NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] AP Declares War on Google and Others -- But the Collateral Damage Will Be Ours
AP Declares War on Google and Others,
But the Collateral Damage Will Be Ours
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000537.html
"Of course you realize, this means war!"
-- Bugs Bunny -- "Bully for Bugs" (1953)
Greetings. Believe it or not, when I discussed the ongoing problems
of the newspaper industry yesterday in "From Hell It Came: Will
"Free" Destroy the Internet As We Know It?"
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000536.html ), I didn't realize that
the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) meeting was being held in
San Diego this week, or that the Associated Press board would
choose their meeting at that venue to declare war against Internet
news aggregators.
Some of the language being bandied about is quite remarkable.
AP's chairman, apparently channeling character Howard Beale's
famous monologue from the film "Network" (1976)
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE ), was quoted as
exclaiming to applause that "We are mad as hell and we are not going
to take it any more!" Notably, AP also took this occasion to announce
some price breaks for their media clients, who have reportedly
sometimes been using similar language to explain their recent
cancellations of AP contracts.
Robert Thomson of the "Wall Street Journal" was quoted in an
Australian newspaper as saying that, "There is no doubt that certain
Web sites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the
intestines of the Internet."
"Madness!" "Parasites!" See, I wasn't kidding around with my horror
movie analogy yesterday.
The battle preparations apparently go beyond the usual threats of
lawsuits, to include talk of diverting users of news aggregation sites
away from their selected stories to special "landing pages" instead
(no word on how this might be accomplished, though "referrer"-based
diversions seem like one likely technique).
While Google was not specifically named in most of the pronouncements
as The Enemy per se, it's clear to all observers that Google -- and
their "Google News" service -- are at the top of the pack when it
comes to the designated villain list.
Coincidentally (?), Google CEO Eric Schmidt is scheduled to deliver
the keynote tomorrow at the NAA meeting. (Free advice -- check for
improperly grounded microphones at the podium before handling them!)
Seriously, these controversies are indeed Big Issues, but to my mind
remain essentially orthogonal to the situations that I was describing
yesterday regarding the "free" vs. "paid" Internet content dilemma.
Search indexing is not the same as being a content provider, given any
normal usage of these terms -- and treating Search like conventional
content could be devastating to people's legitimate access to
information.
That Google and others derive economic benefit from Search is a given,
obviously. But the logical result of a major move toward a "pay to
index" methodology on the Internet would likely not only be a massive
distortion of how Web pages are indexed, but also the triggering of a
major and harmful skew to the basic nature of search engines
themselves.
It's easy to see why. As things stand right now, any Web site,
including at any newspaper, can use the "robots.txt"
( http://www.robotstxt.org/ ) exclusion method to control how any
well-behaved indexing robot will crawl (or not crawl) their site. Any
site that wants to keep Google or other search engines out completely,
or even limit them individually or collectively to indexing specific
pages, can do so.
But if the Internet paradigm shifts to a "pay me or you can't index my
site" structure, we've taken an already complicated situation and
stirred it up into a maelstrom.
Search engines would be faced with making economically-based value
judgments regarding which sites could affordably be included in their
index for users to query. "Those sites are garbage, but they're
free -- so they get in." "These sites have the quality info, but
they're too expensive this year -- they get left out."
Meanwhile, many Web sites themselves might be tempted to try game the
search system in various new ways -- perhaps by making "teaser"
materials free to index and then charging the big bucks for anyone
wanting to index the real meat -- Web site indexing brought down to
the level of late night infomercials.
Immediately lost in a regime where many search engine index crawling
decisions move to a "pay indexing" basis would be the *trust* of
search engine users. They could never really be sure if search
results actually represented an honest reality, or if those results
had been hopelessly limited, distorted, and skewed by the complexities
and charge-based bottom lines of the associated indexing permission
fee structures imposed by Web sites onto search engines.
I have a great deal of admiration for Associated Press. Their
reporters and other personnel are top notch in the truest sense, and
in my opinion represent the quintessential essence of quality
journalism.
I also fully support the right of any site to control if and where it
is indexed, and by whom. That's what robots.txt is for.
But if we open up the Pandora's box of what would effectively be
"indexing charges" and associated fee-based indexing limitations, I
believe that we'd be going down a path that would be extremely
damaging to Internet users, and we risk ultimately decimating the
quantity and quality of important information available to us all.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: LW1