(By You Yunting) According to a report in the New York Times, as also reported by some European websites, Google is recompiling its searched news results as a news page. It may be said that this method could infringe the copyright of the original publishing websites and, as a result, Google should pay fees for the websites. This idea has received support from both the French and German Governments, yet Google believes that its behavior fully conforms to the law, and thus should not have to pay any fees. In China, the main search engines Google and Baidu provide this kind of news search service, and today’s post will discuss whether it is lawful for news websites to claim fees from the search engines.
In my opinion, there are two relevant issues worth consideration: the legitimacy under the Anti Unfair Competition Law, and the legality under the Copyright Law.
Firstly, let us check the legitimacy. There are two types of searched websites: traditional paper media, and new media websites with no paper publication. For the new media, it usually does not directly charge users but mainly benefits from users clicking ads, remissions from online shopping, web games, and other value added models. The income and number of visits to these sites are a direct ratio and search engines can increase visit volume. Therefore, the new media websites welcome being used by search engines and may even conduct active Search Engine Marketing (“SMO”). For these reasons, it is fully legitimate for search engines to search and record the content of new media websites.
However, for those traditional paper media companies with centuries of history, the main source of income for their business model lies with reader subscription fees and ad fees. Therefore, they hold a very ambiguous attitude towards search engines. On the one hand, the internet is today’s primary channel for disseminating information, which forces the traditional media to put their content online to avoid lagging behind the times. Additionally, they could not block the content of their website being recorded by search engines because they would not have any market influence if they had to wait for people to find their website manually.
On the other hand, however, the website will influence the paper’s subscription rates, but it is relatively difficult to receive fees from users. Although top media like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal can charge readers because of the irreplaceability of their content, the content of most their rivals does not reach this standard. Although search engines can bring in revenue, this revenue comes at the expense of the paper media and does not fully compensate for this loss. Comprehensive news searches by search engines also takes focus away from traditional media. Before new media, a comprehensive newspaper might have been the only source of one’s news, but if users are able to start reading the news from the search engine’s search page, the individual news sites are only able to serve as news contributors. For the advertisers, the value of ads placed on search engines could, in time, prevail over those of traditional media websites.
As the websites of traditional media providers are not willing to allow search engines to collect the contents they create for free, we return to the beginning of this article. So, traditional media providers will lobby lawmakers to have search engines pay to search their contents. The New York Times provided the following reasons for such a charge:
“We are integrating…but we cannot accept the commercial integration with no interests.”
”Even abstracts may damage our business because if they appear to be complete, no one will bother to look at the original.”
The above discussion involves two legal issues. Firstly, is it legal for search engines like Google to compile searched news into its own news page? Secondly, is it legal for Google to provide abstracts of the searched news on its page?
For the questions of compilation, first, no specific rules can be found in the existing Anti Unfair Competition Law, and the only applicable principles would be the principle concerning good faith and legitimacy in Article 2. The logic of the website could be the editing of its news stories may incur a high cost, but Google can use them as integrated news without paying any fees, which would be unfair competition. But, in reality, Google’s search and compilation of news both incur costs. At the same time, Google is not the sole beneficiary of the visit volume; it leads the page views back to the original news websites through links, which could benefit both parties, and because the news website has full discretion to block the search engine, considering the current operation mode of the websites, it can only be concluded that both parties have the option to participate and benefit. Therefore, there is no reason to find a violation of the Anti Unfair Competition Law
For the legality of the abstracts, this mainly concerns copyright infringement, which is covered by corresponding regulations in the existing law. By Article 6 of Protection Regulation on Information Communication by Networks:
“Anyone who provides others’ works through information networks shall not have to obtain permission from, or pay remuneration to, the copyright owner under the following circumstances:
1. When an appropriate quotation from a published work is provided to the public for the purposes of introducing or commenting on any work or for elaborating on any issue…”
Obviously, as long as the search engine’s searches of the news websites’ contents does not violate the principle of appropriate quotation, then the use violates no laws and does not require payment of licensing fees. The question then becomes, what is an “appropriate quotation”? To judge from functionality, the abstract shall be limited to the overall introduction of the searched website and shall not substantively replace the original website. By my research of the contents of Google’s English and Chinese news abstracts, English pages normally show 20-40 words of each news story, while Chinese pages normally show 80-100 characters. Additionally, English web pages begin with a summary or abstract, but summaries or abstracts do not appear on half of the Chinese web pages – only HTML linked words. Therefore, it can be seen that Google’s abstract display could not replace the searched page, for the abstract is more for attracting readers to visit the specific news page.
In conclusion, the European media’s method for collecting fees from Google is not justifiable, even with support from national Governments and Parliaments. This could also make Google pause the search over local websites, which will eventually damage the interests of local users and society’s efficiency in acquiring information. The paper media in China also faces the same problem as its European counterparts and has no means to receive any payment from the search engines. Unlike Europe, however, Chinese users are known for their reluctance to charge for content on the Internet. Even the most well marketized media outlets such as Southern Weekly, New Century Weekly, and 21st Century Business do not have the courage to collect fees from their users. Therefore, my suggestion is to invest more effort in making money through traditional paper subscriptions and improvement of online value-added services.
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You Yunting：86-21-52134918 youyunting@debund.com/yytbest@gmail.com
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