Tag: Australia

Facebook Blocks Oz. But Why Shouldn’t Platforms Pay for News?

This week, Facebook made good on its threat to block Australian news media on its platform. “Australian users cannot share Australian or international news. International users outside Australia also cannot share Australian news,” MSN reports. The move by the social giant is a hardline tactic designed to make the Australian government blink on proposed legislation that requires both Facebook and Google to pay for Australian news media that are shared across the platforms. Google reportedly has entered into agreements in recent days. For an in-depth analysis, especially from a global trade perspective, see Hugh Stephens’s post.

But acknowledging that the details are somewhere between opaque and invisible in the Facebook v. Oz story, I fail to see why the principle itself is terrribly flawed. Why shouldn’t the major online platforms pay for news media?

Google and Facebook (and potentially other platforms) derive substantial value from all those news stories that are shared across their platforms, but which others produce—often at great cost. Nevertheless, Facebook asserts that it does not need the news media as badly as the news media needs its platform. Perhaps that’s true. But in a statement released this week about the blocking decision, Facebook stated, “This is not our first choice – it is our last. But it is the only way to protect against an outcome that defies logic and will hurt, not help, the long-term vibrancy of Australia’s news and media sector.”

Combine that remark with the familiar generalization that the Australian proposal “misunderstands the internet,” and we are left to wonder if those are Facebook’s best arguments against the proposal. Because if the platform giants have ever been the least bit concerned with the “long-term vibrancy” of the news or any other media producing sectors, they must have been tripping balls when they built their business models. The underlying principle of every major online provider since roughly 2000 has been to monetize the flow of content produced by parties other than the platforms themselves.

Whether it’s someone making a joke or sharing a news story from the Washington Post, it’s all just data flow to Facebook. Very valuable data flow. And while we ordinary users may have volunteered to share personal comments or photos on the platform, the journalists whose salaries depend primarily on advertising revenues, did not voluntarily enter into the arrangement. While I recognize that the devil is in the details as to where the money will end up (i.e. does it pay journalists?), the underlying principle still seems sound.

Is really such a radical proposal that Facebook and Google (and potentially others if they achieve certain scale) pay negotiated fees to news producers? Certainly, the existing model has not done journalism much good, so why must we conclude that more of the same is necessary for the “long-term vibrancy” of the industry, as Facebook puts it? I noticed that Techdirt’s Mike Masnick tweeted his endorsement of Facebook’s rebuke to Australia, opining that the proposed legislation is just corporate welfare for Rupert Murdoch.

Admittedly, I find it difficult to defend journalism so broadly that it encompasses the work product of the Murdoch empire, but Masnick’s response is not wholly satisfactory to the question. What Facebook in particular has done to news—including where it has siphoned off revenue streams—has largely exacerbated the plague of alternate realities now threatening to unravel democratic societies worldwide. More specifically, to the extent that Masnick’s comment represents Facebook’s view, it obscures a much bigger truth:  that the major platforms have long been subsidized by the creators of works in nearly every field. That’s corporate welfare.

If the quotes listed on Yahoo! Finance, or the comments in this BBC piece are any indication, Facebook’s decision is not earning the company any goodwill—particularly in the middle of a global pandemic and brushfire season in Australia. And that’s on top of the fact that Zuckerberg & Co. have so reliably equivocated in its responding to demands to remove toxic disinformation and propaganda. “Well, that’s a tantrum. Facebook has exponentially increased the opportunity for misinformation, dangerous radicalism and conspiracy theories to abound on its platform,” said Lisa Davies, Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, in response to the Facebook block.

Assuming the Australian proposal is a first test, it will be one to watch. There should be little doubt that if the platforms have to start paying for news in Australia and then the EU, we will see proposals to do likewise in the U.S. And that probably scares the hell out of Facebook and, perhaps Google as well. Presumably, Facebook will argue that the portal they built is so essential that they should not have to pay for any of the content that flows through it. But that seems about as irrational as saying that journalism itself is so important it should be free. Besides, I seem to remember a saying about great power coming with something. What was it again?

Some Good Copyright News From Down Under

G’Day! Since there’s so much gloomy news here in the States, I thought I’d take a moment to note that Australia did a couple of pretty cool things recently.  They legalized same-sex marriage, so good on them for that.  And on the 6th of this month, they introduced a safe harbors provision to their copyright law that would exclude platform providers like Google and Facebook.  The new copyright liability shield would extend to carriage service providers, academic and cultural institutions, and organizations for the disabled.  If the bill passes as is, the legislation could prove instructive if and when the U.S. resumes debate on revision of its own safe harbor provisions.

The internet giants have strenuously lobbied the Australian government to adopt blanket safe harbors akin to those in Section 512 of the U.S. DMCA. Naturally, they’ve repeated the standard arguments that the liability shield against copyright infringement, established in this country in 1998, remains essential for free speech and the continued innovation of web platforms.  (What other argument do they ever make?)

Rights holders in the U.S., perhaps most prominently independent musicians, have tried for years to describe how the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions have had the unintended consequence of enabling the major—otherwise legal—platforms to profit from mass copyright infringement.  As described in detail in several posts, the most obvious example is YouTube, which grew to its monopsony position partly on the backs of creators whose works were constantly uploaded to the platform without license.

Because copyrighted works are uploaded by users, a platform like YouTube remains shielded from liability but still free to reap the rewards of traffic driven by the high volume of infringement. The fundamental flaw in the policy should be obvious:  where a corporation has both financial incentive and zero liability, it’s probably going to make some effort to profit from whatever conduct was supposed to be mitigated by the policy.  Both the harm done to creators and the untouchable market dominance of YouTube are unintended results of the safe harbor provisions in the DMCA.

Although presently overshadowed by more serious policy issues (and the circus), when Congress first took up review of the Copyright Act in 2013 and the Copyright Office last year began review of the DMCA, many independent artists and rights groups began to amplify the message that revision of Section 512 is long overdue.  In response, the internet industry and the familiar network of “digital rights” groups began promoting the counter-message that the status quo of the safe harbor is essential to (say it with me) free speech and innovation. And this is on top of the widely-promoted fallacy that the DMCA has predominantly been abused by rights holders to stifle speech, even where no infringement exists.

The Australian bill may yet change, but if their more narrowly tailored safe harbor provision becomes law, it could be instructive to the American creative community, if we resume discussion about Section 512 of the DMCA.  At the moment, it feels quaintly optimistic to imagine standing on the other side of so much political chaos with a still-extant republic in which to debate copyright law, but one must keep hope alive I suppose. In the meantime, what’s intriguing about Australia’s legislative process on this matter is that their bill reflects an effort to balance the intent of safe harbors with effective copyright protection—but with a contemporary understanding of online infringement that simply did not exist in the U.S. in the 1990s.  At the very least, it’s encouraging to see legislators draw a sharp distinction between public-serving, cultural institutions and the world’s largest, for-profit tech giants.  For far too long, we in the States have allowed Google & Friends to blur those lines.

Music Piracy More Common Among the Wealthy

When my wife and I were first starting out in Seattle, we both got retail jobs, and she worked in the Eddie Bauer basement where everything was discounted due to overstocks, minor flaws, or seasonal obsolescence.  Still, she had customers who approached her daily insisting that they were entitled to some further reduction from the marked price because, “See, this seam isn’t straight.” And my wife spent half her day saying things like, “Yes, Ma’am, that’s why it’s been marked down sixty percent and you’re finding it here in bargain basement.”  I theorized then that there are few things more likely to ignite latent greed than a person of means who is already getting a deal.  Charge an egomaniac a thousand dollars for something that’s really worth a few hundred, and he’ll think he’s getting something special; charge him fifty bucks, and he’ll see if he can’t also get your shoes and your watch.

So, it comes as no surprise to me to read Helienne Lindvall’s report on Digital Music News about a study which reveals music piracy to be more prevalent among the wealthy. The theory behind the numbers is that the wealthier segment of society can afford the technologies used to steal and consume media, thus giving lie to the “piracy makes culture available to the underprivileged” claims one hears all the time.  It ought to be obvious to everyone that the “underprivileged” don’t have computers, iPods, and high-speed connections to the internet. And even though music is now readily accessible to people of means at bargain basement prices, they still want musicians’ shoes and watches.