Commentary

News Corp.: Google News Lives Off 'Sweat Of Our Brow'

by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer, October 14, 2009

News Corp. is continuing to publicly press its case that Web sites are threatening journalism by "free riding" on copyrighted material.

"Aggregators and Google News are, to us, the worst offenders," general counsel Lawrence Jacobs said today at a luncheon talk at Brooklyn Law School. "They make money by living off the sweat of our brow."

The refrain is familiar by now, yet makes no more sense now than the last dozen or so times we've heard it. If Google News is such a menace, all News Corp. has to do is communicate that it no longer wants its stories indexed.

Jacobs acknowledged as much, but said that News Corp. isn't willing to go that far. "No one, including us, is ready to pull that trigger," he said.

That's obviously because news companies know they get traffic from aggregators. Yet, while they want that traffic, they clearly also want cold hard cash from the sites that are sending them visitors. But the law doesn't necessarily entitle news publications to demand that sites pay licensing fees to excerpt brief snippets and headlines. This issue came up in a recent lawsuit by Gatehouse News against Boston.com, but the case was settled before the court issued a ruling.

There's no question that original reporting takes time and money. But facts are still facts; the people who dig them up don't own them. Allowing any news organization to claim a right to license sports scores, voting results, news of executive moves or other facts is hugely inconsistent with the free speech principles that protect the flow of information -- and, even more importantly, that allow news organizations to exist at all.

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7 comments about "News Corp.: Google News Lives Off 'Sweat Of Our Brow'".

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Jaki Levy from Arrow Root Media, October 14, 2009 at 5:44 p.m.
News organizations should spend less time criticizing companies like google for driving traffic, and more time innovating + figuring out how to monetize that traffic and drive value for those readers.
Reply

Dan Mckillen from HealthDay, October 14, 2009 at 6:14 p.m.

How's this for an approach?

Bing is trying very hard to compete and win market share from Google right now. What if Rupert Murdoch at Fox and Tom Curley at AP cut a deal with Bing that gives these organizations fair value for their content and then block Google and the other search engines from crawling their web site? If people searching the web wanted valuable results from two of the country's most valuable news sources, they would likely start using Bing much more often than Google. As Bing's market share increases, the royalties paid to Fox and AP would increase accordingly. How long do you think Google would suffer the loss of market share to Bing until they agreed to give Fox & AP their fair share of revenues?

Brian Hayashi from ConnectMe 360, October 14, 2009 at 6:34 p.m.

I like Dan's approach.

That being said, Wendy, are newspapers wrong to claim a right to license sports scores -- or are you faulting the pro sports for asserting the license in the first place?

I'd argue that the principles that allow news organizations to exist are based more on "free enterprise" than "free speech" -- the notion, founded in English law, that if you create something of value then you are entitled to protection of those rights and should have some protection if someone tries to take them away.

Andrew Elston from iCopyright, October 14, 2009 at 7:20 p.m.

It seems to me that Lawrence Jacobs (and Tom Curley at the AP in recent talks) are not talking about "sports scores, voting results, executive moves" and other "facts" as Wendy implies, but rather the "sweat of our brow" (in Mr. Lawrence's words) expressions and unique formulations that comprise the value in reporting by the likes of the Journal and the AP. Should a publisher not exercise its right to assert ownership in these expressions as afforded by copyright law? "Snippets" are one thing, but when does a "snippet" become larceny?

To Jaki Levy and others with a similar perspective that news organizations should spend "more time innovating + figuring out how to monetize that traffic": Sounds to me like that is exactly what News Corp. is attempting to do. With just one dominant search engine in the marketplace, where else would they direct their efforts?

Tim Daly, October 14, 2009 at 7:29 p.m.

I find the stance of News Corp to be slightly hypocrital. Based on numbers from Compete, the #1 driver of referral traffic to their website is Google. They complain about the "sweat of their brow", but are more than happy to accept the free traffic so that they can sell advertising against it. Seems to me Google could say exactly the same given News Corp didn't have to pay for the placement.

Jim Courtright from Big Thinking By The Hour, October 15, 2009 at 2:09 a.m.

Content will always have it's value. If it's timely, insightful, relevant, or stylish.

Big Media used to own this content, because they owned the distribution network, and could afford to pay the content creators (writer and researchers) because they could charge advertisers for the right to interrupt the content with an ad message.

Now the Internet blows up that business model.

Content creators no longer need Big Media to distribute the content. They can go straight to the Internet and distribute for themselves.

Once the good writers and researchers learn that they don't need Big Media to distribute their content, and they can wean themselves away from the weekly paycheck, they'll eventually find their own way in the New Order, and find ways to monetize their own content.

I wouldn't want to be a media company in this day and age.

Their business model is kaput.

I'd prefer to be a content creator.

Jim Courtright
Become Your Own Broadcaster (BYOB)

Jonathan Mirow from BroadbandVideo, Inc., October 15, 2009 at 1:02 p.m.

The facts are in - business models change. The newspaper industry has a rich history of ignorance and self-importance - and now they are reaping the rewards of that strategy. Want some examples? When PayPal started becoming popular they spent millions trying to develop their own auction / payment system. Fail. When sophisticated websites started beoming the norm they would have 4 people working on the website and 50 people working on the printed version. Fail. Insiders to this mess know that internet workers had a hard time even getting standardized equipment and platforms. Fail. These people were (and still are) NOT innovators - and those are the folks who survive on the web.