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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Auf der Suche nach einer Google-Strategie
The more time passes, the more difficult it is to explain the love-hate relationship between European conservatives and Google. Every new policy, both on European and national levels, appears on the surface to be anti-Google but, on closer inspection, appears destined to ensure that Google never has any significant European competitors.
At the end of 2011, the conservative European People's Party group in the European Parliament adopted a paper on the “Internet of Today and Tomorrow,” which included several key pro-Google measures, which are duplicated in the policies of national members of the EPP group.
For example, the EPP paper proposes “auxiliary copyright”, which is a new layer of bureaucracy and expense to be imposed on any company offering news search or news aggregation services on the Internet. This policy is now in the process of being put into place by the conservative/liberal German government. They feel that they need to do this in order to help the hapless publishers whose livelihoods are being ruined by people finding the material that they put on the Internet and... reading it. The unintended consequence of this policy is that it creates a significant new administrative and financial cost on small companies providing aggregation services and preventing any new service from entering the market. Indeed, the only kind of company that will be able to comfortably deal with such burdens will be a large multinational already in the business. Google wins.
The conservatives also propose increased liability for Internet intermediaries for copyright infringements. Google already implements far from perfect technology to remove content that might breach copyright. It blocks content for European consumers not only if it is breaking the law, but even if there is a fear that it might be breaking the law – for example, Laurence Lessig's “website chat” video. While Google is far from happy with the Russian roulette that is European intermediary copyright liability regime, this has helped limit the number of competitors it has to deal with. Yahoo!, as one example, tried to launch a user-generated video service but had to close down this functionality because of the legal uncertainty caused by Italian and Spanish court rulings. Google wins.
Perhaps the most egregious example of pro-Google lobbying and activism comes from the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. The Legal Affairs Committee recently voted on a proposal to make it easier to provide access to so-called “orphan” works – works for which the author or rightsholder cannot readily be found. The Directive should have been proof that European copyright is about supporting culture and not about locking it away from European citizens. Instead, a plethora of amendments adopted in the Committee (albeit in very questionable circumstances) will make access to and the digitisation of orphan works vastly more complicated, costly and bureaucratic. The question then is... which company has got the financial and administrative power to be able to cope with this barrier to European culture? It is unlikely that any European company will be able to build a business model on unlocking access to European culture. Google wins.
Of course, it isn't the case that policy is being deliberately being made to promote the interests of Google. That, however, does not prevent this from being the real world effect.
EPP hearing on the Internet of Today and Tomorrow (1.12.2011)
http://stream.eppgroup.eu/Activities/docs/year2012/hearing_internet_en...
EPP paper - A Fair Internet for All Strengthening Our Citizens' Rights
and Securing a Fair Business Environment in the Internet
http://edri.org/files/11_2011EPPInternetTodayTomorrow_FinalConclusions...
EDRi response to EPP paper (03.2012)
http://edri.org/files/03_2012EDRi_comments_EPPfinal.pdf
Google's auto-delete function (03.2010)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/youtubes-content-id-c-ensorship-...
Lessig's legal yet illegal video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JIp3yStpmg
Strange: Vote Against Freeing Up Orphan Works Achieves 113% Turnout In
EU Committee (16.03.2012)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120315/08382118115/strange-vote-aga...
(Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)