Re: Right to Link vs proposed Australian “link fee ” legislation

I remember saying to Ian Jacobs a few years ago at an AC Meeting
reception: "Micropayments already happened, no one noticed" --- in the
absence of a "microcurrency", it's happened using a currency called
"user attention".
Tim Bray writes:
 > Micropayments are an obvious answer, and perfectly compatible with the web
 > architecture. Once again it's a political and economic problem. The
 > payments business is a nice business and the cartel that controls it has no
 > interest in allowing micro payments to disrupt their rental income.
 > 
 > On Sat., Jan. 16, 2021, 11:52 a.m. Henry Story, <henry.story@bblfish.net>
 > wrote:
 > 
 > >
 > >
 > > > On 16 Jan 2021, at 20:14, Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com> wrote:
 > > >
 > > > It’s obvious on the face of it that this is profoundly hostile to the
 > > way the Web is supposed to work.
 > > >
 > > > Just in case it's not obvious, a few words on why this is happening.
 > > >
 > > > In a sane world, places like Google and Facebook would publish links to
 > > whatever out there on the Web, sell advertising beside those links, and
 > > then the linked-to parties would sell advertising on the destination
 > > resources, and everyone would be happy.  De facto, what's happening is that
 > > Google and Facebook are getting more or less all the money and the
 > > newspapers and so on are getting more or less none.  Thus the collapse in
 > > the publishing industry and, increasingly, more and more locations having
 > > no access to quality local journalism.  Thus the publishers are clutching
 > > at straws, this being one of them.
 > > >
 > > > One response is for publications to pivot to the subscription model but
 > > unfortunately, for most publications it's too late; subscription fatigue
 > > has set in and people are increasingly unwilling to give more parties
 > > monthly access to their bank account.
 > >
 > > Another response is to make it easy for them to deploy micropayments, so
 > > that
 > > users coming from search engines can easily pay per article read, and then
 > > subscribe if they find themselves reading articles from that paper very
 > > often.
 > >
 > > I regularly land on newspapers via search engines, twitter, blogs, …  and
 > > these ask me for
 > > a monthly or yearly subscription which I don’t really want. I can’t
 > > possibly subscribe to
 > > all newspapers I come across, for lack of time. But I would be happy to
 > > pay a
 > > small amount per article read if it were a one click affair and secure.
 > >
 > >
 > > >
 > > > Now, as to *why* Google and Facebook are getting all the money, this
 > > gets deep into politics and antitrust policy and regulation of the
 > > advertising market very quickly. I have strong opinions about it but I'm
 > > not sure whether that discussion belongs here. Having said that, Data
 > > Lords: The Real Story of Big Data, Facebook and the Future of News from
 > > 2018 is an article that really influenced my understanding of the dilemma
 > > that the publishing industry is facing.
 > > >
 > > >
 > > >
 > > > On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 9:38 AM 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?
 > > >
 > > > Tim
 > > >
 > > >
 > > >
 > >
 > > Henry Story
 > >
 > > https://co-operating.systems
 > > WhatsApp, Signal, Tel: +33 6 38 32 69 84‬
 > > Twitter: @bblfish
 > >
 > >

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Received on Wednesday, 27 January 2021 18:06:45 UTC