Misunderstanding The Land Of Earthquakes

Michael Hedges July 7, 2021 Follow on Twitter

Ideas are the competitive edge in the long slog of human behavior. Good ones bring benefit, sometimes remarkable. Bad ones, to paraphrase Gresham's Law, drive the good ones out, typically by rewarding short-term self-interest and punishing innovation. Bad ideas, however, can be valuable for shining a light on foolishness.

Collective bargaining has worked so well for the music industry that publishers want to try that route to dislodge Big Tech or, as one of their number described, the “Californians.” It is fair to acknowledge the certain pain publishers have experienced. They are not making as much money as they did last century, usually with very little effort, and, too, power centers have shifted. Somehow this all gets back to snippets.

With the snippet/link battle lost - legally and morally - publishers keep looking for new ways to tap, literally and figuratively, into Google Money. This is because Google - and Apple, Facebook, Amazon and others - have money and publishers have been forced to grovel with the little people - the readers - for subscriptions. Publishers still want Big Tech to pay for sending them traffic. This is, as the oil business knows, a dry hole.

Nearly all Danish publishers, joined by television broadcasters, signed onto an initiative last week to bring collective bargaining to the quest for money and blunt the well-exercised competitive advantage of digital technologies. They are hoping to take advantage of the EU Copyright Directive (2019), which mandated permissions - meaning compensations - for any publisher-produced material beyond a link to the originating website and opened the door to negotiated agreements. “The impetus for this initiative came in part from the music industry,” said, CEO of Danish publisher JP/Politikens Hus chief executive Stig Orskov, quoted by Reuters (June 28). The implication is that publishers are still unable to financialize their products in the digital age.

Publishers, not limited to newspapers, were blind-sided by Google and Facebook succeeding to negotiate individual agreements in Australia and France. Along with the obvious, this kept contractual terms confidential. At the conclusion of the big-deal agreements with Australian publishers - notably News Australia, subsidiary of News Corporation - details were left in the non-disclosure section. Hence, one publisher had no idea about terms agreed by another, competing publisher.

The old saws were trotted out. “This is not content created for free use,” said Berlingske Media chief executive Anders Krab-Johansen to the Financial Times (June 28), perhaps referring to those snippets or maybe something else. “That’s some Californian misunderstanding.” Last last year the Danish publishers announced they were “readying” a collective publisher platform to address data needs of advertisers with the then-impending “cookie death,” which Google postponed.

“Media companies have transferred their mandate to the organization,” said Mr. Orskov. “This is an approach that is well-known and proven in Denmark, and we hope that in this way we will get the best results, without necessarily being related to a specific information product.” Executives representing over two dozen Danish media groups were set to meet last Friday (July 2). A notable absence from the supporting group is publisher Egmont, suggesting any collective agreement is a long way off. “We’re not in a hurry. We need to do this right.” said Mr. Krab-Johansen. There has been no official word on the meeting outcome.

“Changing the format of the negotiations doesn't hide the fact that this is still traditional media companies demanding to be paid for their own failure to innovate and move online quickly enough,” observed technology portal TechDirt (July 1). “It was a bad idea when it was framed as a link tax, and it's a bad idea now it's in the form of collective bargaining.”

There are signs of cracks, generally, in the long-held hostility toward the “Californians.” Dublin-based fintech Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison, to the Economist (June 11), said companies wanted “fewer impractical and ineffective regulations like website cookie banners,” a publisher favorite. "We don't have to lose time because we won't create a European Google or Facebook,” said EU Commissioner for Innovation Mariya Gabriel to Politico EU (June 18). “Let’s be very realistic about that."

See also...

• Hot Topics - Media in Denmark

• Hot Topics - Digital Transitions

• Hot Topics - Google/Alphabet

• Hot Topics - Social Media

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