop A into their shop by offering something different.

You can if they reason behind it being doable is they steal  intellectual property no?

At least in Norway. My buddy got hit with sieze and something. Desist? Cause they took customer base based on former company IP.

Edited February 19, 2021 by KenjiOgiwara

[OutByEaster?]

10 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

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.

That's not what facebook is doing. Facebook isn't "stealing" stories, it's sharing them, at the request of the people that write them - the publishers absolutely want Facebook to continue to do that, they would like money as well. 

 

[bickster]

1 minute ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

You can if they reason behind it being doable is they steal  intellectual property no?

That is an entirely different thing. Which is why I asked the question

[OutByEaster?]

It's interesting that if you take an actual news aggregator - Newsnow - not only are they not being asked to pay for the links to the stories they link to, but they actually make a point of saying how they offer the sharing service for free. That it's the publishers who are benefitting from the service and that it's great that Newsnow aren't asking the publishers to pay for that exposure.

 

[HanoiVillan]

2 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

That makes a lot more sense than what's being reported. For me, it's increasingly clear that this isn't a matter for governmental interference - if "the major Australian news publisher" wanted to take legal action against Facebook he should have done it through the courts - I very much get the feeling that "favours" have resulted in governmental involvement. 

 

On that topic, I note as I read about the topic that:

'I suspect the great Australian news outage of 2021 will be short-lived. Australia’s treasurer, a leading figure in the negotiations, said he spoke with Mark Zuckerberg today and that negotiations continue. (Fun fact from The New York Times: Australia’s treasurer was also “the best man at the wedding of Ryan Stokes, who is a son of Kerry Stokes, the billionaire owner of Seven West Media, one of the companies that have reached a deal with Google.”)'

from: https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/18/22288510/google-facebook-australia-news-media-bargaining-code

That article provides some interesting critical views of this proposal, including:

'I’d feel better about this if publishers said a single word about how much of their new Google revenue they planned to spend on journalists’ salaries or news gathering.

They didn’t, though, and why would they? Australia’s bargaining code doesn’t say one word about requiring that any of this money be spent on journalism, either.

[...]

I wish Australia would take Facebook’s rejection as a sign it should rethink its approach to media regulation entirely. It could just tax companies based on their revenues, for example. It could earmark those revenues to support journalism — nonprofit public media, even, which has consistently been shown to have powerful civic benefits. Or it could pursue a bargaining code that requires big media conglomerates to create and support jobs in journalism, rather than simply accept tens of millions of dollars and spend them however they like — or just return it to shareholders.'

[bickster]

6 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

That's not what facebook is doing. Facebook isn't "stealing" stories, it's sharing them, at the request of the people that write them - the publishers absolutely want Facebook to continue to do that, they would like money as well. 

 

Not only that but its sharing them by an image that appears is designed by the News Company, specifically for sharing on social media, they are enabling it themselves

[OutByEaster?]

Microsoft owned Bing news isn't a threat to Australian news companies by the looks of things - despite over a billion hits on its news aggregation page in the last month.

On a completely unrelated note, Murdoch has spoken on a number of occasions in recent years about his desire to partner with Microsoft in terms of news delivery and remove his news content from the pages of Google.

 

 

[blandy]

19 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Microsoft owned Bing news isn't a threat to Australian news companies by the looks of things - despite over a billion hits on its news aggregation page in the last month.

On a completely unrelated note, Murdoch has spoken on a number of occasions in recent years about his desire to partner with Microsoft in terms of news delivery and remove his news content from the pages of Google.

Google marketshare is 94% in Aus for search etc.

Facebook is between 55 odd percent and about 70+ percent.

They are massively dominant, the others are small fry.

[OutByEaster?]

8 minutes ago, blandy said:

Google marketshare is 94% in Aus for search etc.

Facebook is between 55 odd percent and about 70+ percent.

They are massively dominant, the others are small fry.

Bing is quietly much bigger than you'd think. It has around a 6% market share in Australia - largely because it's the default browser in lots of microsoft products and has links with lots of different types of search.

Alexa, can you tell me what search engine you're using to provide me with results?

 

[KenjiOgiwara]

44 minutes ago, bickster said:

That is an entirely different thing. Which is why I asked the question

Ok maybe I got it all wrong. You guys probably know more about it than me, but this is just what it reads to me. A company publishing content they don't pay for on platforms it wasn't intended.

But like I said, I'm biased here cause I just don't like facebook and consider good journalism a higher feat than regurgitating others work.

[KenjiOgiwara]

47 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

That's not what facebook is doing. Facebook isn't "stealing" stories, it's sharing them, at the request of the people that write them - the publishers absolutely want Facebook to continue to do that, they would like money as well. 

 

Ok I thought the rejection by facebook ment they lost that right? Fair play, I knew I didn’t know the details.

But from a purely legal, ethical and socio beneficial standpoint I still think they should be forced to pay.

[OutByEaster?]

2 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Ok maybe I got it all wrong. You guys probably know more about it than me, but this is just what it reads to me. A company publishing content they don't pay for on platforms it wasn't intended.

I think it's probably truer to say "A company publishing content they don't pay for on platforms it was intended for."

 

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

A company publishing content they don't pay for on platforms it wasn't intended.

That is most definitely not the case, the web arm of the companies are designing the images that get shared on SM, they are specifically targeting customers to be driven from SM to their websites

[OutByEaster?]

1 minute ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

But from a purely legal, ethical and socio beneficial standpoint I still think they should be forced to pay.

I don't think they should be forced to pay if they decide not to link - that choice should be Facebook's.

Facebook are essentially asking the news publishers whether they lose more money by not having the link based advertising revenue or by not having the links.