I agree with that entirely, but they are still using someone else's material to provide the service they are providing. As such they are using, without paying, someone else's work.
The service they provide may be very good, indeed, it is very good, but should they not pay for the materials on which it's based?
Publishing excerpts is a perfectly legal use of other people's copyright and does not require any sort of compensation (attribution is the only thing required and Google correctly provides that)
Basing one's entire business on quoting snippets from other people's work, wholesale, seems one of these cases that might be legal, but leaves a really bad taste in the mouth.
Is it legal? Maybe. Should it be legal? Is it ethical? Is it good for society? These are questions that people should ask.
Are you saying that Google shouldn't pay for the works they are quoting?
This action by the Australian Government seems to be based on the idea that what Google is doing is unfair, and so the law should be changed. Google is fighting against it because they say it's legal, and it shouldn't matter that they make a lot of money from it.
Copyright as a concept seems to be fair game on HN for many reasons. Maybe this is another place where it should be reformed. Maybe the amount taken from a single work is not the issue. Maybe what should be an infringement of copyright is having a "work" that is primarily taken from other works, even if only in small pieces.
I have no skin in this game, I have no axe to grind, but I do feel that the situation is unbalanced, unfair, possibly unethical, and needs to be reviewed and possibly changed.
I'm no Oracle ... I don't know what the right answer might be.
> This action by the Australian Government seems to be based on the idea that what Google is doing is unfair, and so the law should be changed. Google is fighting against it because they say it's legal, and it shouldn't matter that they make a lot of money from it.
It is not really the "Australian government" it is Rupert Murdoch, a billionaire, who controls the evening news and with that, elections. It is so blatant that the party that will need to vote this into law is actually divided on this issue. Think of it: the majority party that backs the government, their representatives, are considering this too blatant corruption to follow ranks. They are famous for forming a single front on everything by the way, which I guess is the point of forming a party, but this party is certainly more united than the others.
Rupert Murdoch even had the gall to exclude any news organisation he didn't own from these payments, most famously ABC, and of course he does also own several social media companies, who unlike Facebook, are not getting hit.
> Maybe the amount taken from a single work is not the issue. Maybe what should be an infringement of copyright is having a "work" that is primarily taken from other works, even if only in small pieces.
You're saying creating an index of material from multiple sources should be prohibited or subject to paying money to everyone included in the index?
The real reason news media are doing so bad is that people just don't care about news, never mind local news, like they did at this point almost 100 years ago. Combined with global news sources like the BBC far outstripping most "popular" (except not so much anymore) news in quality. Additionally, the BBC covers Australia pretty well. This is not just visible in website visits, otherwise measured views to the evening news, for example, have plummeted even deeper.
I would also worry, if I was Mr. Murdoch that if this legislation goes through, Google, Facebook, Youtube, ... all become direct enemies of news organisations. It won't be about competing for views anymore, Facebook and Youtube, Amazon and Twitter will be banding together to deny views to news organisations even where it damages their own views, their own bottom line. I have very little doubt who will win that contest.
Furthermore, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter have an incredibly privileged position when it comes to reporting local events, they could easily outperform any news media with machine learning because of the data being uploaded through them. They could stop having any links to the outside world at all.
The service they provide may be very good, indeed, it is very good, but should they not pay for the materials on which it's based?