FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Arlington, VA – Today the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law will hold a hearing at 2:00 p.m. ET, on “Oversight of A.I.: The Future of Journalism,” which will explore the impact of the growth of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) technology on publishers’ ability to provide high-quality journalism and possible oversight mechanisms to help protect and sustain quality journalism.

Witnesses scheduled to testify at the hearing include Danielle Coffey, President & CEO of the News/Media Alliance (written testimony here); Roger Lynch, CEO at Condé Nast (written testimony here); Curtis LeGeyt, President and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters (written testimony here); and author Jeff Jarvis (written testimony here).

Coffey’s comments before the Subcommittee will explain how Generative AI tools exploit news content to compete directly with publishers, yet need quality journalism to train their systems. Coffey will focus on the copyright infringement implications of how GAI developers train and use their models, as well as the need for legislation, including requiring transparency and responsibility from GAI developers, and passing the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA), which would allow publishers to collectively negotiate for fair compensation for use of their content by the dominant tech platforms, such as Meta and Google.

Since generative AI technology took off exponentially last year, the News/Media Alliance has been leading the call for AI companies to seek proper permissions and licensing from publishers for use of their valuable content. Last fall, the Alliance published a White Paper revealing that GAI systems copy massive amounts of publishers’ original works, almost always without authorization or compensation, and publisher content is overweighted in materials used for training these systems. The White Paper and comments the Alliance submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office also explain the legal implications of such use.

In response to the hearing, News/Media Alliance President & CEO, Danielle Coffey stated, “We commend Subcommittee Chair Richard Blumenthal and Ranking Member Josh Hawley and the Senate Judiciary Committee for recognizing the urgent need to address our very serious concerns about the impacts of AI technology on providers of quality journalism, as well as the legal questions this raises. AI companies are scraping our content to compete with it – usually without any compensation to, or permission from the publishers of that content – while they reap all the benefits. This is classic freeriding that infringes publishers’ copyrights and goes far beyond fair use.”

Coffey’s testimony offers multiple suggestions for policymakers, including:

• Recognizing that unauthorized use of publishers’ expressive content for commercial GAI training and development is likely to compete with and harm publisher businesses in a manner that infringes copyright;
• Creating transparency requirements to require the recordkeeping and disclosure of unauthorized training uses of material that is protected by copyright, by technical protection measures, or governed by contractual terms prohibiting scraping; and
• Adopting legislation to remedy existing market imbalances that prevent publishers from engaging in fair negotiations for the use of their content against dominant platforms.

A new report released by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in November found that the rate of newspaper closures has accelerated, now at 2.5 closures per week (with more than 130 confirmed newspaper closings or mergers in the last year), resulting in the expansion of news deserts, in which communities lack a source of local news.

Coffey concluded, “For years the tech platforms have gotten away with using publishers’ content without appropriate compensation. This problem, having gone unaddressed, has been getting worse and now, AI doubles down on the threat the largest tech platforms pose to publishers’ viability. Countries all over the world are introducing and passing legislation requiring the tech platforms to pay news publishers. The United States cannot fall behind other countries and should pass the JCPA, which will ensure publishers can continue to provide important high-quality journalism we all depend on. We have to act now before it’s too late.”

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Media Contact:
Lindsey Loving
Director, Communications
lindsey@newsmediaalliance.org

The News/Media Alliance is a nonprofit organization representing more than 2,200 news and magazine media organizations and their multiplatform businesses in the United States and globally. Alliance members include print and digital publishers of original journalism. Headquartered just outside Washington, D.C., the association focuses on ensuring the future of journalism through communication, research, advocacy, and innovation. Information about the News/Media Alliance can be found at www.newsmediaalliance.org.

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Arlington, VA – Today News/Media Alliance President & CEO Danielle Coffey is attending as an invited participant in a bipartisan forum hosted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on “AI – Transparency, Explainability, Intellectual Property, & Copyright.”

This is the seventh AI Insight Forum that seeks to further innovation and develop bipartisan artificial intelligence legislation that takes the opportunities as well as the threats of AI technology into account. Also participating in the forum are 19 leaders from various industries, including the news media, entertainment, and tech industries.

Today’s Forum focuses on two key areas of AI policy: 1) transparency and explainability and 2) intellectual property and copyright, including addressing concerns around the use of copyrighted content in training and prompting. These are the most vital artificial intelligence concerns for the Alliance’s members.

In addition to a written statement provided in advance of the Forum, Coffey will provide oral remarks sharing the unique perspective of the news and magazine industry.

Coffey stated, “I am honored to be invited by Majority Leader Schumer, Senator Rounds, Senator Heinrich, and Senator Young to participate in this AI forum and I look forward to the dialogue. This is a critical time in the evolution of AI technology, and it is important to strike the right balance of creativity, innovation, regulation, and respect for existing rights. We must ensure that publishers of high-quality journalism whose content is being used to train AI systems have a seat at the table.”

The Alliance – whose members comprise over 2,200 news and magazine media organizations and their multiplatform businesses in the U.S. and globally – has been leading the call since the advent of generative AI chatbots earlier this year for AI companies and developers to properly compensate publishers of quality journalism for use of their valuable content to train generative AI systems (GAI).

In April, the Alliance released AI Principles for the news and magazine media industry, which highlight the overarching principles that must guide the development and use of GAI systems as well as the policies and regulations governing them. Among other things, the AI Principles outline the need for GAI developers to obtain explicit permission for use of publishers’ intellectual property, and for publishers to be able to negotiate for fair compensation for use of their IP by these developers. In addition, the Alliance helped organize the publication of Global AI Principles in September, endorsed by 31 organizations representing thousands of creative professionals around the world, including news, entertainment, magazine, and book publishing companies and the academic publishing sector.

On October 31, the Alliance released a White Paper entitled, “How the Pervasive Copying of Expressive Works to Train and Fuel Generative Artificial Intelligence Systems Is Copyright Infringement And Not a Fair Use,” which shows that GAI systems have been developed by copying massive amounts of the expressive material published by the Alliance’s members, almost always without authorization or compensation, to create new products and services that frequently compete with Alliance member publishers.

The Alliance also recently submitted comments to the U.S. Copyright Office on the use of publisher content to power generative artificial intelligence technologies (GAI). The comments, White Paper and accompanying technical analysis together document the pervasive, unauthorized use of publisher content by GAI developers, the impact this may have on the sustainability and availability of high-quality original content, and the legal implications of such use.

The Copyright Office comments and the White Paper offer multiple recommendations to policymakers, including recognizing that unauthorized use of publishers’ expressive content for commercial GAI training and development is likely to compete with and harm publisher businesses in a manner that infringes copyright; creating transparency requirements to require disclosure of the use of copyright protected content in training; encouraging and facilitating effective licensing solutions; supporting international cooperation and harmonization on GAI regulations; and adopting legislation to remedy existing market imbalances that prevent publishers from engaging in fair negotiations for the use of their content against dominant platforms.

Coffey added, “For years the Big Tech platforms have gotten away with using our publishers’ content to add billions to their bottom lines, all while publishers have suffered. Now, the platforms and AI companies are scraping publisher content and using it to train their generative AI systems – again without compensating publishers. This goes far beyond fair use. Journalists, writers, publishers, and other creators make the investments and take the risks while generative AI developers reap the rewards of traffic, data, brand creation, subscription fees, and advertising dollars. This is freeriding, and it is antithetical to established copyright law and the public interest that it serves.”

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Media Contact:
Lindsey Loving
Director, Communications
lindsey@newsmediaalliance.org

The News/Media Alliance is a nonprofit organization representing more than 2,200 news and magazine media organizations and their multiplatform businesses in the United States and globally. Alliance members include print and digital publishers of original journalism. Headquartered just outside Washington, D.C., the association focuses on ensuring the future of journalism through communication, research, advocacy, and innovation. Information about the News/Media Alliance can be found at www.newsmediaalliance.org.

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Arlington, VA – Yesterday, the News/Media Alliance published a White Paper and a technical analysis and submitted comments to the U.S. Copyright Office on the use of publisher content to power generative artificial intelligence technologies (GAI). Together, the three publications document the pervasive, unauthorized use of publisher content by GAI developers, the impact this may have on the sustainability and availability of high-quality original content, and the legal implications of such use. GAI systems have been developed by copying massive amounts of the expressive material published by the Alliance’s members, almost always without authorization or compensation, to create new products and services that frequently compete with Alliance member publishers.

The Alliance recognizes the exciting potential of GAI models and applications to improve aspects of our lives and supports the principled development of these systems. But this development must not come at the expense of publishers and journalists who invest considerable time and resources producing material that keeps our communities informed, safe, and entertained, and holds our government officials and other decision makers in check. The Alliance and its members would welcome working with GAI developers to help build and grow these technologies in a sustainable and responsible manner.

While the Copyright Office submission and White Paper discuss the wider publisher landscape in the face of the GAI revolution, including relevant principles of copyright law, the accompanying technical analysis documents the extent to which GAI developers rely on high-quality journalistic content to power their models. In particular, the results show:

• GAI developers have copied and used news, magazine and digital media content to train large language models (LLMs).
• Popular curated datasets underlying LLMs significantly overweight publisher content by a factor ranging from over 5 to almost 100 as compared to the generic collection of content that the well-known entity Common Crawl has scraped from the web.
• Other studies show that news and digital media ranks third among all categories of sources in Google’s C4 training set, which was used to develop Google’s GAI-powered products like Bard. Half of the top ten sites represented in the data set are news outlets.
• The LLMs also copy and use publisher content in their outputs. The LLMs can reproduce the content on which they were trained, demonstrating that the models retain and can memorize the expressive content of the training works.

Alliance President & CEO Danielle Coffey stated, “The research and analysis we’ve conducted shows that AI companies and developers are not only engaging in unauthorized copying of our members’ content to train their products, but they are using it pervasively and to a greater extent than other sources. This shows they recognize our unique value, and yet most of these developers are not obtaining proper permissions through licensing agreements or compensating publishers for the use of this content. This diminishment of high-quality, human created content harms not only publishers but the sustainability of AI models themselves and the availability of reliable, trustworthy information.”

The Copyright Office comments and the White Paper offer multiple recommendations to policymakers, including recognizing that unauthorized use of publishers’ expressive content for commercial GAI training and development is likely to compete with and harm publisher businesses in a manner that infringes copyright; creating transparency requirements to require disclosure of the use of copyright protected content in training; encouraging and facilitating effective licensing solutions; supporting international cooperation and harmonization on GAI regulations; and adopting legislation to remedy existing market imbalances that prevent publishers from engaging in fair negotiations for the use of their content against dominant platforms.

Coffey continued, “Generative AI systems should be held responsible and accountable, just like any other business. This White Paper demonstrates that these systems rely on journalistic and creative content, which have the benefit of investment in quality on the front end, as well as publishers who are required by law to take responsibility for the content they share with the public. Continued unauthorized use will harm existing markets that acknowledge the value of archived and real-time quality content, and over time the GAI models themselves will deteriorate. You get out what you put in. It is critical that our copyright protections are properly enforced and that high standards of quality and accountability are the foundation of these and other new technologies.”

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Media Contact:
Lindsey Loving
Director, Communications
lindsey@newsmediaalliance.org

The News/Media Alliance is a nonprofit organization representing more than 2,200 news and magazine media organizations and their multiplatform businesses in the United States and globally. Alliance members include print and digital publishers of original journalism. Headquartered just outside Washington, D.C., the association focuses on ensuring the future of journalism through communication, research, advocacy, and innovation. Information about the News/Media Alliance can be found at www.newsmediaalliance.org.

The post News/Media Alliance Study Finds Pervasive Unauthorized Use of Publisher Content to Power Generative AI Technologies appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

Like most industries, news media outlets have made business decisions impacting revenue and the business landscape. Not all of those decisions have paid off.  One such decision was made almost twenty years ago to allow news content to be used on search and social platforms when the value exchange was fair, and traffic produced revenue through advertising. However, today, that value exchange is nearly nonexistent. It has been reported that 65 percent of users stay within the walled gardens and do not click through. And when few do click through, the ad tech tax is imposed, where the platforms take up to 70 percent of every digital advertising dollar because they also dominate the ad tech ecosystem, which feeds off the data collected inside their products and across the web. There is no longer a fair exchange of value, and no one publisher alone can alter this dynamic.

The White Paper outlines several ways in which Google uses news content to its advantage – and to news publishers’ detriment – across its products and services:

• The use of news content through AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), Google Discover, Google News app, Google Assistant, and Search have become a “walled garden” in which publishers and consumers are increasingly forced or encouraged to stay.
• Evidence that AMP, in which users read articles served by Google, benefits the platform to the detriment of news publishers who lose advertising revenue, reader data, and subscribers in comparison to organic search.
• Terms of Use are exclusionary and anticompetitive whereby consenting to the use of content for one product irrevocably binds the publisher to other products and services, some that directly compete with news publishers’ offerings.
• New evidence presented to the courts of anticompetitive practices around “header bidding” – an auctioning tool that competes against Google, producing a higher payout for publishers – was discouraged by Google as an intentional move to improve its financial gain in advertising auctions.
• Revelations that Facebook substantially curtailed its use of header bidding in return for Google giving Facebook a leg up in publishers’ web display and developers in app ad auctions, allocating a portion of the wins to Facebook and helping Facebook’s ad network, FAN, beat the competition.

As the Senate markup of the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA) approaches (the Senate text was released in late August and it was listed to the Senate Judiciary Committee agenda for markup on September 8), critics of the bill have referred to it as a way to “prop up an industry that has largely failed to address its business problems” unrelated to the platforms. The White Paper proves this is not the case. If the platforms were required to come to the table and negotiate with news publishers for fair compensation for use of their content, as the JCPA specifies, it would address at least one critical piece of the gross marketplace imbalance with the dominant platforms.

Danielle Coffey, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at the News/Media Alliance said, “Google extracts revenue from valuable news content by deliberately and systematically delivering personalized information to users to keep them within their walled gardens. This fuels their engine of scraping reader data to sell their information and target them with ads.” Coffey continued, “There remains little bargaining power and, as a result, news publishers are forced to consent to nearly unlimited uses of their content in exchange for scraps to cover the tremendous investments it takes to produce quality journalism. If this continues, the production of quality local news content will be irreparably harmed.”

In the White Paper, the Alliance recommends passage of the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act, which would allow news publishers to collectively negotiate for fair compensation from the tech platforms.

The White Paper can be found here.

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Media Contact:
Lindsey Loving
Director, Communications
lindsey@newsmediaalliance.org

The post Statement: White Paper Shows Google’s Ongoing Use and Abuse of News Content, Why We Need the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

simpson33/iStock/Getty Images Plus via Getty Images

Updated September 5, 2022

The News Media Alliance has produced a White Paper, “How Google Abuses Its Position as a Market Dominant Platform to Strong-Arm News Publishers and Hurt Journalism.”

Download updated White Paper (September 2022) here.

About the White Paper

The White Paper is based on more than a year of interviews and consultations with many Alliance members about their experiences with Google products. It outlines several of the ways in which Google uses news content to its advantage across its products and services. The use of news content through AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), Google Discover, and the Google News app, as well as Search becoming more of a “walled garden” in which publishers and consumers are increasingly forced or encouraged to stay, has been systematically making use of news content to enhance Google’s bottom line. In exchange, because there is little bargaining power, news publishers are not receiving fair value for quality content.

Based on the conclusions reached in the White Paper, recommendations from the Alliance include:

• Antitrust scrutiny through the current investigations by the DOJ and state Attorneys General and remedies that address the abuses and impacts on news publishers.
• Passage of the safe harbor bill, also known as the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act, to allow news publishers to collectively negotiate for better business arrangements with the tech platforms.
• Compensation mechanisms that properly account for the value that platforms receive through original news content provided by established news organizations.

The Alliance has submitted the White Paper to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for its investigation of Google’s anticompetitive behavior.

Resources

Click the links below to download the White Paper and related resources.

White Paper with Graphics:

This visually-friendly version of the White Paper includes seven new graphics created to help explain some of the concepts in the report.

White Paper with Graphics (PDF, June 2020)

Graphics:

Download and share the individual graphics from the White Paper. Corresponding text for each graphic from the White Paper is below.

For use on social media, please credit the News Media Alliance. Click on an image, then right-click and select “Save image as” to download.

PowerPoint Presentation:

Download our presentation (PDF) of the White Paper graphics for your use and sharing.

Download in PPT format (Note: Some fonts may not display properly)

Graphic 1: How Google Dominates the Online Marketplace 

From page 4 of the White Paper: AMP keeps users in Google’s ecosystem while creating several disadvantages for many news publishers – including making it more difficult in some cases to form direct relationships with their readers, reducing some publishers’ subscription conversion rates, limiting the use of interactive features in AMP articles, reducing some publishers’ ad revenues, and impairing their collection of certain user data.

Graphic 2: How Google Comes Between Newspapers and Users

From page 14 of the White Paper: At the most fundamental level, Google has placed itself in the middle of the relationship between the newspaper and its user. The user is no longer visiting the publisher’s website directly, but instead viewing a copy of the article hosted on Google’s servers. Further, Google controls the AMP elements of the format, its functions and capabilities, and encourages users to stay within the search results page, for example, by creating an H-scroll in the Top News carousels that seamlessly moves from one publisher to the next without ever leaving Google. As subscriptions become increasingly important in an era in which digital ad revenues pale in comparison to earlier revenues from print ads, having a separate proprietary format that does not easily foster direct relationships is even more problematic.

Graphic 3: AMP URL API Terms

From page 19 of the White Paper (text on page 18): In our view, the AMP URL API terms of use also amount to exclusionary and anticompetitive conduct. A news publication does not appear to have the ability to acquiesce in the use of its AMP content on Google mobile search, for example, while declining permission for use in the new (and free) Google News app, which may directly compete with a newspaper’s own app or another app licensed by the publisher. Further, the language is sufficiently broad and unclear as to raise the question whether it gives Google the right to use the content for free for other purposes, such as artificial intelligence, that supposedly “improve” the APIs (and may in turn reinforce Google’s market power). Moreover, the terms give Google the right to sub-license use of the content to third parties, including presumably for a license fee. Finally, the license is irrevocable; although a news entity can theoretically stop creating AMP pages for its publication and stop using Google’s AMP URL API (with all its negative consequences), Google’s right to use the content continues indefinitely for all earlier-posted AMP pages.

Graphic 4: The Price of Appearing on Google News

From page 24 of the White Paper: News publishers are required to grant Google vast and unclear rights to use the publishers’ news content. The required grant of rights to Google extends not only to Google News but for all “Google Services” – defined as any products, services or technology developed by Google from time to time. In short, as a price of having their content appear on the regular Google News website, a publisher apparently is not only required to participate in the Google News app, and any future version of the Google News app, but any product or service developed by Google in the future.

Graphic 5: Google: A Walled Garden

From page 29 of the White Paper: For many years, Google Search results consisted of simple blue links with only a headline and very short snippet from an article. Today, Google Search makes heavy use of premier news content, including high quality news photos. Google uses this content to enhance its own brand – especially in an era plagued by fake news – and earns substantial advertising revenues for aggregating content it did not create or fund.

Graphic 6: The Effect of Google’s Walled Garden

From page 30 of the White Paper: One growing concern for the news industry is the current length of snippets from their articles, which often can collectively provide ample information on any news story to satisfy the casual reader skimming the news. Google is able to use its role as the market dominant platform to pressure newspapers into providing “rich snippets” for search. If these rich snippets are not on properly optimized pages (meaning the publisher implemented Google dictated structured data and markup properly, and the images are of requisite quality and size), the newspaper is put at competitive disadvantage. As illustrated by the examples and screenshots detailed below, a second, broader concern is the format and wide range of content presented by Google on today’s search results pages, usually above the traditional headlines and links to news articles – changes which undoubtedly decrease the chances that a user will click on a news link. Many have quoted the stunning statistic that, “In June of 2019, for the first time, a majority of all browser-based searches on Google.com resulted in zero clicks. We’ve passed a milestone in Google’s evolution from search engine to walled-garden.”³⁸ The situation is even more stark on mobile: in the past three years, “[o]rganic has fallen by almost 20%, while paid has nearly tripled and zero-click searches are up significantly. … Today … almost two-thirds [of mobile searches ended without a click.]”³⁹

Graphic 7: Google Assistant Does Not Give Credit to Original Publisher

From page 36 of the White Paper: Google Assistant is but one of the growing “Voice-first” Google platforms.  The Google website states that, “If you search with the Google Assistant, featured snippets may also be read aloud.”⁴² The full extent of this practice is not known, but in a limited review the news publishers have certainly found examples. When Google Assistant provides an audio response, that audio response obviously does not contain any link to the original article.  In short, in that setting, the quid pro quo that supports any fair use defense is absent.

Additional Resources:

Plain White Paper (no graphics) (PDF, September 2022)

Alliance Letter to the Department of Justice (June 18, 2020)

Statement: White Paper Shows Google’s Ongoing Use and Abuse of News Content, Why We Need the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (September 6, 2022)

Press Release: Alliance Releases New White Paper Outlining Google’s Dominant Market Behavior, Harming of Journalism (June 18, 2020)

For more information:

Please contact Alliance Executive Vice President and General Counsel Danielle Coffey if you have any questions.

The post White Paper: How Google Abuses Its Position as a Market Dominant Platform to Strong-Arm News Publishers and Hurt Journalism appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

Image credit: oatawa / iStock/Getty Images Plus via Getty Images

By Johannes Munter, outside consultant, and Allison Reed

In late June, the U.S. Copyright Office released its long-awaited report on copyright protections for news publishers. The report, requested by Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) and others last year, focused on whether the United States should adopt similar ancillary copyright protections for news publishers as those created by the European Union in 2019.

Article 15 of the EU’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market – a broader package to harmonize copyright laws across the Union – required members states to implement national laws to better allow publishers to protect their content online and to negotiate with online platforms for compensation. This so-called “publishers’ right” was warranted due to considerable variance in rights afforded to news publishers across the EU, leaving many publishers with no independent rights to protect their works.

The study – informed by two comment periods and a public roundtable, all of which the News/Media Alliance participated in – does not recommend the creation of new ancillary copyright protections for news publishers in the U.S. This conclusion was consistent with the News/Media Alliance views.  This recommendation is based on the undisputable fact that American publishers in most case already own the copyrights to the content they publish, in addition to which, they have at their disposal various other ways to protect their content – including paywalls, technological circumvention protections under Section 1201, and contractual provisions. Implementing new ancillary rights would not lead to a significant improvement or change for U.S. publishers, especially as the marketplace is characterized by an uneven playing field and bargaining power between publishers and a few dominant online platforms.

The report closely follows our recent white paper on Google’s abusive business practices and the recommendations made by the Alliance in our comments and during the roundtables in highlighting the current state of news media, acknowledging the existing protections, and noting the imbalanced bargaining power that prevents publishers from enforcing their rights effectively in the digital ecosystem. The Alliance’s comments noted that U.S. publishers already enjoy protections similar to those established by the EU Copyright Directive, while being unable to effectively enforce those rights due to existing power imbalances. Consequently, the Alliance called on the Copyright Office to endorse the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) as a potential solution to the competition problem and to conclude that the use of news content by aggregators is not, in most cases, fair use.

While the report recognizes that problems in the digital marketplace are largely competition-based, and therefore outside the Copyright Office’s remit, it highlights the JCPA as a potential non-copyright solution to the problem. The report also includes an extended fair use discussion, balancing both sides of the argument, and acknowledging that not all uses of news content by aggregators are likely to be fair use. Related to the Alliance’s argument that systemic aggregation has a noticeable negative effect on the demand for news content, the Office notes that “widespread aggregation may significantly impede the ability of press publishers to obtain payment for their expression” and that “[t]o the extent that aggregation provides a substitute that ‘satisfies most demand for the full original’ and decreases the resources available for original news reporting, this would cut against a finding of fair use.” This conclusion captures the essence of the Alliance’s fair use argument and provides an important marker for courts analyzing cases involving systemic aggregation of news content.

In addition to its fair use and bargaining power discussions, the report also addresses the inability of news publishers to register dynamic web content – a major impediment to effective protection and an issue highlighted by the Alliance in our comments. The Office recognizes the importance of the issue and notes that it is actively considering ways to address it during the ongoing Copyright Office modernization efforts. The Alliance will continue working with the Office to ensure that these changes get implemented expeditiously in order to allow publishers to register and better protect their content online.

Despite arguments by some detractors to the contrary, the Alliance has never requested the Copyright Office to recommend the creation of additional ancillary copyright protections for publishers. Our members already have the tools to protect their content. However, the abusive practices of the dominant online platforms, together with the disparate bargaining power between them and news publishers, make enforcing those rights effectively next to impossible. By providing a time-limited period during which publishers could come together to negotiate with the large platforms for fair compensation, the JCPA would help balance the playing field and provide a lifeline for high-quality journalism in America. The Copyright Office’s report closely follows the Alliance’s comments and amounts to an important acknowledgment of the issues faced by news publishers. We look forward to working together with the Office to ensure that news publishers are well-positioned to utilize their existing rights to protect news content online, while continuing to push Congress to act on the anticompetitive practices of the dominant online platforms.

The post New Copyright Office Report Correctly Concludes News Publishers Enjoy Copyright Protections Similar to the EU, Acknowledges Bargaining Power Disparities as Major Obstacle for Publishers in Protecting News Content Online appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

In October, House Antitrust Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI) and the Democratic Majority of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law released a report on the anticompetitive behavior of the big tech platforms, which resulted in the antitrust bills (link to bills) that will be marked up in the House Judiciary Committee this week. The Report also referenced the News Media Alliance White Paper, “How Google Abuses Its Position as a Market Dominant Platform to Strong-Arm News Publishers and Hurt Journalism,” which outlines several of the ways in which Google uses news content to its advantage across its products and services.

The House Majority Report also recommends passing the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which will allow for the fair exchange of value for quality journalism that is extracted and monetized by the tech platforms.

Alliance President and CEO, David Chavern, stated, “The anticompetitive conduct of the dominant tech platforms can’t be ignored and is a testament to the critical need to correct the glaring imbalance in the marketplace. We applaud the House Judiciary Committee’s attention to these very important issues that cause consumer harm across our country.”

In March, Chairman Cicilline, Ranking Member Ken Buck (R-CO), Senate Antitrust Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Senator John N. Kennedy (R-LA), reintroduced the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), which would grant news publishers the ability to collectively negotiate with the dominant tech platforms for fair compensation for use of their content. The News Media Alliance is strongly advocating for the JCPA.

Chavern continued, “Both short- and long-term solutions are needed, and we applaud Chairman Cicilline, Chairwoman Klobuchar, the Department of Justice, state Attorneys General, and other supporters who are continuing to push for a fair and competitive digital landscape that rewards the producers of original content, both now and in the future.

“Local news is more important than ever, but without a fair deal from the tech platforms, we can’t continue to invest in providing the public with high-quality journalism critical to our democracy.”

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Submitted to Department of Justice to Inform Investigation of Google’s Anticompetitive Behavior

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Arlington, VA – Today, the News Media Alliance released a White Paper, “How Google Abuses Its Position as a Market Dominant Platform to Strong-Arm News Publishers and Hurt Journalism.” The Alliance has submitted the White Paper to the Department of Justice (DOJ) as they proceed with an investigation of Google’s anticompetitive behavior.

The White Paper, which is based on more than a year of interviews and consultations with many Alliance members about their experiences with Google products, outlines several of the ways in which Google uses news content to its advantage across its products and services. The use of news content through AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), Google Discover, and the Google News app, as well as Search becoming more of a “walled garden” in which publishers and consumers are increasingly forced or encouraged to stay, has been systematically making use of news content to enhance Google’s bottom line. In exchange, because there is little bargaining power, news publishers are not receiving fair value for quality content.

“The leading copyright cases concerning search engines and aggregators are over a decade old and the precedent they created no longer reflects the realities of the modern online ecosystem,” stated Alliance Senior Vice President and General Counsel Danielle Coffey. “Despite the fact that the digital marketplace has changed and many of Google’s uses of news content may not be fair use under the current circumstances, there remains little bargaining power with Google and, as a result, news publishers must consent to these practically unlimited uses by Google without compensation, regardless of the strength of our copyright protections.”

Based on the conclusions reached in the White Paper, recommendations from the Alliance include:

• Antitrust scrutiny through the current investigations by the DOJ and state Attorneys General and remedies that address the abuses and impacts on news publishers.
• Passage of the safe harbor bill, also known as the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act, to allow news publishers to collectively negotiate for better business arrangements with the tech platforms.
• Compensation mechanisms that properly account for the value that platforms receive through original news content provided by established news organizations.

The White Paper can be found on the Alliance website here.

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Media Contact:
Lindsey Loving
Director, Communications
lindsey@newsmediaalliance.org
571.366.1009

The News Media Alliance is a nonprofit organization representing more than 2,000 news organizations and their multiplatform businesses in the United States and globally. Alliance members include print, digital and mobile publishers of original news content. Headquartered near Washington, D.C., in Arlington, Va., the association focuses on ensuring the future of news media through communication, research, advocacy and innovation. Information about the News Media Alliance (formerly NAA) can be found at www.newsmediaalliance.org.

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