Reuters is reporting:

Alberico Fernandes, head of the Portuguese Confederation of Social Communication Media, told Reuters that the global Internet services group’s Iberian and Portuguese units rejected the demand at a first meeting last week but agreed to continue negotiations.

He said Google “showed readiness to collaborate with media groups to help us modernize and make our content more profitable”, something it had agreed to do in France earlier.

Earlier this year, Google announced an initiative to “help stimulate innovation and increase revenues” for French publishers. Google agreed to create a €60 million fund called the DIgital Publishing Innovation Fund to “help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers.” Google said it would also “deepen” its partnership with French publishers to help increase their online revenues using Google’s ad technology.

The announcement followed a similar one Google made in December, when it reached an agreement with publishers in Belgium after six years of litigation, which saw publishers sue Google claiming that it violated their copyrights by displaying snippets in Google News and linking to cached copies of their pages in Google search.

As part of the agreement in Belgium, Google said it would advertise its services on publishers’ media, and publishers would optimize their use of AdWords. Google would also work with Belgian French-language publishers to “help increase publishers’ revenue,” collaborating on ways to make money with Paywalls and subscriptions, and with AdSense and the Ad Exchange. Google would also work with Belgian publishers to implement Google+ social tools and launch YouTube channels.

At the time, Google said it would like to come to similar terms with publishers around the world. Perhaps Portugal is next.

The TImes filed a brief with the court, calling Meltwater a “free-rider,” which engages in the “wholesale copying and redistribution” of its news reports.The brief is also endorsed by other publishers including Gannett and McClatchy (via PaidContent).

As described on its site, Meltwater offers a product that tracks keywords, phrases, and topics in over 192,000 sources from over 190 countries and 100 languages, and monitors these sources consistently throughout the day. It searches an unlimited amount of keywords throughout the publications, and lets customers receieve daily reports at the timing and frequency of their choosing, “collated into easily digested categories,” as the company describes it.

Interestingly, the brief paints Google News in a positive light, at least in comparison to Meltwater. The publishers claim that the rate of clickthrough is much greater with Google News and similar services than it is for Meltwater.

TechDirt reported on the battle between the AP and Meltwater as far back as last April, saying that if the AP’s argument gains traction, it could “effectively outlaw search engines”. Mike Masnick shared this statement from Meltwater at the time:

Plaintiff’s claims are barred in whole or in part by the doctrine of copyright misuse. Through this Complaint and through other means, Plaintiff seeks to misuse its limited copyright monopoly to extend its control over the Internet search market more generally, thereby improperly expanding the protections afforded by U.S. copyright law. Among other things, AP has misused its copyright monopoly by demanding that third parties take licenses for search results, which do not require a license under U.S. copyright law, and AP has also formed a consortium (called NewsRight) with the purpose of further misusing its copyright monopoly to extract licensing fees that exceed what the law allows.

We’ve discussed Newsright in the past.

Meltwater has actually filed a counter-suit against the AP on the grounds of libel, and has the support of the EFF, and as Jeff John Roberts at PaidContent points out, even the Google-backed Computer and Communications Industry Association has backed Meltwater’s claim that it’s a search engine. He shares the NYT Amicus Brief:

NYT Amicus Brief for Meltwater by

Earlier this month, Meltwater issued a press release saying it was taking the fight to protect Internet users from unintentionally infringing copyright law.

Does Google News do a good job of ranking content as it should be ranked? Does it favor certain publications too much? Tell us what you think.

Computerworld reports that the application was filed a year ago, and published in July, but patent analyst Bill Slawki points out that the updated version of the patent from 2003 gets rid of some of the old media ideals.

Note: We’ve updated as Slawski has pointed this out.

The patent describes a number of metrics, listed as: the number of articles produced by the news source during a given time period, an average length of an article from the news source, the importance of coverage from the news source, a breaking news score, usage pattern, human opinion, circulation statistics, the size of the staff associated with the news source, the number of news bureaus associated with the news source, the number of original named entities the source news produces within a cluster of articles, the breath of coverage, international diversity, writing style, and the like.

Slawki notes:

In February of 2012, a new version of the Google patent was published as a pending application. (A second version was granted in 2012). The third version has the same name as the first version, and it has substantially the same description section as the first version. What’s different is the “claims” section. The claims section of the new version of the patent starts off with:

1-31. (canceled)

Gone are things like the “circulation statistics of the news source,” the “number of bureaus associated with the news source,” and other things associated with the kind of journalism that’s done in print.

Either way, the signals listed are worth taking a look at.

Now, it’s important to note that just because these are listed as such in the patent, it does not mean that this is the exact recipe to Google’s secret News sauce (which is separate from Google web search). Still, it does tell you some of the stuff Google might be thinking about when it comes to news stories. And of course, ranking in Google News can also put you in regular Google web results for hot news items, via Universal Search.

It’s hard to say how much weight any one signal would be given, and that would likely fluctuate, anyway, based on the strength of the remaining signals, and an on article-by-article basis.

The article length metric is painted as a valid one in the Computerworld article, but I wonder how much weight that really should be given. Certainly it depends on the content of any particular article. Additional length does not always make a story better. Sometimes it’s simply added fluff. More text from one source may not be as relevant as less text from the right source.

Here’s what the patent says about that particular metric (labeled as the “second metric”):

The average length may be measured, for example, in words or sentences. In one implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, the second metric may be determined by determining the average length of non-duplicate articles produced by the news source. For example, it may be determined that the average length of an article from CNN is 300 words, while the average article length from Amateur News Network is 150 words. Therefore, the value of the second metric for CNN may be 300 and for Amateur News Network may be 150.

So, based on that description, it would seem that adding additional text to articles regularly, even when it is not needed, would help one better compete with CNN for rankings. Of course, even assuming Google’s secret sauce is comprised of these metrics alone (and remember, “and the like” is listed with the metrics, leading one to believe there are more things Google is looking at), there’s always the chance other signals will be used more strongly in some cases.

Google does like stories to have substance though. If nothing else, the Panda update taught the web as much. Still, as I discussed with ChaCha CEO (and Panda victim) Scott Jones recently, sometimes a quick answer is really better for the user. It really just depends on the case.

I wonder how valid the “number of articles produced by the news source during a given time period” metric is too. If given too much weight, one could see this signal easily burying an original source, which could come from anywhere. It wouldn’t serve the niche blog (which might have a great deal more authority on a subject than a big news outlet like CNN) very well when it covers something first (because it is focused on said niche), if the story is later picked up by said big news outlet.

As Slawki points out, he pretty much made this case about the patent years ago.

This could, however, be offset by the “importance of coverage from the news source” metric, which appears to basically be how many articles a publication produces on a particular subject. For example, a publication writing 500 articles on the crash of the Columbia Shuttle (example given in patent) should rank better for this particular metric than a publication who only put out 10 articles about it. Depending on the story, this could actually benefit the industry-focused niche blog. Again, it comes down to how Google is weighing these signals against one another.

Google’s Matt Cutts recently put out a video discussing news stories – specifically whether it”s better to use one article or multiple articles for developing stories. I’m not sure you could call his take on the subject the definitive answer to such a question, but he seems to prefer the one-page route. Interestingly, this seems almost contrary to the signal described above. Of course, one could see how such a metric could be ripe for abuse, but that all depends on how Google is able to fight this kind of spam. I’d still recommend only writing relevant articles, and not just blasting out a bunch of useless stories about a subject.

You can see further description of each of the metrics by reading the patent here. Scroll down to the “Exemplary Processing” section.

Google recently launched a new News Keywords meta tag to give it an additional signal for ranking news content. This simply allows publications to include keywords they want their stories to be associated with, making the importance of having such keywords in a title a little less important. At least that’s how Google portrayed the addition.

Do you think Google is currently doing a good job of getting the right stories in front of users? Do you often see examples of where Google is getting it wrong? Let us know in the comments.

Reuters called the agreement “a deal on payment of media links”. That’s certainly what it feels like. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt explained the deal:

First, Google has agreed to create a €60 million Digital Publishing Innovation Fund to help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers. Second, Google will deepen our partnership with French publishers to help increase their online revenues using our advertising technology.

This exciting announcement builds on the commitments we made in 2011 to increase our investment in France—including our Cultural Institute in Paris to help preserve amazing cultural treasures such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. These agreements show that through business and technology partnerships we can help stimulate digital innovation for the benefit of consumers, our partners and the wider web.

From the sound of it, however, we shouldn’t expect this to set a precedent for how we’re going to see Google operate around the globe. For one, in Germany (where Google has been facing a simliar battle), publishers aren’t all that interested in a deal like the one in France, as it would be a Google-specific “solution” to their problem, and wouldn’t apply to other search engines.

For that matter, Google is not looking to enter similar agreements with publishers in other countries. TechCrunch reports that Google has no plans to create “digital innovation” funds for publishers outside of France. The publication shares this statement from a Google spokesperson:

“While we are always happy to talk to publishers about additional ideas for driving traffic, engagement, and monetization, we are not currently looking to create a fund outside France.”

Google did reach an agreement with publishers in Belgium in December, following six years of litigation, but it did not involve one of these funds. Rather, as part of that agreement, Google said it would advertise its services on publishers’ media, and publishers would optimize their use of AdWords. Google would also work with Belgian French-language publishers to “help increase publishers’ revenue,” collaborating on ways to make money with Paywalls and subscriptions, and with AdSense and the Ad Exchange. Google would also work with Belgian publishers to implement Google+ social tools and launch YouTube channels.

When Google announced that deal, it said it would like to come to similar terms with publishers around the world, so we may be seeing more of this type of “solution,” rather than Google just funding publishers. As we’re seeing, each country’s publishers has a unique view of the situation, and it doesn’t look like we’re going to see a worldwide standard.

In Brazil, publishers have gone so far as to simply pull out of Google News.

Somewhat surprisingly, Electronic Arts (EA) has topped review charts this year. This is despite being voted “Worst Company in America” by gamers fed-up with day-one DLC and micro-transactions that are popping up in every one of the publisher’s releases.

Though it may be hard to remember due to the scandals over its ending and day-one DLC, Mass Effect 3 was well-reviewed upon release and tops EA’s list of 2012 games with a Metacritic score of 93. The publisher’s average score was 75.2, and none of its games scored a 49 or lower.

The next three publishers on the list are all first-party publishers: Microsoft with a 73, Sony with a 72.3, and Nintendo with a 71.2. Microsoft was led by Mark of the Ninja‘s 91, but was balanced out by poorly rated Kinect and Xbox LIVE Arcade games. Nintendo was similarly balanced by casual-gamer targeted titles, though Xenoblade Chronicles‘ 92 saved it from falling lower on the list. Similar to EA, Sony also did not have any scores fall below 50, though a majority of its titles fell into the “average” range from 50 to 75.

Capcom (70.4), Warner Bros (70.6), Ubisoft (68.2), Konami (69), Sega (69.9), and Activision Blizzard (64.4) rounded out the top ten. Activision’s highest-rated title was Diablo III (88), but the publisher was brought low by movie tie-in games such as 007 Legends, which managed a 25 Metacritic score.

As for the “mid-size” publisher (those that released between 7 and 14 titles) rankings, Take-Two Interactive (83.1), Telltale Games (83.9), and Square Enix (75.2) led the list. Telltale Games was buoyed by each episode of its The Walking Dead adventure game, which managed to win quite a few game of the year awards.

Google agreed to create a €60 million fund called the DIgital Publishing Innovation Fund to “help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers.” Google says it will also “deepen” its partnership with French publishers to help increase their online revenues using Google’s ad technology.

Though Google has indicated that it hopes to reach similar agreements with publishers in other countries, it doesn’t look like those in Germany are going for it. Germany’s The Local reports that German newspapers have rejected the idea of copying the agreement Google made with French publishers:

The German association of newspaper publishers (BDZV) said the French agreement did have some positive points. The major of these was that it was established and accepted “that the aggregation of content from third parties as a business model costs them money,” said Anja Pasquay, BDZV spokeswoman on Sunday.

But she said a drawback was that the French solution only referred to Google. “The publishers there have no legal recourse against other aggregators who operate in the same fashion – or those who will do so in the future,” she said.

Back in December, Google made a deal with publishers in Belgium. While not exactly the same as the one it made in France, it seems that German publishers would take similar issue with such a deal.

Google and publishers in France have not been seeing eye to eye for quite some time. In October, the company spoke out about a proposal by French lawmakers, backed by publishers, which would seek for search engines to license content in order to have the privilege of linking to it.

At the time, Google’s Director of Public Policy in France said, “The web has led to an explosion of content creation, by both professional and citizen journalists. So it’s not a secret that we think a law like the one proposed in France and Germany would be very damaging to the internet. We have said so publicly for three years.”

“In order to shed light on the reasons that lead us to believe that this law is detrimental to French users, innovation on the Internet and ultimately to the news publishers themselves, we decided to post the note in its entirety,” he said. “We have always been and remain committed to collaborate with French Publishers associations as they experiment and develop sustainable economic models on the Internet.”

On Friday, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, announced with President Francois Hollande, two initiatives to “help stimulate innovation and increase revenues” for French publishers.

Reuters reports it as “a deal on payment of media links,” as described by a Reuters journalist present at the signing.

Google has agreed to create a €60 million fund called the DIgital Publishing Innovation Fund to “help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers.” Google says it will also “deepen” its partnership with French publishers to help increase their online revenues using Google’s ad technology.

“This exciting announcement builds on the commitments we made in 2011 to increase our investment in France—including our Cultural Institute in Paris to help preserve amazing cultural treasures such as the Dead Sea Scrolls,” said Schmidt. “These agreements show that through business and technology partnerships we can help stimulate digital innovation for the benefit of consumers, our partners and the wider web.”

The announcement follows a similar one Google made in December, when it reached an agreement with publishers in Belgium after six years of litigation, which saw publishers sue Google claiming that it violated their copyrights by displaying snippets in Google News and linking to cached copies of their pages in Google search.

As part of the agreement in Belgium, Google said it would advertise its services on publishers’ media, and publishers would optimize their use of AdWords. Google would also work with Belgian French-language publishers to “help increase publishers’ revenue,” collaborating on ways to make money with Paywalls and subscriptions, and with AdSense and the Ad Exchange. Google would also work with Belgian publishers to implement Google+ social tools and launch YouTube channels.

At the time, Google had indicated it would like to come to similar terms with publishers around the world, and it looks like today’s announcement is the next step in that.

It’s going to be quite interesting to see how Google deals with the rest of the countries with publishers who have voiced similar concerns as those in France.

There is some great content out there, but is there any that is so good that you would pay just to link to it? Keep in mind, we’re not talking about republishing that content and linking to the original source. We’re not talking about writing a blog post, maybe pulling a quote or two, and linking to the original source. We’re not even talking about pulling snippets and linking to content in Google fashion (which has certainly been a controversial topic in the publishing world for years). No, we’re just talking about a simple link.

Would you ever pay to link to any piece of content? If so, in what kind of scenario would payment for links be justified? Share your thoughts in the comments.

There was a bit of an uproar last week (understandably), when a story made the rounds, claiming that the National Newspapers of Ireland, a group representing 16 national daily, Sunday and weekly newspapers and 25 local and regional newspapers, is enforcing a policy requiring any site linking to one of its member publicationsto pay at least 300 Euros (and more than that for multiple links).

Lawyer Simon McGarr posted an article about attempts from the organization to get money from one of his clients, a domestic violence charity, for linking to newspaper content. McGarr wrote:

This year the Irish newspaper industry asserted, first tentatively and then without any equivocation, that links -just bare links like this one- belonged to them. They said that they had the right to be paid to be linked to. They said they had the right to set the rates for those links, as they had set rates in the past for other forms of licensing of their intellectual property. And then they started a campaign to lobby for unauthorised linking to be outlawed.

These assertions were not merely academic positions. The Newspaper Industry (all these newspapers) had its agent write out demanding money. They wrote to Women’s Aid, (amongst others) who became our clients when they received letters, emails and phone calls asserting that they needed to buy a licence because they had linked to articles in newspapers carrying positive stories about their fundraising efforts. These are the prices for linking they were supplied with:

1 – 5 €300.00
6 – 10 €500.00
11 – 15 €700.00
16 – 25 €950.00
26 – 50 €1,350.00
50 + Negotiable

McGarr’s story was picked up by Slashdot, and was referenced by media industry analysts like Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen, and Matthew Ingram, who wrote a good piece about the situation.

McGarr called the whole thing: “2012: The year Irish newspapers tried to destroy the web.” He has since followed it up with some Twitter reaction, and an update about the policy from Newspaper Licensing Ireland (a group set up by the Newspapers of Ireland), who issued a statement on Friday.

He quotes the group as saying, “For personal use: NLI never requires or requests a licence for personal use of newspaper content.For commercial use: NLI does not require a licence from any organisation which only displays or transmits links to newspaper content. A licence is required when there is other reproduction of the newspaper content, such as display of PDFs or text extracts.”

So, apparently still no quoting, commonly considered to be fair use (within reason).

“Of more general social value, the damaging assertion that permission was required (and could be refused) to link to another website has been abandoned,” wrote McGarr. “For the sake of the country’s free exchange of views, this is a significant development.”

The group put out a much longer press release on the matter. Here’s what that says under “Our Position on Linking”:

Some of the discussion over the last few days has been around whether a hyperlink from one website to another, in itself and without any more, constitutes copyright infringement. That exact issue was in fact one raised a number of months ago in the Consultation Paper issued by the Copyright Review Committee appointed by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation to review existing copyright legislation. In the Consultation Paper, the Committee expressly requested that submissions would be made by any interested parties on the issue and as to whether our existing copyright law should be changed so as to specifically include a positive statement to the effect that linking in itself, without more, does not constitute an infringement of copyright legislation. This request for submissions was made by the Committee in the context where the Committee itself states in its Consultation Paper that there are “divided” views from Courts as to whether the display of links in itself is an infringement of copyright. The Consultation Paper was made publicly available and anyone was free to make a submission on it.

NNI made a submission to the effect that our view of existing legislation is that the display and transmission of links does constitute an infringement of copyright and our existing copyright law should not be amended in the manner discussed in the Consultation Paper. We understand that some people do not agree with that interpretation of the law. Equally, there are others who do agree with it. As already indicated, the Committee itself acknowledged that there are divided views on this. We await, in due course, the final report from the Copyright Review Committee and await sight of whatever they might say or recommend on the point.

It is important, in fairness to us and our members, to specifically note here that the submission made on behalf of NNI to the Copyright Review Committee also expressly recognised that there is a distinction between the sending and receipt of links for personal use on the one hand and the sending and receipt of links for commercial purposes on the other (despite the fact that the same legal principles apply to both). NNI specifically stated that its members accept that linking for personal use is part of how individuals communicate on-line and that our members have no issue with that. Emphasis ours.

As Ingram points out, the statement from the group “confirms that it is lobbying to have Irish copyright laws define links as copyright infringement.”

As far as the distinction between personal and commercial use, where exactly is that distinction in today’s online world of social media, blogging, citizen journalism, and content creation and curation?

The whole thing is kind of ironic, because even many of the major media corporations of the world, would like to see more linking to their own properties. Look at this case from last year where a guy had to go to court for linking to copyright infringing content.

The argument about links has been going on for many years now. In the end, there is always the question, do links not drive traffic to the content in question? There are many publications on the web who would love to be linked to more (You can count us among them. By all means, link.). Why is the newspaper industry so resistant to the way of the web, even as the industry embraces it as a platform? Is it just that their content is so good that online-only publications could never match the quality? I’ve seen plenty of original reporting and breaking news coming from online-only outlets. I can’t think of too many who would try to charge for a link, or even a link and a snippet or quote or “text extract” within the bounds of ethical fair use.

What content is so good that people should pay for the right to link to it? Tell us what you think.

Now, however, Google has made an agreement which could have ramifications for how publishers in other countries proceed.

Google put out a blog post about the agreement, painting the whole thing as a win win situation, but it may not be that simple. While it may not have been as bad as it could have been for Google, it’s likely a bigger win for publishers. Jeff John Roberts at PaidContent points to some other reports, raising a pretty interesting point. He writes:

Google’s announcement says the parties are “collaborating” to make money but also takes pains to note that “we are not paying the Belgian publishers or authors to include their content in our services”. Oh, really?

US press outlets have noted Google is paying all the legal fees but have generally framed the deal as a tie or a win for Google. The Europeans, however, have been less gracious. Le Monde‘s triumphant account begins by explaining that the Belgian papers “forced Google to bend” and that Google will “compensate” papers and journalists to the tune of “2 to 3 percent of sales” — or “around 5 million euros” ($6.5 million).

As he notes, it seems very likely that publishers in other countries who have been fighting similar battles (albeit not always in the same fashion) will pursue similar payoffs. Google, as it mentioned in its blog post, will also be advertising heavily on publishers’ sites, giving them who knows how much more in revenue, though the company says publishers will also be using Google’s ad products.

In the post, Google Belgium Managing Director Thierry Geerts said, “Many win-win ways exist for Google and publishers to join forces in the new digital universe. We drive traffic to publishers – four billion clicks a month around the globe, offering publishers 100,000 business opportunities per minute. Our AdSense program pays out $7 billion a year to web publishers worldwide. Publishers remain free, with the addition of just a few lines of code, to pull out of Google web search and Google News. Publishers also remain free to determine whether to put their articles discovered through Google search behind a paywall.”

“Instead of continuing to argue over legal interpretations, we have agreed on the need to set aside past grievances in favour of collaboration,” he added. “This is the same message we would like to send to other publishers around the world – its much more beneficial for us to work together than to fight.” (Emphasis ours)

Google just may be sending a message to publishers indeed. It just might not be quite as rosy as the one painted in Google’s announcement.

This, as you may know, is a pretty standard fight for Google from country to country, as publishers seek more money for their content throughout the world. Some countries in Europe have proposed laws that would require Google to pay publishers to license content for this purpose, something Google is obviously completely against. In Brazil, publishers have pulled out of Google News on their own.

In Belgium, they’ve worked things out.

“We have reached an agreement that ends all litigation and represents great news for both us and the newspapers,” said Thierry Geerts, Managing Director, Google Belgium. “We continue to believe that our services respect newspaper copyrights and it is important to note that we are not paying the Belgian publishers or authors to include their content in our services.”

Google will advertise its services on the publishers’ media, and publishers will optimize their use of AdWords, Google says, adding that it will work with Belgian French-language publishers to help increase publishers’ revenue, collaborating on way to make money with Paywalls and subscriptions, and with AdSense and the AdExchange. Google says it will also work with publishers to implement Google+ social tools, including Hangouts on news sites, and launching YouTube channels. Finally, Google and publishers will collaborate on the distribution of original content on tablets and smartphones.

“This agreement comes at an important moment, in the midst of a debate how best the newspaper industry should adapt to the new digital age,” says Geerts. “As the Economist recently reported under the enticing headline, Letting the Baby Dance, many governments including Ireland, the Netherlands, Australia, UK and Canada are considering or have gone ahead with Internet-friendly copyright reforms. At the same time, some European countries including Germany and France are considering an extension of copyright protection to excerpts of newspaper articles appearing in search engines’ results. The European Journalism Centre recently outlined why both Google and newspapers would be best off cooperating and The Reach Group published independent research reaching a similar conclusion.”

“We agree,” he adds. “Many win-win ways exist for Google and publishers to join forces in the new digital universe. We drive traffic to publishers – four billion clicks a month around the globe, offering publishers 100,000 business opportunities per minute. Our AdSense program pays out $7 billion a year to web publishers worldwide. Publishers remain free, with the addition of just a few lines of code, to pull out of Google web search and Google News. Publishers also remain free to determine whether to put their articles discovered through Google search behind a paywall.”

Google has indicated it would like to come to similar terms with publishers around the world.