Before the ink has even dried on the contract transferring the troubled Tribune Co. media empire to real estate tycoon Samuel Zell, the unremorseful buyer has sent a major sign that he doesn’t understand how web content works. As the Washington Post reports:
In conversations before and after a speech Zell delivered Thursday night at Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, Calif., the billionaire said newspapers could not economically sustain the practice of allowing their articles, photos and other content to be used free by other Internet news aggregators. “If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?” Zell said during the question period after his speech. “Not very.”
One wonders if Zell is familiar with the doctrine of fair use. In fact, one wonders if Zell is driving at something else entirely, because these comments make no sense. I have limited sympathy for Viacom’s billion-dollar lawsuit against Google/YouTube, but at least they have a case.
Apparently Zell has never used Google News, because the website doesn’t itself host any of the stories it features — it merely links. Google is “stealing” what, headlines and news photos? They aren’t even hotlinking those images, so the free advertisement doesn’t even cost Zell a cent — but it does give readers a thumbnail view of what to expect if they click through.
To demonstrate, if you run a Google search on the word “Zell” right now, here’s what you’ll find:
Note, Zell is the proud new papa of two of the papers linked above. Google is not depriving him of traffic, but delivering it to him.
If Zell sticks to his guns, I fully expect he’ll demand Google remove his newspapers’ headlines from their aggregator, sue Matt Drudge (who actually does hotlink images) and then set his sights on Google once again when he realizes those damn kids on Blogger are using his excerpts without permission.
At that point, all that’s left is to build a subscription wall around the Tribune Co’s online assets. I can’t wait to sign up for ZellSelect.
Not only does Zell have no idea what he’s talking about, he has no idea what he’s doing. The Internet is a threat to the long term viability of print newspapers for a number of reasons, but newspaper owners’ failure to understand what makes for successful online content will only hasten their slide into irrelevance and unprofitability.
I’ve read three stories on this today, and I’m really puzzled by what Sam is thinking. Maybe he’ll get a clue before long and realize the huge mistake he’s suggesting. It just goes to show that just because someone has a lot of money doesn’t mean they have it all figured out.
Before dismissing him, consider for a moment that the billionaire has some experience and insight of value. I actually think Sam Zell has a point, and I’ve explained why on my blog.
Explaining why fair use doesn’t apply is outlined there, as well.
Lucas, it’s true that it’s hard to argue with a billion dollars. On the other hand, even he admits the newspaper industry is all new to him.
I have read your post, and I don’t see any support for your assertion that indexing each headline and link is any violation. Fair use allows for news reporting and places no hard limits on a specific number of words. It seems to me that Google is well within its rights, and what’s more, doing the Tribune a service.
You also write: “Page views generated from search engine traffic are empty. Advertisers have no interest in them. And people accessing us this way are unlikely to become repeat users.”
For one thing, readers who come to visit a website because they were looking for a particular term are indeed valuable — the more specific the search term, the better targeted they are.
I understand your point about how newspapers want to be their own local hub, but these readers are very often not local. Newspapers online can offer different ads to local readers and non-local visitors.
And the non-locals may never have found a given regional newspaper article but for Google News.
Fair use of copyrighted material is allowed under only certain circumstances, usually when someone is commenting on a piece of work. Fair use doesn’t allow for anyone to profit from your copyrighted material — ever.
On the first point, Google scores poorly. It isn’t taking the content to use in a report it’s written. It isn’t commenting on a report. It’s just taking the report and repackaging it under its own brand.
On the second point, Google also scores poorly, but much less blatantly. Many folks have claimed Google does not benefit financially from Google News. But they’re just not looking carefully enough.
Assume for a moment that all multi-billion dollar companies are in every project ultimately for the money, including Google. So how does Google make money off its Google News service, which doesn’t have any ads? It benefits in two ways:
By indexing and displaying newspaper content on its Web site, Google’s brand benefits significantly as a place to find any kind of information. That brand reputation is making them a hell of a lot of money by driving loyal customers. Google converts that loyalty into money in numerous ways, across its entire site. Not having ads on one section of the site doesn’t excuse it from benefiting.
By driving up links to newspaper Web sites, loads of remnant inventory is created on those sites. Since local advertisers have no interest in these one-off page views, the remnant space is most often filled with Google AdSense ads. This isn’t coincidence. Google understands the effect of driving up remnant inventory via Google News.
All multi-billion dollar companies are in it for the money, Google included. They’re not featuring Google News prominently on their ever-so-sparse home page just to be nice.
Fair use doesn’t allow for anyone to profit from your copyrighted material — ever.
Uh, wrong, wrong, wrong.
And you present yourself as some kind of expert, or something?
The crazy thing about the entire Tribune business is that tit isn’t troubled; it’s biggest shareholder is. In 2005 the Tribune company posted a 20% profit. Exxon posted 10%. Although its print market is changing rapidly, it has a long,long way to fall.
So, why are they selling? It turned out that buying the LA Taimes was a poisoned chalice. The insane Chandler Family ended up as the biggest shareholders, and they complained that they weren’t getting 25% profit. So they demanded the paper go on sale at the bottom of the market, when nobody knows exactly what is going to happen. Sam Zell made his fortune buying good assets from hysterics who were eager to cash out, then holding on to them until their true worth reappeared. Although the bolosphere is eager to see the print media be destroyed (except maybe for comic books), Zell is very canny, indeed. Let’s look back five years hence and see who is still in business.