报纸vs.谷歌：征税时代到来
Newspapers versus Google Taxing times
由于报纸业面对的困难日渐增多，一些人开始游说政客对谷歌发布的新闻征税
As newspapers’ woes grow, some are lobbying politicians to make Google pay for the news it publishes
2009年鲁伯特•默多克称谷歌和其他搜索引擎是“内容偷窃狂”。如今拮据的报业想对他们眼中的寄生型新闻汇总机构施加法律压力。
IN 2009 Rupert Murdoch called Google and other search engines “content kleptomaniacs”. Now cash-strapped newspapers want to put legal pressure on what they see as parasitical news aggregators.
德国的政客正在考虑一项拓宽版权法保护范围的法案，以允许出版商对搜索引擎搜索结果中出现的文章摘录进行收费。谷歌是其主要目标：一些德国的报商总裁称在谷歌通过其在新闻汇总栏目——“谷歌新闻”的搜索结果中展示他们的报纸内容而受益。有人已提议意大利当局制定类似的法案。法国出版商也闻风而起。10月29日，法国总统弗朗索瓦•奥朗德警告谷歌董事长埃里克•施密特说，如果法国报商提出的赔偿要求在年底得不到满足，法国可能出台类似于德国那样的法案。奥地利和瑞士出版商也在做着同样的打算。
In Germany politicians are considering a bill to extend copyright protection to excerpts of newspaper articles appearing in search engines’ results, thus enabling publishers to collect payment for them. Google is the main target: some German newspaper executives say it benefits from showcasing their material in search results on its news aggregator, Google News. A similar bill has been proposed in Italy. French newspapers want the same. On October 29th President François Hollande warned Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, that if French newspapers’ demands for compensation are not met by year-end, France may pass a law akin to the German one. Austrian and Swiss publishers are thinking along similar lines.
把文章的标题和首句暴露出来可能会打消读者点击链接到报商网站去阅读全文的念头。评论家还指出抄来哪怕是一小段文章内容，谷歌也可以利用其搜索平台在紧挨着那小段文章内容的地方进行广告招租。(虽然谷歌新闻版面上没有广告)。
Giving away the headline and first sentence of an article supposedly dissuades readers from clicking through to the newspaper’s website to read the entire story. Critics also say that lifting even snippets of articles means Google can sell advertisements alongside them on its search platform (though Google News carries no ads).
但这样做不仅对谷歌有利。谷歌称其每月给各类新闻网站带去了40亿点击量;这可能相当于有七五成谷歌新闻用户通过点击链接通读了全文。并且报商可以通过在其在线文章页面添加标识符的方式防止谷歌新闻收录其文章。
But the benefit goes the other way, too. Google says it directs 4 billion clicks to news websites every month; perhaps as much as three-quarters of Google News users go on to read the full article. And newspapers can add a tag to their pages so that they do not appear in Google News.
德国立法机构将于本月开始讨论该法案，并且可能于明年春季获得通过。届时报商们通力合作共建收费社会，就像是音乐产业对歌曲收版税那样。
German lawmakers will start to discuss the bill this month, and it could pass next spring. Newspapers will then probably join forces to set up a collecting society, rather as the music industry collects royalties on songs.
谷歌称对其所引用的文章收费可能会“威胁公司的生存”。但是谷歌最可能的回应就是移除其搜索结果中涉及到的收费国家报纸网站页面。对那些投放搜索引擎广告，并靠其带来的流量而提高收入的媒体而言，这可能是对他们的当头一棒。虽然默多克曾于2010年屏蔽谷歌对其在线报纸的搜索，但今年9月份他还是决定重新放出其在线报纸上面的文章标题和引题供谷歌取用。世界各地对谷歌新闻的依赖性并不相同。10月份有150多家巴西报商选择屏蔽谷歌新闻搜索(虽然他们的网站仍对谷歌的主力搜索引擎的搜索结果起重要作用)，他们称应该有人对自身的付出埋单。他们的网站流量只降低了5%。
Google has said that having to pay for articles could “threaten its very existence”. But its most likely response would be to remove pages from newspaper sites in the countries concerned from its search results. That would hit media outlets that depend on search-engine traffic to boost their revenues from online adverts. Even Mr Murdoch, who pulled his newspapers from Google’s search results in 2010, decided in September that headlines and teaser text from the articles should reappear. Google News is not universally important. In October over 150 Brazilian newspapers opted out of it (although they still feature in results on Google’s main search engine), saying they should be paid for their work. Traffic dropped by only 5%.
报商们还称版权法对他们有利。美国的法律比大多数欧洲国家的法律宽松多了，因此搜索引擎认为摘取一些报刊文章内容的做法属于“合理使用”。但有一群比利时报商控告谷歌的侵权行为并取得胜诉。谷歌将对此判决提出上诉，但可能以不得不支付一笔损害赔偿金而告终。
Newspapers are also claiming that copyright law is on their side. America’s laws are more relaxed than most of Europe’s, so search engines’ use of some material from articles qualifies there as “fair use”. But in Belgium a group of newspapers sued Google for news copyright infringement and won. The company is appealing against the ruling but is likely to have to pay some damages.
然而这一切背后的真正问题是传统媒体的衰落。通信公司明思力集团总裁，《金融时报》前首席执行官，《经济学人》股东奥利维尔·福罗特表示执行总裁 Olivier Fleurot说，即便法国的全国性报商拿到的直接和间接的政府补贴达12亿欧元(折15.4亿美元)左右，也没有哪一家取得盈利。但难以把传统媒体的衰退、读者数和印刷广告收入的减少怪罪到谷歌头上。印刷广告丢失的利润并不能从在线广告中弥补。据世界报业协会统计，2011年全球报纸广告业务总额达760亿美元，较2007年减少41%。其中只有2.2%来自于数字平台，而且这一数字还容易受广告拦截软件的影响。
The real issue behind all this, however, is the decline of traditional media. In France not a single national newspaper is profitable, despite around €1.2 billion ($1.54 billion) in direct and indirect government subsidies, according to Olivier Fleurot, the boss of MSLGROUP, a communications firm, and a former chief executive at the Financial Times, part-owner of The Economist. Google can hardly be blamed for the recession, declining readership, and slumping advertising revenue. Online advertising has not offset the decline of print ads in newspapers. In 2011 newspaper advertising globally amounted to $76 billion, down 41% since 2007, according to the World Association of Newspapers. Only 2.2% of newspapers’ advertising revenues last year came from digital platforms, and even these are vulnerable to ad-blocking software .
新闻冲刺
News sprint
即便很多国家确实让谷歌为自己取用的文章标题和摘录片段付钱了。但依然难以填补报商的收入缺口，亦或是难以加速他们的重组。一名来自欧洲委员会的媒体专家Jan Malinowski说道，让谷歌为其取用的文章埋单“就像是试图通过禁用古腾堡的印刷机来保住抄写员的饭碗一样”。
Even if some countries do get Google to pay up for using their headlines and some text from articles, it will hardly plug the holes in their newspapers’ revenues, or speed their restructuring. Jan Malinowski, a media expert at the Council of Europe, says trying to get Google to pay for articles “is like trying to ban Gutenberg’s printing press in order to protect the scribes”.
立法永远也赶不上商业模式的变化。报业为了提高自身网站的浏览量几乎已经不对读者收费了。但观念正在转变。巴西报业协会会长Carlos FernandoLindenberg Neto说道，很多选择屏蔽谷歌新闻搜索的巴西报商将于明年开始对读者收费。
The legal pressure may in any case be overtaken by changes in business models. Newspapers have mostly avoided charging users for reading articles in the hope of boosting visitor numbers to their websites. But thinking is shifting. Many of the Brazilian papers that opted out of Google News will launch paywalls next year, says Carlos Fernando Lindenberg Neto, president of the Brazilian newspapers’ association.
现在新兴的商业模式是计量收费模式：用几篇免费文章来吸引读者，但如果读者想继续阅读的话就需要付费了(其中《经济学人》和《纽约时报》就采用此模式)。今年美国采用此模式的公司数量已经翻番。其他公司正在联合起来为建立网站访问权付费模式努力。一家叫做Piano Media的斯洛伐克公司提供浏览国内多家网站、电视及广播频道的权利，而用户只需付固定费用即可。该公司会根据用户在网站停留的时间，按一定比例向商家付费。这些想法也许要比向谷歌索索取赔偿更好。
The emerging business model is now the metered paywall: a few free articles entice readers, but they must pay if they want more (a model used by The Economist and the New York Times, among others). Paywalls have doubled in America this year. Other outlets are banding together to charge for access. Piano Media, a Slovakian firm, lets users buy access to multiple websites, TV and radio stations in a single country for a flat fee. It pays publishers in proportion to time spent by users on their sites. Such ideas may work better than hoping for a cheque from Google.
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2012-11-13
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