Biting the hand that feeds you? Daily Telegraph takes on Google…and Yahoo
April 24th, 2007 by Lloyd Gofton
Comments from the Daily Telegraph’s editor Will Lewis have reignited the newspaper v search engine copyright argument, which recently saw The Belgian court rule that Google infringed copyright and must stop aggregating Belgian newspaper content.
According to Roy Greenslade, Lewis spoke at Friday’s Ifra newsroom conference in Paris on behalf of his CEO, Murdoch MacLennan, and started by confirming that newspapers should embrace new media as a friend rather than treating it as an enemy, but went onto argue that search engines are seeking to build a business model on the back of newspapers’ own investments:”Our ability to protect content is under consistent attack from those such as Google and Yahoo who wish to access it for free.
“These companies are seeking to build a business model on the back of our own investment without recognition. All media companies need to be on guard for this. Success in the digital age, as we have seen in our own company, is going to require massive investment… [this needs] effective legal protection for our content, in such a way that allows us to invest for the future.”
So, does he have a case, or is he simply biting the hand that feeds him?
Roy Greenslade also covers the argument in detail, confirming that the newspapers are on one hand reaping the benefits as aggregators such as Google provide links to news stories and are therefore actually doing the providers a favour, giving advertisers a wider reach, and journalists more readers.
While on the other hand, traditional news-gatherers still have a lot to offer and therefore they should receive compensation from the aggregators who are reaping profits while apparently doing so little.
Personally, I agree newspapers should be rewarded fairly for their content, and any licensing agreement should be developed across the board, rather than with specific titles, as suggested by Greenslade. However, the rules have changed. The way we consume news is constantly evolving, and we have to be careful not to make traditional rules fit into a web-based environment.
If pioneering newspapers, such as the Daily Telegraph, are putting the effort in to embrace a web-based news service and therefore evolve, then it also needs to realise the new environment comes with a new set of rules. Traditional content rules do not necessarily apply, and it’s the business model that needs to evolve as well as the technology and reporting strategy.
I’m not suggesting a free for all, but I think both sides need to adjust their expectations.
What’s the alternative here? The newspapers withdraw from search engines and lose the related traffic and wider exposure. In that case, they had better get their collective feeding hands down to A&E (ER).
Apart from @amandita and @renatenyborg (who...