Wednesday, December 07, 2005
USATODAY.com - Group: Online content cannot remain free:
"By Helena Spongenberg, Associated Press
BRUSSELS - European publishers warned Tuesday that they cannot keep allowing Internet search engines such as Google to make money from their content.
'The new models of Google and others reverse the traditional permission-based copyright model of content trading that we have built up over the years,' said Francisco Pinto Balsemao, the head of the European Publishers Council, in prepared remarks for a speech at a Brussels conference.
His stance backs French news agency AFP, which is suing Google for pulling together photos and story excerpts from thousands of news websites.
'It is fascinating to see how these companies 'help themselves' to copyright-protected material, build up their own business models around what they have collected, and parasitically, earn advertising revenue off the back of other people's content,' he said.
'This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.'
The news section of Google's website doesn't display ads. But the Mountain View, Calif.-based company depends on visitors clicking on ads in other parts of its website to generate a substantial portion of its revenue, which totaled $4.2 billion through the first nine months of this year.
Responding to Balsemao's remarks, Google spokesman Steve Langdon said: 'Search engines do not reproduce content. They help users find content by pointing to where it exists on the Web.' Google removes websites from its news index if a publisher doesn't want the content listed, Langdon said..."
"By Helena Spongenberg, Associated Press
BRUSSELS - European publishers warned Tuesday that they cannot keep allowing Internet search engines such as Google to make money from their content.
'The new models of Google and others reverse the traditional permission-based copyright model of content trading that we have built up over the years,' said Francisco Pinto Balsemao, the head of the European Publishers Council, in prepared remarks for a speech at a Brussels conference.
His stance backs French news agency AFP, which is suing Google for pulling together photos and story excerpts from thousands of news websites.
'It is fascinating to see how these companies 'help themselves' to copyright-protected material, build up their own business models around what they have collected, and parasitically, earn advertising revenue off the back of other people's content,' he said.
'This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.'
The news section of Google's website doesn't display ads. But the Mountain View, Calif.-based company depends on visitors clicking on ads in other parts of its website to generate a substantial portion of its revenue, which totaled $4.2 billion through the first nine months of this year.
Responding to Balsemao's remarks, Google spokesman Steve Langdon said: 'Search engines do not reproduce content. They help users find content by pointing to where it exists on the Web.' Google removes websites from its news index if a publisher doesn't want the content listed, Langdon said..."
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