News companies have the option of blocking the crawling companies' crawlers. Rather than giving them specifically allocated text and images as they usually do now. But they choose to get an increase in web traffic and brand exposure instead.
Should the crawling companies pay something for their news content? Probably. Should they pay something for all the content posted by someone that doesn't own it? Probably.
An ideal system might involve a page header denoting that the page's owner wishes to be paid for any use of it's crawled text and images. The crawler could then look up the requested fee at a particular rights collection agency, and choose not to use the resources or not. If it likes the deal, it would lodge it's use of that page's resources with the agency. At the end of the month, the operator of the page would receive a payment.
The case can be made that what is proposed is similar to our FTA TV regulations. Organisations that want to broadcast in a particular way have to have a certain proportion of Australian/NZ content, with incentives for some kinds of programming over others. Some local news must be produced in many regional areas. Not long ago, they had to commission a particular amount of new Australian made children's programming each year. Plus there is an annual fee for using the airwaves.
Rather than force companies that don't produce content to produce it, or charge them for using the NBN; the government appears to be proposing to apply a tax to all "significant social media or search services", which will be spent on news production. If the operators of such services can negotiate a separate deal with the "news publishers", then much like with private health insurance and the Medicare levy, they will pay no tax. If not all publishers are negotiated with, one can only presume that a partial tax will be levied and distributed.
The country already requires that certain kinds of content be commissioned by certain media companies, and now we will see if that requirement will be extended.
News companies have the option of blocking the crawling companies' crawlers. Rather than giving them specifically allocated text and images as they usually do now. But they choose to get an increase in web traffic and brand exposure instead.
Should the crawling companies pay something for their news content? Probably. Should they pay something for all the content posted by someone that doesn't own it? Probably.
An ideal system might involve a page header denoting that the page's owner wishes to be paid for any use of it's crawled text and images. The crawler could then look up the requested fee at a particular rights collection agency, and choose not to use the resources or not. If it likes the deal, it would lodge it's use of that page's resources with the agency. At the end of the month, the operator of the page would receive a payment.
The case can be made that what is proposed is similar to our FTA TV regulations. Organisations that want to broadcast in a particular way have to have a certain proportion of Australian/NZ content, with incentives for some kinds of programming over others. Some local news must be produced in many regional areas. Not long ago, they had to commission a particular amount of new Australian made children's programming each year. Plus there is an annual fee for using the airwaves.
Rather than force companies that don't produce content to produce it, or charge them for using the NBN; the government appears to be proposing to apply a tax to all "significant social media or search services", which will be spent on news production. If the operators of such services can negotiate a separate deal with the "news publishers", then much like with private health insurance and the Medicare levy, they will pay no tax. If not all publishers are negotiated with, one can only presume that a partial tax will be levied and distributed.
The country already requires that certain kinds of content be commissioned by certain media companies, and now we will see if that requirement will be extended.
Bodgy is the word!