Dvorak-

In a headline-grabbing comment last week, Pinto Balsemão, head of the
European Publishers Council, said that the Internet cannot continue to
be free, as it has been for the last decade. He wasn't suggesting that
publishers make all their sites pay-per-view, but that search engines
could not and should not be able to search for content freely. The
gripe was aimed directly at Google, but it seemed to me that it was
also a broadside against bloggers, podcasters, and even academicians,
as Balsemão was attacking fair-use principles, too.

His most telling remark was reported everywhere: "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." This is like saying that the travel industry
and the airlines are building up their business models around cities
like Paris-making money from other people's hard work.

Is there some convoluted European logic here that eludes me? Take
publisher A. Put A's content online. Does publisher A make more money
or less without Google in the picture? Does its site have more visitors
or fewer without Google in the picture? All these jokers have stat
packages. They know exactly how many visitors come directly from a
Google search. My educated guess: At least a third of all visitors come
via Google or some other search mechanism. So by this weird logic, this
additional attention is somehow bad.

And what's with this notion that Google is "helping itself"? Are there
Google books that are simply copies of other books? Is that what he's
imagining? If I were this guy, I'd be more concerned about Google
charging hard money to be included in its search engine. "Yeah, we'll
index you and put you on the search engine-FOR A FEE!" That's the
fear Americans have regarding Google. We're apparently smarter than
Europeans.

For all practical purposes, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN are doing the
online publishers a huge favor by expediting the personal research and
discovery process, as will anyone who wants to get into this game in
the future. This is hardly "helping themselves."

ADVERTISEMENT Google makes money by operating a complex software system
that includes a specialized ad server. And it needs to spend a lot of
money in overhead to sell those ads, too. This is not a free ride. So
what's really going on here? Isn't this really about Europeans' simple
jealousy and resentfulness? Google is an American company. Yahoo! is an
American company. AOL is an American company. Microsoft is an American
company. These companies control search worldwide. Balsemão and the
Europeans hate the situation, and this is one time they cannot blame
George Bush. This time it's their own sluggish reaction time and lack
of vision that allowed this situation to happen.

This complaint does point out that the copyright laws are flawed and
old-fashioned, though. And these laws must be fixed. By some
interpretations, caching a New York Times article on your hard drive is
a violation of copyright law, but since the The New York Times is
online and the browser in conjunction with the operating system does
this caching for you, how is the individual responsible? Should
Microsoft be sued for an ongoing broad-ranging copyright breach?
Balsemão probably thinks so.

Since every judge in the world probably uses Google to get his work
done efficiently, you can be certain that nothing will come from these
complaints. Although you never know. I wouldn't be surprised if someone
in Europe began to demand that Google be nationalized.

In fact, it's too late for these sorts of complaints. And this
particular Balsemão complaint is stupid, naïve, idealistic, and
counterproductive. In fact, it's reactionary. How many people who use
computers in the 21st century go a single day without hitting the
Google site once or twice?

Dvorak-
In a headline-grabbing comment last week, Pinto Balsemão, head of the
European Publishers Council, said that the Internet cannot continue to
be free, as it has been for the last decade. He wasn't suggesting that
publishers make all their sites pay-per-view, but that search engines
could not and should not be able to search for content freely. The
gripe was aimed directly at Google, but it seemed to me that it was
also a broadside against bloggers, podcasters, and even academicians,
as Balsemão was attacking fair-use principles, too.

Dvorak-

In a headline-grabbing comment last week, Pinto Balsemão, head of the
European Publishers Council, said that the Internet cannot continue to
be free, as it has been for the last decade. He wasn't suggesting that
publishers make all their sites pay-per-view, but that search engines
could not and should not be able to search for content freely. The
gripe was aimed directly at Google, but it seemed to me that it was
also a broadside against bloggers, podcasters, and even academicians,
as Balsemão was attacking fair-use principles, too.

His most telling remark was reported everywhere: "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." This is like saying that the travel industry
and the airlines are building up their business models around cities
like Paris-making money from other people's hard work.

Is there some convoluted European logic here that eludes me? Take
publisher A. Put A's content online. Does publisher A make more money
or less without Google in the picture? Does its site have more visitors
or fewer without Google in the picture? All these jokers have stat
packages. They know exactly how many visitors come directly from a
Google search. My educated guess: At least a third of all visitors come
via Google or some other search mechanism. So by this weird logic, this
additional attention is somehow bad.

And what's with this notion that Google is "helping itself"? Are there
Google books that are simply copies of other books? Is that what he's
imagining? If I were this guy, I'd be more concerned about Google
charging hard money to be included in its search engine. "Yeah, we'll
index you and put you on the search engine-FOR A FEE!" That's the
fear Americans have regarding Google. We're apparently smarter than
Europeans.

For all practical purposes, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN are doing the
online publishers a huge favor by expediting the personal research and
discovery process, as will anyone who wants to get into this game in
the future. This is hardly "helping themselves."

ADVERTISEMENT Google makes money by operating a complex software system
that includes a specialized ad server. And it needs to spend a lot of
money in overhead to sell those ads, too. This is not a free ride. So
what's really going on here? Isn't this really about Europeans' simple
jealousy and resentfulness? Google is an American company. Yahoo! is an
American company. AOL is an American company. Microsoft is an American
company. These companies control search worldwide. Balsemão and the
Europeans hate the situation, and this is one time they cannot blame
George Bush. This time it's their own sluggish reaction time and lack
of vision that allowed this situation to happen.

This complaint does point out that the copyright laws are flawed and
old-fashioned, though. And these laws must be fixed. By some
interpretations, caching a New York Times article on your hard drive is
a violation of copyright law, but since the The New York Times is
online and the browser in conjunction with the operating system does
this caching for you, how is the individual responsible? Should
Microsoft be sued for an ongoing broad-ranging copyright breach?
Balsemão probably thinks so.

Since every judge in the world probably uses Google to get his work
done efficiently, you can be certain that nothing will come from these
complaints. Although you never know. I wouldn't be surprised if someone
in Europe began to demand that Google be nationalized.

In fact, it's too late for these sorts of complaints. And this
particular Balsemão complaint is stupid, naïve, idealistic, and
counterproductive. In fact, it's reactionary. How many people who use
computers in the 21st century go a single day without hitting the
Google site once or twice?