- From: Graham Leggett <minfrin@sharp.fm>
- Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2021 16:57:57 +0200
- To: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>
- Cc: Public TAG List <www-tag@w3.org>, Wendy Seltzer <wseltzer@w3.org>, Jonathan Zittrain <zittrain@law.harvard.edu>, Daniel Weitzner <weitzner@mit.edu>, Davi Ottenheimer <davi@inrupt.com>, schneier Bruce <schneier@inrupt.com>, Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
On 16 Jan 2021, at 19:36, Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org> wrote: > Has anyone noticed this call > https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code > from the Australian government for comments on a plan to force Google and Facebook to pay money to news media businesses for content they display on their services? This is a final call of a proposal whose first versions came out in July. > > The web architecture issue here seems to be the right to link. The code, if it became law, would force Google search and Facebook Newsfeed [specifically] to pay a fee to the owner of the destination content (news publisher) when the link is displayed, not even necessarily followed. > > The architecture of the WWW generally involves the right to link to something with impunity -- is this proposal in direct with that right? > > What do folks, and the TAG, think? Looking from above, the issue looks like a licensing issue. Publishers own the rights to and want to license and profit from their work, but are thwarted from doing so by companies who are creating derivatives of their work without being paid for it. This has many parallels to software licenses, where your right (or lack of right) to make a derivative work is clearly spelled out. The derivative work comes about when a news aggregator starts lifting elements of the news article, the headline, the lede, an image, and embeds that in the news aggregator, removing the reason for following the link in the first place. From this I’d argue that the link itself isn’t the problem, it’s the incentive being removed to follow a link that’s the problem. Thinking out loud, would the web architecture help by specifying metadata related to the license of the content? For example the license might be open (think Wikipedia) or might be limited (think a subscription to a newspaper). Key would be that the publisher had a machine readable mechanism (OPTIONS method?) to tell the world what to expect at the link. Example “come on in” (Wikipedia) or “seek permission to get access from that resource first” (Newspaper’s own controlled payment / micropayment gateway). The license might be a well known URL (eg CC) or a custom URL. The custom URL might represent a specific set of payments terms that a news aggregator would have signed up to. OPTIONS /some-article HTTP/x.x 200 OK License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 200 OK License: https://newspaper.com/licenses/pay-us-to-use-this/ Regards, Graham —
Received on Sunday, 17 January 2021 14:58:13 UTC