Posted on 01/31/2006 4:21:16 PM PST by steve-b
DUBLIN (Reuters) - A group representing global newspaper publishers has launched a lobbying campaign to challenge search engines like Google that aggregate news content...
"They're 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's for the courts to decide whether that's a copyright violation or not."...
(Excerpt) Read more at today.reuters.com ...
Anything to try to save themselves from collapse.
Google picks through the public domain, accumulates that data and then deems it private property, theirs. Typical liberal mindset.
This is neither a liberal nor a conservative pursuit. You too, whatever your political persuasion is, can feel free to compile commonly available data from any source and make an independent database from it (i.e. your own library).
Fair use laws determine what portion of that database you may share with others at one time.
But isn't the role of the editor to sell auto adds to generate profit? The loss leader is the news which is a come on to get you to view the adds. Complain about the spin and content. You get "I have spent 31 years in the newspaper business". Doing what?
Why would they not want the free advertising?
Apparently you don't understand what public domain is.
The Paris-based group, which represents 18,000 newspapers, isn't 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. But WAN noted that Web companies also "built their business models in large part on taking content for free."Newspapers want search engines to pay CNET News.com
Maybe it's just me, but it sounds like the WAN is upset because they are having trouble maintaining their monopoly on the "truth." They don't like the idea that people can get information without having to pay for it. In another article on this issue a spokesman for the WAN condemned Google for its "absolute view" that information should be free. Sounds a little lefty to me.
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