google news article

The piece on Google news is an interesting one because it raises several key issues.
If you are an aggregator - that is a site that simply collects and lists information or stories from other sites - what is your responsibility to the content producers?
In this case, we've seen that people are okay with Google listing the stories and linking back, but they are NOT okay with them making money from the content produced by other news agencies.
And with good reason.
As the article states, and as we've discussed in class, content production - a fancy term for research, reporting, writing and editing, cost a lot of money. Salaries are the major expense of any news operation. It's easy to collect and repurpose the material other people have carefully produced. It's much harder and more expensive to make it yourself.
I think the other issue raised is one of "fair use." The Net is an open world, but there are rules about taking other people's words and images and simply using them for your own purpose. Private and educatioinal use is generally allowed, but once the use becomes commercial, the "cease and desist" letters start to fly.
This is one of the only ways of ensuring that the people who spend the money to hire reporters and editors are protected from those who love the content, but don't want to spend the money to make it.
Paul