> I don't see any reason for Google to hand over their hard work for free; they are playing by the rules.
Who said it had to be free? How about sharing revenues? I'm pretty sure that would go a long way towards making a win-win situation. Of course google isn't used to having to pay for its content but that doesn't mean they should not have to. If you displace someones homepage but still use their content then you've entered into a parasitic relationship that will last until the subject dies.
That leaves only losers so the German position is not as unreasonable as you make it out to be.
Maybe those newspapers deserve to die, maybe their time has simply come. Legislation like this is usually only putting off the inevitable and I'm really not in favor. But google crying 'unfair!' is a bit much.
So your basic argument is that the publishers are currently giving away their content for free and have been doing so for years and now, that someone has found a viable business model based on aggregating and indexing that content, they suddenly want a share of those earnings while they still want to give away their content for free?
It wouldn't be any problem at all for the publishers to hide their webpages behind a paywall and then charge for access. They could even try and negotiate a price with google. Now, wether that's a good strategy is a question in itself, but they don't do that. They rather want a "search engine tax" imposed by the state.
(1) because it isn't their content and they profit from it
(2) because we need a free press, which is a greater good than the income of some corporation
The press has a function that is a cornerstone of modern societies, if the press collectively goes bust we have a serious problem.
It should come as a noteworthy thing that the government (an opposing party here) should need to protect the press. You could easily argue that it is to the governments advantage not to have a free press at all. And yet, they value it enough that they propose (misguided) legislation to protect it.
If the government decides that a free press is of vital importance, there should be a public funding for free press. We do have such a system for TV channels in germany. However, creating misguided legislation to funnel earnings from one private company to a group of other private to bolster their income is not a way to protect free press. To add insult to injury: The free press has not proven to be very free in this whole debate, but rather greedy and profit-driven. There was very little mention of the problems of the given legislation in the free press.
This case is a prime example of big-corporate lobbyism and not at all about free press.
To some a government funding of the press and a 'free' press could be seen as mutually exclusive. Personally I relish the BBC, and hope it continues to report the news, but in general 'government owned' journalism raises it's own questions.
The ARD and ZDF channels are not government funded in germany. It's a fee that gets collected by a dedicated agency, but not a tax. The System has its own set of issues, but in general I think the system is a good idea.
For the consumer it certainly looks like that. However, the legal underpinnings are completely different with all sorts of interesting side effects. The basic idea was after WW2 that the radio should be as independent from the government as possible, so a completely separate system of funding was set up. The government has no say in the way the money gets collected or spent and very little ways of influencing how much money gets collected. Now there are some checks and balances and ways how the politicians can actually influence the radio stations, but not via "we'll cut your funding if you don't report what we want."
The system certainly has its flaws and room for improvement, but a purely privately owned system is not a better option.
Oh, I know the background. But the leadership of the public broadcasters is full of party people, so it's not too different from the government in terms of who are the people in charge.
Who said it had to be free? How about sharing revenues? I'm pretty sure that would go a long way towards making a win-win situation. Of course google isn't used to having to pay for its content but that doesn't mean they should not have to. If you displace someones homepage but still use their content then you've entered into a parasitic relationship that will last until the subject dies.
That leaves only losers so the German position is not as unreasonable as you make it out to be.
Maybe those newspapers deserve to die, maybe their time has simply come. Legislation like this is usually only putting off the inevitable and I'm really not in favor. But google crying 'unfair!' is a bit much.