"There was a lot of major news last week, but for the media business nothing was more important than Google’s settlement with book publishers of law suits challenging the right to digitize copyrighted books for search and distribution without paying for them. Google will pay $125 million to the plaintiffs, publishers, and authors, and will cover legal fees for what was a protracted haggle ..."
"... the major point is that Google has now conceded, with a very large payment, that information is not free. This leads to an obvious, critical question: Why aren’t newspapers and news magazines demanding payment for use of their stories on Google and other search engines? Why are they not getting a significant slice of the advertising revenues generated by use of their stories via Google?"
"Google makes a fortune. The leading Internet service providers and telecommunications giants like Verizon are doing fine also (Verizon’s profits were up 31 percent in the third quarter of 2008). But key providers of the news that flows through their digital services are being asphyxiated to an extent that is a massive threat to our information culture, a pillar of our democracy. It’s that serious ..."
The end of free?
For the User / Customer the Internet is not free. They invest their time and spend quite some money (which goes to the Internet / Mobile Service provider).
If Google makes (or spends money e.g. Book project) , Google should not only pay the author /content provider but also the user / reader ( so rightly, Harvard dropped out of the scanning program, this is not anymore a part of free)
For advertisers advertising was never free. Their advertising money which goes from and with 'content' and should be shared between the content provider / author, the reader / user and the provider of this services?
What do you think?
