Security quotes of the week

Posted Mar 5, 2021 4:09 UTC (Fri) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359)
Parent article: Security quotes of the week

I think the attempt at drawing a line from news services to publishing services (music, book, software) is misguided.

The issue here is advertising revenue. News services have always got the bulk of their revenue from advertising. The mentioned publishing services get the bulk of their revenue from sales.

Google/Facebook don't "steal" the sales (though Amazon might). They do take the advertising dollars.

This doesn't necessarily mean I disagree with the conclusion - I honestly don't know. I deliberately ignore all advertising and pay for the news that I read (mostly through taxes - abc.net.au/news is AWESOME) so I'm not part of the equation at all. It just means that the argument is wrong. And if the best argument you can come up with is a wrong one .....

Security quotes of the week

Posted Mar 5, 2021 10:09 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

In the original form, I think the link is there - the intent was that Google and Facebook would pay all news services, regardless of which ones they actually linked to. In effect, a tax was suggested on any tech firm linking to news sites that would be distributed to all news services in Australia; so a link from Google to abc.net.au/news would require Google to pay News Corp Australia on the basis that Google could have chosen to link to a News Corp property instead of ABC.

That form, I think, is not a misguided link from news services to publishing services; the claim was being made that because Google *could* have chosen to link to News Corp, but instead linked to a competitor, Google somehow owed News Corp revenue. The new form breaks that link, because it (among other good changes) allows Google to refuse to pay News Corp, but at the expense of no longer being allowed to link to News Corp properties.