German Legislators Will Allow Google To Display "Snippets" of Publishers Content

[engine]

Google this week ducked a European legislative bullet after lawmakers in Germany reached a compromise to water-down the language of a law that had been described by many as a draconian "Lex Google". When Germany's new "Leistungschutzrecht" ancillary copyright law is sent to parliament for approval on Friday, where it is likely to pass, Google will have one reason less to fear the future.

Under a compromise reached between legislators on Tuesday and approved in parliament's Legal Committee one day later, Google will still be permitted to use "snippets" of content from publisher's web sites in its search results. Publishers had pushed to force the Internet giant to pay a licensing fee even for the snippets of content used to display search results. German Legislators Will Allow Google To Display "Snippets" of Publishers Content [spiegel.de]

[Leosghost]

So..Google can't display the whole article ..just snippets..

Manuel Höferlin, a member of the FDP on the Legal Committee considering the issue, spoke out in support of the change. "The compromise can be implemented technically and provides search engines with legal certainty." He added that all parties had an interest in permitting short descriptive texts. Höferlin added that a limit on the length of snippets would ensure that users would know what to expect when they clicked on a link while at the same time ensuring that visiting that article would not be made superfluous by the description.

What the new draft does not stipulate, however, is the precise definition of the length permitted. Instead, the draft refers to legal precedents set for thumbnail photos used by search engines. Germany's high administrative court recently ruled that search engines are permitted to use thumbnails of images on media websites and that the practice doesn't constitute copyright violation.

Next..

Images..how about reverting to displaying only the thumbnails and not the hi-res images ..

Listening Larry ..?

[jecasc]

Great compromise. They pass a law that originally had only the purpose that newspapers could get money from Google for snippets, since Google has never been allowed to use full articles - in the last moment they reach a compromise and pass the law anyway "excluding snippets".

What is next? A general speed limit on the german autobahn? Compromise in the last minute: Motorized vehicles are excluded.

[eJojo]

This dumb law could be bad in a few areas. Apps like Flipboard and Pocket will probably cease their service in Germany. But this law is also so "washed down", I am not sure if the publishers will even try to enforce their rights. There´s not much money to gain for them.

@Leosghost
Google didn´t bring the new image search to Germany and probably won´t do that in the future. Otherwise it would likely be shot down in court.

[Leosghost]

Google didn´t bring the new image search to Germany and probably won´t do that in the future

I knew ..it is only partially implemented in France ( where I am ) for similar reasons..

But..that does not prevent images that are hosted on French or German servers being shown to non French or German based, searchers when image search is accessed through other countries versions of Google images, such as Google.com or .co.uk etc..

Nor does it stop Google showing images that are owned by French or German companies or individuals, but hosted outside of the EU ( for example in the USA*) in the same way as other images are displayed on image search ( hi-res) at Google.com

* Some hosts such as 1&1 may say they are hosting your site in France or Germany, but actually they may be hosting it from elsewhere..usually the USA..

Some hosts even ask you where you would like it to appear that your site is hosted from for GEO targeting SEO purposes..

I wonder if all the French and German newspapers actually are truly hosted in either France or Germany?

[moTi]

all this legislation does provide is additional uncertainty for the common publisher. it is so vague, that no one really knows, what the difference to the status quo might actually be. such watered-down laws are common malpractice right now in germany. and so it's up to the courts again to define and specify the rules in endless lawsuits.

[incrediBILL]

Forest Gump's mother was dead on the money with "Stupid is as stupid does.". The whole issue is idiotic because most search engines provide the technology for the website to dictate if the content is indexed (NOINDEX) or whether even a snippet appears (NOSNIPPET) in the first place.

If it's an RSS feed, the website controls whether it's a full or partial feed as well.

Also, they can use IP and user agent cloaking to change which method is used for which crawlers or visitors and take total control of their own content distribution situation.

It's clearly a simple technical issue, not legal, and makes them look like whiny idiots to even take such issues to a legislative level.

If a little one man operation like me can easily deal with it why can't a larger organization?

I'm available for a fee if they can't figure it out. :)

[jonathanleger]

The whole issue is idiotic because most search engines provide the technology for the website to dictate if the content is indexed (NOINDEX) or whether even a snippet appears (NOSNIPPET) in the first place.

If it's an RSS feed, the website controls whether it's a full or partial feed as well.

In virtually every other area of business and commerce the business has to ask permission first before using another entity's property. But not so with search, where the engines get to use our content unless we tell them not to.

This has become so commonly accepted that people just don't get it when the entity whose property is being used without permission makes an issue of it rather than just modifying their content to prevent it from being indexed.

Right or wrong? I'm not making that judgement. I just find it very interesting.

[incrediBILL]

Right or wrong?

At this point it's neither, it's the status quo.

As long as the tools are there to let the webmaster manage control of content crawlers then I think it's a level playing field. However, when a search engine abuses the situation and ignores those controls like Google Preview does by not giving specific control over that specific screen shot feature it's pretty ugly. We should be able to disable just screen shots that theoretically can contain copyrighted images and other information that aren't intended to be indexed or displayed outside of the website but the only alternative is to use NOSNIPPET which completely removes all information from the list.

That's where legislation would be useful to force them stop blackmailing us to have image copyrights violated at the expense of participation in the index itself. Funny how you can also have NOARCHIVE which disables page cache which would be more appropriate to disable the page preview as well since they're essentially the same thing but it doesn't work that way.

[graeme_p]

In other areas of copyright use of snippets is generally fair use/fair dealing or similar. That is what Google has been relying on in the rest of the world.

Also, in this case, manually asking permission from each indexed site would be impossible, changing from permission by default to no permission by default is impractical, and changing permissions is very easy (a two line robots.txt will do it).

Google preview is pushing things, and I am surprised that it has not been successfully challenged. It is a lot more than a snippet. The same applies to large image previews.

[yaix2]

In virtually every other area of business [...] Right or wrong?

Wrong.

Books and papers quote texts and add the source of the quote. And newspapers do that too. That is common practice for centuries.

No book author would add "do not quote me!" to their book. And neither do newspapers. They get tons of free traffic from Goog. They just want to try if they can grab a little more money for free.