AFP & Google Settle Over Google News Copyright Case

The most significant copyright case against Google News, that filed by Agence France-Presse back in March 2005, has now ended. Google has signed a licensing agreement with AFP that settles the suit. News from the AFP here. The statement from both companies has the usual spin that this is about "new" uses rather than Google […]

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The most significant copyright case against
Google News
, that filed by Agence France-Presse

back in
March 2005, has now ended. Google has signed a licensing agreement
with AFP that settles the suit. News from the AFP

here
. The statement from both companies has the usual spin that this is
about "new" uses rather than Google having done wrong. Some background on that,
below.

Back in August 2006, Google signed an agreement with the Associated Press.
The AP hadn’t sued Google over news usage, but it had made noises. Google
told me at
the time:

The license in this agreement provides for new uses of original AP content
for features and products we will introduce in the future. We are very excited
about the innovative new products we will build with full access to this
content.

Google also said it wasn’t the first deal it had cut with a news provider.
But what were these new features? I speculated what Google might do based on a
similar deal that was cut between the AP and
Topix
:

AP stories can originate from one of thousands of member publications. Any
of those thousands of member publications might also republish an AP story.
Which story is the originating one? That’s useful for a search engine to know,
if you don’t want your results to get overwhelmed by having duplicates of all
the same content.

In terms of fairness, Topix uses the agreement to get a rich data feed of
content from the AP (along with
many other
things
). This helps them better understand if an AP story originated from
a particular member publication and, if so, to link over to the publication
that deserves the credit.

The agreement also allows Topix to put AP-originated national and
international stories on its own site, rather than having to guess at which of
many different news sites to point at.

For example, if the AP runs some international story that an AP
reporter has written, how should Topix decide which newspaper to point at?
Just pick some random newspaper that had nothing to do with creating it? And
if so, what about registration or payment issues that might be in place at
that random paper.

Hosting AP national and international stories helps solve this
problem. Of course, hosting AP stories that come from the AP directly also
means Topix — and indirectly the AP — can earn from ad revenue.

Understanding what Topix does with the AP shed sheds some light on possible
Google motivations in working with the AP. Perhaps we’ll see hosted stories as
Topix is doing — and as Yahoo also does — for some of the reasons explained
above. And perhaps the deal also is to give Google better news search
capabilities as I’ve also outlined, something that’s hard to do without a
deeper relationship.

To date, we’ve yet to see any of these features happen. I have no doubt that
at some point, we’ll see AP stories hosted on Google itself. But the most
significant thing the agreement has done is prevent the AP from filing a suit
against Google over crawling and summarizing its content on Google News.

Google, of course, argued that the AP agreement wasn’t about getting legal
permission for what it had been doing. It remained resolute that how it puts
material on Google News remained fair use, telling me:

Google News is fully consistent with fair use and always has been.

Now skip forward to the suit that Belgian news publishers filed against
Google. Google managed to get some groups to drop that case last November after
signing a licensing agreement. As
I’ve explained:

Google didn’t specify what the agreement covered, other than to say:

"It’s a way for us to use their content in new ways beyond what copyright
law currently allows us without the permission of the authors," said Powell
said.

My between-the-lines analysis of the situation I
wrote at
the time explained:

The Sofam deal might help solve some of Google’s legal issues in Belgium.
The group represents the rights of nearly 4,000 photographers in Belgium,
Google said. Google did NOT say how this might translate into usage at
Google News.

So far, it has been AP all over again. New uses of the Belgium content
haven’t appeared, but the agreement helped cause copyright challenges from some
to disappear.

Now onto the AFP settlement. From the news report, the statement is:

The deal "will enable the use of AFP’s newswire content in innovative, new
ways that will dramatically improve the way users experience newswire content
on the Internet," the statement said.

I can’t tell you more, because so far, only the AFP’s news desk itself has
gotten that statement. Lamely, neither Google or AFP have posted a release to
their press areas (AFP,
Google),

As with AP, I’m sure we’ll see AFP stories eventually show up on Google
itself. Moreover, all the member publications that carry AP and AFP content that
currently get traffic from Google News will likely see this start to disappear,
as the "source" documents on Google itself get preference. And those documents
will no doubt accompanied by ads with revenues split to the AP and AFP. Still,
that’s better for searchers, as long as unlike with Yahoo, the stories don’t
disappear after 30 days into oblivion.

Postscript: Statement now in full, below:

AFP and Google have signed a licensing agreement that will enable the use of AFP’s newswire content in innovative, new ways that will dramatically improve the way users experience newswire content on the Internet. It will also help highlight original journalism, giving credit to the newswire journalists who worked hard to break the news.
The new collaboration will ensure that AFP’s original journalism and breaking news are easily discoverable on Google services and in particular on Google News.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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