intellectual property...
Since when do we call eight words "intellectual property" ?
After months of deliberations, Germany's national arbitration board on copyright has told German copyright collection company VG Media to go whistle over its proposal for a six per cent “Google Tax”. Although the ancillary copyright tax law does indeed apply to Google, said the board, which is part of the German Patent …
It was mainly the Axel Springer group. They were complaining that they were losing money, because people read the synopsis in Google News and never clicked through, so Google kept the ad revenue.
After the law was implemented, Axel Springer rubbed their collective hands in glee, until they realised that Google simply delisted them. Most sensible publishers had already told Google to go ahead and carry on with what they were doing, they would waive the fee.
After their page impressions plummeted, AS pretty much threw in the towel on round 1.
This post has been deleted by its author
@ Larry F54
That book should be a compulsory text for everyone who goes through the school system. For so many reasons. It is one of my favourite books. I have only read it in English and Norwegian translation. When reading it in Norwegian it took me three attempts to get through the first three or so pages the "disclaimer" at the start of the first chapter. I had forgotten how densely written the mock legaleese was. A modern classic well worth reading (in any language of your choosing).
"Since when do we call eight words "intellectual property" ?"
Chapter 1.
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz und donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft mit siebenhundertsiebenundsiebzigtausendsiebenhundertsiebenundsiebzig massenkommunikationsdienstleistungsunternehmen ist sozialversicherungsfachangestelltenauszubildender.
Chapter 2...
The Spain experiment shows that publishers are actually benefiting from news aggregators rather than the reverse. In fact, if I remember correctly, publishers who want their articles to show up on Yahoo News actually have to pay Yahoo.
Considering Google's whole profits come from getting paid to show links to websites, they probably have a very good knowledge of who profits from what. It is understandable that they refuse to pay up.
The remedy is clear: 1) do it like Spain, add extra legislation making it lillegal/impossible for publishers to opt out; and 2) make it illegal for aggregators like Google to opt out as a consequence as well.
(Optional: 3) make it illegal for the users to not read an article taxed in this way.)
After all, it's called a "tax" for a reason.
And, some simple math:
6-11 % fee x 19-21 % VAT: Nice extra money for the state. But that, of course, has nothing to do with anything.
They tried it in Germany and publishers waived their right. They tried it in Spain with a non-waivable right and it didn't work at all.
Why carry on regardless? Unless it's about shutting out smaller players that people otherwise wouldn't find as easily.
Google's crawlers strictly respect robots.txt. They and Bing also support wildcards in robots.txt.
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_txt?hl=en
So these dinosaurs can perfectly well keep their fucking drivel from appearing in the largest search engines. The thing is, they don't really want to. Greedy arseholes that they are. They want both the clicks that search engines bring their way AND a tax on those engines because "IP dawg".
I haven't played much with robots.txt, but can you specify a non-existing directory so you can block anyone who tries to access them?
I found that most 404 logs of attempts to hack a small WP based test site by probing for vulnerable plugins tend to start with a request for robots.txt, so it's maybe a fun way to set up a trap for those who see "disallow" as an invitation and sling them straight onto a ban list.
That's a rather nice idea. Have a directory called /norobots, specify that it's off-limits to crawlers in your standard robots.txt file, and have an index.php script in that directory that adds the IP address of anything that requests it to a blacklist.
I'll give it a try on one of my servers when I have time later this week.
It is useless to pursue Internet companies locally, the case of Spain is a brilliant example.
The only solution to the current taxation predicament is to set up an Internet Bureau of Taxation, which has authority in ALL countries. Internet revenue - whatever the amount - must be reported to the IBT, which will coordinate with the country where the revenue was generated to apply the required tax to the transaction. It can happen after the fact - everything is recorded.
Thus, no more upping and outing. You made a billion dollars of revenue from Spanish ad clicks ? You get whatever tax is applicable, whether you are based in Honduras or New York.
It's the Internet, don't tell me it's not technically possible.
But of course, the money lies with the corporations required to make that happen, so not very likely.
This is dumb. News companies (and any sane website) are likely saving tons of money by designed SEO websites to take advantage of Google Indexing and not spending it on advertising their website articles 24/7.
Won't the more sensible thing be to limit the summary piece? If I can get all the content I want from readying a summary than your content is shit. Taxing Google (or any other company on similar grounds) is a waste. Taxation on Ad revenue is one thing (probably already happens). but if google wanted to play that game, they could just as easily make any taxing up in charging more for Analytics, selling data to Ad companies, etc. with it all being pushed back on the site owner regardless.