As should be obvious to nearly everyone with an internet connection these days, Google is both really useful and kind of terrifying given the scope of how much Google knows about nearly all of us and how much it controls what we know. The fact that Google’s list of corporate ambitions includes things like ‘owning the internet’ and owning the internet’s pipes doesn’t really help. And then there’s the killer robots and wage-theft. All in all, it’s not hard to hope Google gets Scroogled. Soon.
But there’s more than one way to screw Google and not everyone that fears Google is some random consumer. Major corporate entities also fear Google and it just so happens that a coalition of many of the largest publisher in Europe has a plan to slay the Google Dragon they fear so much. Unfortunately, this coalition might slay “fair use” across the internet in the process. That’s right, copyright law could be getting a big ‘upgrade’ in the digital realm as part of a new anti-Google initiative in a way that upgrades the bottom line of the biggest publishers and downgrades everyone else’s general ability to find news articles and talk about the world. This is happening.
So here’s a quick summary of what just happened:
The European parliament is set to vote a motion proposing that Google and other internet technology companies be broken up in the EU. The parliament itself can’t break up these firms, so it’s really more a plea to EU regulators. Considering that Google controls 95% search engine market share in the EU, it’s not a shocking move and maybe even appropriate.
What is shocking is manner in which the new laws that, right now, are focused on rein in Google will also radical overhaul of how we use the internet and, even more consequently, it might change how we read the news and understand our world. And it’s the EU’s major publishers that are effectively writing these new laws. THAT’s what’s so shocking. The EU’s new “competition minister”, Germany’s Günther Oettinger, is already calling for reviving something that’s been in the European publisher’s wish-list for years: implementing at the EU-level laws that have been percolating across EU member states that make Google and other “news aggregators” pay a fees to publishers for listing their news headlines and a tiny snippets on their sites.
Google’s competitors are also calling for regulating Google’s search engine algorithms and there’s even the possibility that Google might even be forced to share customer information with rivals if that information is deemed “indispensable” for competition. These are the kinds of new rules Google’s rivals are asking for and it appears to be the case that the EU parliament is now planning on making many of these industry initiatives law. Soon. Which one’s will become law? That remains to be seen, but big changes are coming to the EU’s internet regime and, in the words of the EU competition minster Günther Oettinger:
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“We are seeking unified data protection across Europe, one which American companies will have to abide by as well. If this is not the case there is scope for punitive measures and fines,” the digital economy commissioner warned. On the copyright question he also said, slightly mysteriously: “We want European copyright legislation and we want companies like Google to adhere to European copyright standards. We have the legal jurisdiction for this and we want to bring a degree of fairness into the relationship between the users, Google and its competitors.”
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In other words, making these new EU changes apply to US firms (and presumably firms everywhere else), means the EU is potentially going to change how the internet and copyright law work globally (the rest of the world is interested in EU news too, after all). Again, soon.
All of this is happening as part of an initiative to rein in Google. And since Google is so big and scary these days, it means some potentially very big and scary new rules and regulations that impact much more than just Google could become the new law of the internet (or at least large parts of the internet) under the banner of slaying the Google Dragon. Dragon slaying might come with a lot of associated fanfare and deservedly so. Dragon slaying is hard. But that doesn’t mean others kinds of corporate beasts aren’t already waiting in the wings. And and doesn’t mean those beasts didn’t get the fancy idea of going into the dragon slaying business themselves:
Financial Times
November 21, 2014 6:23 pm
Google break-up plan emerges from BrusselsHenry Mance, Alex Barker and Murad Ahmed
The European parliament is poised to call for a break-up of Google, in one of the most brazen assaults so far on the technology group’s power.
The gambit increases the political pressure on the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, to take a tougher line on Google, either its antitrust investigation into the company or through the introduction of laws to curb its reach.
A draft motion seen by the Financial Times says that “unbundling [of] search engines from other commercial services” should be considered as a potential solution to Google’s dominance. It has the backing of the parliament’s two main political blocs, the European People’s Party and the Socialists.
A vote to effectively single out a big US company for censure is extremely rare in the European parliament and is in part a reflection of how Germany’s politicians have turned against Google this year.
German centre-right and centre-left politicians are the dominant force in the legislature and German corporate champions, from media groups to telecoms, are among the most vocal of Google’s critics.
Since his nomination to be the EU’s digital commissioner, Germany’s Günther Oettinger has suggested hitting Google with a levy for displaying copyright-protected material; has raised the idea of forcing its search results to be neutral; and voiced concerns about its provision of software for cars.
Google has become a a lightning rod for European concerns over Silicon Valley, with consumers, regulators and politicians assailing the company over issues ranging from its commercial dominance to its privacy policy. It has reluctantly accepted the European Court of Justice’s ruling on the right to be forgotten, which requires it to consider requests not to index certain links about people’s past.
The European parliament has no formal power to split up companies, but has increasing influence on the commission, which initiates all EU legislation. The commission has been investigating concerns over Google’s dominance of online search for five years, with critics arguing that the company’s rankings favour its own services, hitting its rivals’ profits.
“Unbundling cannot be excluded,” said Andreas Schwab, a German MEP who is one of the motion’s backers.
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Unbundling of services. That’s clearly one of the top priority of the EU parliament’s new initiative, led by a coalition of German MEPs and the new EU digital commissioner, Günther Oettinger.
But as we’ll see in the excerpts below, unbundling is really just one of the goals EU MEPs and Oettinger are going to be fighting for in the coming months and years. EU publishing giants, led by the German giants like Axel Springer, are calling for a fundamental overhaul of how internet copyright works, at least for companies operating in the EU. It’s an agenda that would force Google to pay publishers for using their headlines and snippets while linking to their articles. Interestingly, just earlier that month, before the EU parliament called for breaking up Google and the EU’s competition minister “suggested hitting Google with a levy for displaying copyright-protected material”, German publishing giant Axel Springer appeared to have given up on that very plan. So this recent announcement that the EU was going to attempt to implement new copyright laws that would charge Google fees for news headlines must have been extremely revieving to Axel Spring and the other German publishers that were suing Google for similar copyright fees very unsuccessfully:
ZDNet
German publishing giant Axel Springer caves in over Google news snippets rowSummary: Could the long-running battle between the publishing giant and the search engine finally be at an end?
By Liam Tung for The German View | November 6, 2014 — 10:12 GMT (02:12 PST)German publisher Axel Springer has withdrawn its demand that Google pay to publish news snippets from its publications, in the latest twist to the scuffle over copyright fees.
Under a new ‘free license’, Axel Springer is allowing Google to display portions of text from news stories published by four of its sites: welt.de, computerbild.de, sportbild.de, and autobild.de.
The move by the German publishing giant follows a standoff over Germany’s ancillary copyright law which Axel Springer argued enabled it to demand licensing fees from search engines like Google for republishing portions of a story. Google has maintained that its service benefits publishers and so it should not have to pay a fee.
In June, fee-collecting body VG Media — a consortium of publishers including Axel Springer — sued Google over the issue. Google responded in October by halting its indexing of news snippets and thumbnails of VG Media content, instead only displaying headlines. At the time, VG Media said it was being blackmailed by Google.
Announcing the free license for Google yesterday, Axel Springer said that traffic to the sites had declined by nearly 40 percent since Google stopped producing snippets and thumbnails on October 23. It also claimed that traffic to the German sites from Google News was down by almost 80 percent.
Withholding the free license was part of the publisher’s plan to demonstrate what it sees as Google abusing its dominant power to force publishers into licensing their content for free. As Axel Springer noted, its aim was to “document the effects of the downgrading of search results as part of ongoing legal proceedings to enforce the existing press ancillary copyright law”.
Axel Springer was one of the primary forces lobbying for the ancillary copyright bill, which came into effect on August 1 last year. What hasn’t been clear is whether the bill granted the German publisher a right to demand fees, which Google has never paid.
At its quarterly earnings update yesterday, the publisher’s CEO Dr Mathias Döpfner called the move “the most successful failure we have ever experienced”.
“As sad as it is, we now know very precisely just how far-reaching the consequences of the discrimination are, as well as the real effects of Google’s market power and how Google punishes everyone who exercises a right that has been granted to them by the German Bundestag.”
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The battle over copyright is likely far from over, however. Incoming digital chief for the European Commission, Günther Oettinger, last week suggested Google be slugged with a copyright tax if it uses European intellectual property.
Well that clearly didn’t work out well for Axel Springer. Google de-indexed Axel Springer-owned content after Axel Springer sued for headline/snippet fess and the publisher’s traffic declined 40 percent, including an 80 decline in traffic from Google News. It certainly demonstrates the power of Google News in driving traffic to German news sites and it’s a reminder that the people critical of Google’s monopolistic size do have a very valid point. Google is wildly important. That’s one reason the EU parliament’s new plan for breaking up Google and/unbundling its services might have some significant successes. Google really has gobbled up much of the European digital market for core services like searching.
A New Standard (For Squeezing Websites)
And yet it’s hard to ignore the fact that forcing Google to pay German publishers for headlines and blurbs is just about the scariest thing you could imagine for the internet if that catches on. How far is the “pay us for headlines and blurbs” trend going to go? We’ll have to wait and see but, again, it’s with noting that EU competition minister Oettinger said, “We are seeking unified data protection across Europe, one which American companies will have to abide by as well. If this is not the case there is scope for punitive measures and fines”:
GigaOm
European Parliament reportedly wants Google to be broken up
David Meyer
Nov. 21, 2014 — 11:10 AM PSTThe European Parliament is about to call for the “unbundling” of Google’s search business from the rest of its operations, as one potential way to challenge the company’s market dominance, according to a report in the Financial Times.
The FT said Friday that it has seen a draft motion that has the backing of the European People’s Party and the S&D (the Socialists), which are by far the two biggest blocs in the Parliament, with a combined weight of around 55 percent. The motion apparently urges the European Commission – which unlike the Parliament does have the authority to break up companies – to “take a tougher line on Google”, in the FT’s words.
The Parliament reportedly would like the Commission to tackle Google’s dominance either through its ongoing antitrust probe into the firm’s search tactics – currently on pause as new competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager re-evaluates where things stand — or by some other means. It is worth noting that Vestager’s predecessor, Joaquin Almunia, was of the opinion that Google could not be broken up under existing competition legislation. Then again, he was also keener than everyone else to agree an early settlement with the firm, and ultimately failed to do so.
Google has a much higher share of the search market in Europe – well over 90 percent – than it does in the U.S., which is why its practices matter so much there. Some of the criticisms call out clearly anticompetitive practices, such as Google promoting its own services over those of rivals in its results, but others have been piling into the case in recent months.
Of particular note is the campaign against Google by press publishers, particularly those in Germany. The new digital economy commissioner, the German Günther Oettinger, has the copyright reform brief and has indicated that he wants to take the publishers’ side in their quest to extract money from the firm for using snippets of their text in its search results.
Beyond antitrust, Google has also repeatedly shrugged off data protection fines across Europe, as national privacy regulators try desperately but unsuccessfully to force a change in its ways. Oettinger said in a Thursday public Q&A session with the German Press Association (DPA) that “if companies based outside the EU want to operate with their digital services within the European digital market and have access to data which they then store or evaluate, then they must adhere to our rules.”
“We are seeking unified data protection across Europe, one which American companies will have to abide by as well. If this is not the case there is scope for punitive measures and fines,” the digital economy commissioner warned. On the copyright question he also said, slightly mysteriously: “We want European copyright legislation and we want companies like Google to adhere to European copyright standards. We have the legal jurisdiction for this and we want to bring a degree of fairness into the relationship between the users, Google and its competitors.”
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As the article points out, Google has repeated flouted the EU’s data-privacy laws “as national privacy regulators try desperately but unsuccessfully to force a change in its ways”. And that’s certainly a large concern. Google’s size and the Panoptican-ish nature of its business model makes it legitimately scary (not to mention Google’s ever-growing military contracting business). But is creating an internet model imposed at the EU level where EU publishers, possibly all EU publishers someday, get paid for headlines or blurbs really part of the solution we want to be pursuing? Doesn’t that threaten to make search engines biased towards fewer news results in general? Do we really want to set up a legal precedent at the EU level where headlines and blurbs are a fee-based luxury?
If the fees are limited to Google and other giants who cares. Google will be fine and the publishers could probably use the money more. But it seems highly questionable to assume that these fees are going to be restricted to large search engines and big ‘news aggregators’ in the long run. At least not as long as it’s the big publishers that are leading the way.
And now that Günther Oettinger has made it one of his goals to champion the agenda of the German publishers, keep in mind that early indications were that those publishers had far grander agenda the headlines/snippets fees:
GigaOm
Google lashes out at German copyright ‘threat’
David Meyer
Aug. 21, 2012 — 8:39 AM PSTGoogle has launched a broadside against a proposed law in Germany that would see search engines forced to pay license fees for linking people to news stories.
Well, actually that’s slightly inaccurate: the draft law would make search engines pay for reproducing newspapers’ headlines and first paragraphs. So, take those away and the links are fine. Even if nobody will have the faintest idea what they’re linking to.
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Oberbeck also pointed out the obvious: that Google send readers to the publishers’ sites. And that anyone who doesn’t want their content to be indexed by Google can just throw a robots.txt file in there. And that publishers make money off Adsense.
But wait, let’s back up. To appreciate the full absurdity of the situation, we should take in a little history.
The German publishing houses, particularly Axel Springer, are very powerful in their country, with relatively strong influence in government circles. As Matthias Spielkamp of the copyright news site iRights put it to me:
“If you look at the U.S., if print houses there want something, they are up against American companies like Google and Yahoo. Here we have local publishers that are enormously powerful and are trying to target U.S. companies. I wouldn’t say it’s anti-American – it’s just that German politicians are much more inclined to protect German publishers’ interests when balancing that with a [foreign] company or industry.”
A couple of years ago, a leaked draft showed what plans the publishing houses were pitching to their friends in the coalition government. The first official draft legislation showed up in April. What it proposed was breathtaking.
The government was calling for a form of ‘ancillary copyright’ to be brought in, that would force companies to pay publishers license fees for using their work in a commercial setting. As in, employers would have to pay up for letting their employees read the news online at work.
German industry bodies were predictably apoplectic, as were opposition parties, and the government beat a hasty retreat. The second draft, which appeared in the last couple of months, drastically narrowed the scope of the legislation, so that it would only apply to search engines.
So now Google is furious for being picked on, when it actually drives traffic to the publishers.
And the publishers aren’t happy either – Anja Pasquay, a spokeswoman for the Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers (BDZV), told me that the second draft “won’t help”, and her organization would rather see a revival of the first draft.
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On balance, it’s difficult not to take Google’s side on this one. The whole idea of this kind of ancillary copyright is ridiculous, and it puts the likes of Axel Springer in a very poor light indeed.
It’s not as though Axel Springer isn’t plunging headfirst into the web industry itself – only today, it announced the purchase of an online news and classified portal.
The German publishing giants are big enough to compete in the real world. Sure, it’s tough monetizing free web content. But cooking up hokey and self-defeating new copyright laws is a pretty shabby way to go about it.
Let’s hope this was an exageration, but once again:
The government was calling for a form of ‘ancillary copyright’ to be brought in, that would force companies to pay publishers license fees for using their work in a commercial setting. As in, employers would have to pay up for letting their employees read the news online at work.
And when that proposal was cut out of the first draft of the German legislation:
And the publishers aren’t happy either – Anja Pasquay, a spokeswoman for the Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers (BDZV), told me that the second draft “won’t help”, and her organization would rather see a revival of the first draft.
And now we have an EU digital commissioner Oettinger is openly expressing interest in reviving the publishing giants’ ‘headlines/blurb royalties’ request.
The French (and Spanish and Belgian) Connection
So just how crazy might this going to get? Keep in mind that while Germany’s officials are clearly leading the way on this initiative, this is far from being a Germany-only project. Spain, France, and Belgium are already making Google pay similar fees. So if there’s a push to make this the model for the entire EU there’s already plenty of precedent:
GigaOm
Why Google’s settlement with French publishers is bad for the web
Mathew Ingram
Feb. 4, 2013 — 8:10 AM PSTAfter much diplomatic maneuvering and a series of face-saving gestures on both sides, Google finally signed an agreement with French newspaper publishers late Friday that puts to rest a long-standing legal battle over Google’s behavior in excerpting stories on Google News, which the French have argued is copyright infringement. But while the search giant may be relieved to put the whole kerfuffle behind it, there’s an argument to be made that it has actually done more harm than good — not only to its own interests, but to the interests of the open web as well.
Veteran tech blogger Lauren Weinstein describes this risk well in a recent blog post, in which he calls what the government of France is doing “extortion,” and warns of the long-term risk of Google acceding to such demands that it pay for the simple act of linking and excerpting content:
“There is little evidence to suggest that ‘paying off’ a party making unreasonable demands will do much more than quiet them for the moment, and they’ll almost inevitably be back for more. And more. And more. Even worse, caving in such situations signals other parties that you may be susceptible to their making the same (or even more outrageous) demands, and this mindset can easily spread from attacking deep-pocketed firms to decimating much smaller companies, organizations, or even individuals.”
As my colleague Jeff Roberts noted in his post on the Google settlement, the French originally wanted the company to pay as much as $100 million, and wanted almost all of that to go into a fund that publishers could use for their own purposes, rather than into ad buying or other joint ventures. And he also noted that with the latest deal — which comes on the heels of a similar settlement with Belgium — Google is sending a very obvious message to other countries such as Germany that it is prepared to pay.
Google’s tactics set a dangerous precedent
This may make sense for Google, since it is trying to avoid as much litigation as possible, and wants to be on good terms with European countries (where it has already run into multiple roadblocks and barriers around services like Street View and privacy concerns). But I think Weinstein is right when he argues that this is only going to encourage countries like Germany — and plenty of others as well — to assume that if they push Google on the subject of linking, they will get cash.
Google wants these payments to be seen as a helping hand to publishers, which is why the fund is described as ““supporting digital publishing initiatives,”,” and why it puts so much emphasis on the strategic partnership angle. But regardless of the picture it is trying to paint, the settlement is being described by many as a “pay for links” deal, and that perception is dangerous. As Weinstein puts it:
“France’s complaints regarding Google related to activities that are absolutely part and parcel of the fundamental and fully expected nature of the open Internet when dealing with publicly accessible Web sites [and its] success at obtaining financial and other concessions from Google associated with ordinary search and linking activities sends a loud, clear, and potentially disastrous message around the planet, a message that could doom the open Internet and Web that we’ve worked so long and hard to create.”
In other words, this issue is much bigger than just Google. While it may serve Google’s purposes to settle with France and Belgium, and perhaps other countries as well, all that does is encourage other governments and companies to see payment for links as an appropriate strategy. How long until U.S. newspapers and publishers start to argue the same thing? What about other companies? Director Harvey Weinstein (no relation to Lauren) said in a recent interview that the U.S. should have legislation to make this a reality — and Google is helping that kind of thinking gain momentum.
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And just a month after Google made that settlement with France big publishers, Germany’s lower house passed a bill similar to what Axel Springer was asking for but somewhat watered down:
Ars Technica
Germany wants Google to pay for news citations, passes re-publishing bill
Google can post “short excerpts” freely—but what that means, nobody knows
by Cyrus Farivar — Mar 1 2013, 7:00pm CSTThe lower house of the German parliament, known as the Bundestag, has approved a new bill that would require search engines to pay a license fee for re-publishing content longer than “individual words or short excerpts.” The bill passed by a vote of 293 to 243, with three abstentions.
However, the law does not define exactly what such a “snippet” would entail. For the law to take effect, it would need to be ratified by the upper house of the German parliament, the Bundesrat. By all accounts, this bill is a watered-down version of what had originally been lobbied for by the German publishing and media industry.
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Yes, the bill was a water-down version on what German publishers asks for since it was somewhat vague in terms of what constitutes a “snippet”. But now that the EU parliament and EU digital commissioner are openly prioritizing the passage of something similar to this law, but for the entire EU, it’s looking like may find out soon! This “ancillary copyright” law went into effect for Germany back in August 2013. It’s the same law that grants German publishers the exclusive rights to commercially exploit their products online and Google and other search engines and ‘news aggregators’ now have to pay a license fee to publisher if they listed more of an article than “single words and smallest excerpts”. And as we saw above, it’s the same law that Axel Springer and others sued Google over when Google refused to pay the fees, leading to Google dropping Axel Springer and other plaintiffs from Google’s search indexing (and the subsequent fee waiver issued by Axel Springer earlier this monthth so Google would start linking to them again).
11 Percent. Just For These Guys.
So how much are the publishers hoping to get from Google if everything goes well for their in thier ancillary persuits? Well, back in June, we learned another fun-fact about what we might expect from the EU’s copyright regime: Several German media giants, including Axel Springer (but not Spiegel Online, Handelsblatt, Sueddeutsche.de, Stern.de or Focus), sued Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft for 11 percent of their “gross sales, including foreign sales” that come “directly and indirectly from making excerpts from online newspapers and magazines public.” That 11 percent would presumably be set aside for just those German media giants that participated in the lawsuit. The rest of the EU will have to fight over the remainining 89% of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s “gross sales, including foreign sales” that come “directly and indirectly from making excerpts from online newspapers and magazines public.”
Breaking Up As A Last Resort. A Last Resort That Was Just Chosen
So some very signficant changes could be in store for the European internet markets and the US markets based on Günther Oettinger’s comments above about making US companies abide by this new framework too. And why wouldn’t this apply to the world? So we’re now looking at a new source of global legal pressure to allow major publishers to start charging for news snippets. One of the fun parts about globalization is the crap can get globalized too as laws get harmonized and publishers everywhere would LOVE this.
And it’s not just a cut of the revenues from companies like Google and other ‘news aggregators’ that are on the horizon for the internet. Back in July, the Financial Times issued a rather interesting report suggesting that hinting at what else to expect: a 42-page internal review of the European Commission’s probe into Google’s practices by the German competition/cartel authority (the Bundeskartellamt) suggested that Google’s proposed settlement with the EU over competition concerns (a settlement that did not involve fees for snippets at all) was adequate and as far as EU law could go. But that initial opinion by the Bundeskartellamt was been clearly ignored:
Financial Times
Brussels reaches legal limits on Google antitrust settlementBy Alex Barker in Brussels
July 21, 2014 4:56 pmGoogle’s draft antitrust deal with Brussels reaches the limits of what is allowed in EU law, according to a German policy paper highlighting the constraints on European politicians railing against US tech groups.
A 42-page internal review by Germany’s competition authority, seen by the Financial Times, offers a cautious assessment for ministers seeking legal means to curb the clout of US internet companies and safeguard consumer data.
At a moment when Google is political siege in Germany, the Bundeskartellamt offers qualified support for the European Commission’s heavily criticised probe into whether the US group rigs search results to divert traffic from rivals.
It argues that Google’s draft EU settlement is a “suitable approach to counter the barriers to competitors” and says the commission went as far as is possible under existing EU competition law.
The paper offers some legislative options – at both national and EU level – to toughen antitrust law and reinforce the Brussels’ draft pact, but warns that steps to break up Google and “unbundle” services would be harmful and misplaced.
French and German ministers have demanded Brussels toughen up its planned settlement or serve charges against the US group. Yet Joaquín Almunia, the EU competition chief, is still expected to push for the pact to be formally adopted this autumn if he thinks he can overcome reservations of some EU commissioners and a barrage of criticism from Google’s rivals.
Even if the search pact is adopted, Mr Almunia has made clear to colleagues that Google would face antitrust scrutiny in other areas – such as YouTube and its Android mobile operating system – and potentially face legislative curbs over data protection or copyright.
In May Sigmar Gabriel, the German economy minister and vice-chancellor, called for radical steps to curb its market power, including as a last resort the possible break-up of Google and its regulation like a utility. His intervention came shortly after the Bundeskartellamt delivered its paper to his ministry.
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Yes, back in May, German Vice Chancellor and Minister of Economic Affairs Sigmar Gabriel called for radical steps to curb Google’s market power shortly after the competition/cartel ministry (the Bundeskartellamt) made its 42 page internal report recommending the EU commission’s anti-trust investigation accept Google’s proposed settlement over claims of unfair search results. On top of that, Gabriel also suggested that Google might need to be regulated like a utility.
A Search Utility?
Recall that EU digital commissioner Oettinger is already talking about regulating Google’s search results. So what might a Google search regulatory regime look like? Well, if the European publishing industry gets its way (which looks quite possible at this point), regulating Google searches will involve regulating Google’s search algorithms:
Google should be regulated like utilities, say rivals
Market testing of Google remedies ends Thursday
By Jennifer Baker
IDG News Service | Jun 25, 2013 3:08 PM PT
Companies who have been assessing Google’s planned remedies to anti-competitive practices called on the European Commission on Tuesday to reject them and to consider regulating Internet search.
Google has been under investigation by the Commission since November 2010 after rivals accused the search giant of setting its algorithm to direct users to its own services by reducing the visibility of competing websites and services. It was also accused of content-scraping and imposing contractual restrictions that prevent advertisers from moving their online campaigns to rival search engines.
On April 25 Google proposed specific measures to address these complaints and rivals and interested parties were invited by the Commission to “market test” them. That testing period ends on Thursday.
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Google has proposed to label its preferred links to its own sites in search results. But publishers say that this will mislead consumers into thinking these were somehow tailor-made results for search queries and interests, thereby causing even greater harm to competition.
Google also proposes to include links to rival search engines for specialist restaurant search results that generate revenue for Google. Google’s paid-for services would be separated from general search and treated more like advertising.
Finally, Google has agreed to remove exclusivity provisions from all future contracts and any legacy advertising contracts and will offer tools to prevent Web scraping by allowing content owners to opt out.
But many complainants who met in Brussels on Tuesday to present their position on the remedies said that search is such an important Internet tool that it should be regulated like a telecommunications or electric utilities.
“Everyone relies on it,” said Weber. “Unfortunately no one planning the digital single market thought that a single company would control access to the Internet.” Google has 95 percent of the search market in the E.U.
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Meanwhile hundreds of publishers and their trade associations wrote an open letter calling on Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia to reject Google’s draft remedies completely.
“As a minimum requirement, Google must hold all services, including its own, to exactly the same standards, using exactly the same crawling, indexing, ranking, display and penalty algorithms,” said one of the signatories, Helmut Heinen, president of the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers.
Feedback from the market test will be taken into account in the Commission’s final analysis. However, it is the Commission that Google’s remedies must satisfy, not any other party involved. If a solution isn’t found, the Commission could still fine the company up to 10 percent of its annual global revenue.
“As a minimum requirement, Google must hold all services, including its own, to exactly the same standards, using exactly the same crawling, indexing, ranking, display and penalty algorithms.” What exactly will that entail? We’ll find out since all signs coming out of the EU parliament right now are that Google’s searches are about to get regulated. Will search regulations be limited to Google? With Google holding 95% of the EU search market share it’s hard to see other major competitors that are also in monopoly territory. So the scope of these new search regulation will be something to watch going forward in part because they might start off only impacting Google (and Google is easy to hate). But, with all European publishers pushing to get exclusive rights to commercially exploit their products online and extract fees for headlines and snippets, we probably shouldn’t be surprised if this “regulated search” initiative doesn’t just include Google and if categories of media of that involve licensing fees expands beyond just the news.
What Other Types of Regulations Might Emerge? A Different Kind of Sharing Economy?
So some very big changes are coming for how the internet functions. Given Google’s gargantuan size and the profoundly scary amount of personal information the company is gathering on the global population it’s not as if a regulatory look at how a firm like Google handles are personal information and directs traffic across the web is inappropriate. But as we’ll see in this Out-Law.com interview below, when Google’s industry rivals are basically writing the news laws regulating Google, maybe we shouldn’t expect all those new regulations intended to limit the collection and commercial use and abuse of private data to apply to the entire industry. Maybe we should expect the opposite result:
Out-law.com
Opinion on big data, privacy and competition may be latest marker in closer scrutiny of Google, says expertA new opinion issued by an EU watchdog on ‘big data’, privacy and competition issues can be read as a “shot across the bows” of Google and other large technology players, an information law specialist has said.
01 Apr 2014
Lore Leitner of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that data protection authorities (DPAs) in the EU are becoming increasingly frustrated with limitations to their ability to control Google’s power in collecting and using personal data.
She said, however, that the new preliminary opinion issued by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has highlighted the potential for EU scrutiny of Google’s activities to shift from an assessment of whether the company is compliant with EU data protection laws to whether the way Google gathers and uses personal data gives the company advantages in a way that is in line with competition rules.
In his opinion, EDPS Peter Hustinx said that an investigation into the “costs and benefits” associated with the way companies often provide free services to consumers in exchange for the right to gather and use their personal data is “overdue”. He called for DPAs and competition regulators to work closer together so as to help “stimulate the market for privacy-enhancing services”.
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Competition law specialist Sammy Kalmanowicz of Pinsent Masons said competition issues around how the use of personal data is controlled has been discussed previously at EU level, including when the European Commission assessed Google’s takeover of advertising business DoubleClick in 2008.
However, Kalmanowicz said he expects competition authorities to pay closer attention to competition issues as the need to analyse big data becomes a more prominent part of doing business. He said competition law could be engaged in a variety of ways.
“Regulators are likely to become increasingly interested in the way companies with significant market power use personal data and will be on the look out for activities that could be said to constitute an abuse of market dominance and thus a breach of competition rules,” Kalmanowicz said.
“In particular, the imposition of restrictions on rivals gaining access to consumers’ personal data is likely to be scrutinised closely as the data becomes an ever more important currency in providing better targeted services. Interoperability with competitors’ platforms and giving consumers the right to transfer their data to rival services will become more important for major businesses as a result,” he said.
An abuse of dominance can occur when a dominant company refuses to supply or provide access to an essential facility. The expert said that businesses’ mere collection and processing of personal data may be scrutinised by competition authorities more closely in future “because big data may be considered an asset giving significant advantages”.
Kalmanowicz also said that competition authorities may also review how companies involved in potential merger deals can exploit the amalgamated personal data records and whether the advantages that can be accrued by the merged entity could raise barriers to entry in certain markets, including advertisement, technology and innovation markets.
“Information is power as services can be tailored better to consumers from analysing their personal data,” Kalmanowicz said. “Proposed merger deals may be affected if they lead to a concentration of a great volume of personal data or tools for analysing such information so that the merged company has significant consumer insights. In such circumstances competition authorities may, for example, require the data to be made available to rival companies if it is felt that such access is indispensible to ensure effective competition and innovation.”
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Well, at least according to the competition law specialist interview above, one of the areas the EU is probably going to be looking at in this era of overhauled data privacy rules is the possibity that major data aggregators, like Google, that gain competitive advantages by having so much different personal information on consumers might be required to make that data avilable to rivals if the data is deemed indispensable to competition and innovation:
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Proposed merger deals may be affected if they lead to a concentration of a great volume of personal data or tools for analysing such information so that the merged company has significant consumer insights. In such circumstances competition authorities may, for example, require the data to be made available to rival companies if it is felt that such access is indispensible to ensure effective competition and innovation.
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In other words, one of the models that’s being looked at for firms like Google that might grow too big for comfort (‘too big’ in terms of how much data they have on us) is to examine how how so much data creates new competitive advantages that make some data “indispensable” and “to ensure competition and innovation” those data giants might be force to make the data available to rival companies. So it’s sort of the opposite approach to the ‘unbundle and break up Google’ approach. Almost the exact opposite approach. It’s possible that the EU’s new data privacy regulations will ensure that whatever shared with rivals doesn’t create new avenues for abuse, but is that’s a realistic scenario given everything we’ve seen?
So it’s going to be important to keep in mind that the concerns over data privacy can be in direct competition with concerns over industry competition. Industry likes having more consumer data. Consumers don’t. Yes, competition concerns can be mitigated by actions like breaking Google up and forcing an unbundling of it’s services (since it’s the bundling that provides so much of the additional personal data). But those competition/anti-trust concerns can also be addressed by forcing Google to share its information with competitors if that information is considered necessary for competition.
And which approach is more likely now that we’ve seen how the publishing industry and other Google rivals are clearly influencing the regulatory/legislative agenda on this topic? Less data collected for Google or more data shared by Google? Or why not both? Couldn’t we see both a push to break up/unbundle Google in Europe and attempts to force Google to share its customer info with rivals? Given the rapidly changing attitude to Google in Europe it sure seems possible.
Isn’t This All Alarming?
Given that we’re now looking at a new EU-level internet regime that might grant publisher such exclusive rights over their online content to extract fees for headlines and snippets, and given that Google’s search algorithms could be regulated and it could possibly be forced to give “indispensable” data to rival firms, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that some potentially scary new laws could be in the works that sort of trashes the internet. Google-bashing is fun and healthy, but Google-bashing at the behest of a coalition of international publishing giants that are just out to increase their own empires is dangerous. Especially if it involves new policies that extent beyond Google.
Just imagine how that would change the internet if an international legal framework was set up that made it really easy for websites to charge you for linking to their site with a little blurb. Because there’s no way this is going to be limited to Google/Microsoft/Yahoo. Isn’t creating a framework where everyone, big and small, has to pay publishing giants for even the smallest bit of content basically the dream of publishing giants? So shouldn’t we expect an extended push get sites much smaller than Google to be forced to pay these snippetting fees too? That’s obviously the dream and the publishers are obviously in the legislative drivers seat with Germany, France, Belgium, and Space already passing headline/snipper fee legislation. So why isn’t this a sign of things to come for everyone?
Isn’t this one of those potential nightmare corporate initiatives that people should be starting to freaking out about? Just imagine how lame making web content would get if the websites you link to with a snippet can come asking for a chunk of your revenue stream. Content producing media giants might LOVE that particular world but is it really good for everyone else? It’s the digital playing field of dreams for Axel Springer: if you build [that legal and technical framework] Axel Springer will come [and ask for a cut of your revenues if it’s an option]. Sorry poor websites. No link-blurbs for you. Media giants should LOVE that world but what about everyone else?
Society needs to figure out how to drive more revenues into the hands of small and mid-sized content producers, not just the media giants although even the giants are dying these days. So something clearly needs to change in terms of how content producers are paid for their work, big and small. It’s a serious crisis since society is just gets more insane the less quality news society consumes. But is the Axel Springer plan that obliterates fair use and places a cost of cross-site linking really going to do anything for the small and mid-sized content producers and really save the internet from the corporate giants? Are the non-huge content producers all going to be getting revenues streams from Google and other sites in some systematic way? Maybe Google, with all its traffic info, can get into the fee collection business for all the small-time content producers that need to extract fees from all the small to large search/aggregation sites. For a fee, of course. Linking could get commercialized fast if the the giants get their way.
And if the framework is set up to make the ‘Google tax’ available for all the little guys (which is only fair) won’t that same technical/legal framework that allows a large number of participants to monetize a single site’s link traffic/snippets now be in place to apply to a much larger group of websites having to pay those fees? And how broadly will the ‘news aggregators’ license fees apply? Will big forums like Daily Kos and Free Republic get charged by EU publishers in a few years? Drudge presumably will fall under the ‘news aggregator’ which could be hilariously disasterous for US/EU relations if the ‘Google tax’ on Drudge turns the right wing blog-o-sphere against the EU (since the US right-wing has been unusally silent in its Europe bashing ever since the austerity-regime took over).
So the monetization of linking and snippets just might suck for almost everyone. Small and mid-sized websites might have to pay all link/snippet fees and change their structures and code to adapt to the new legal framework. And small and mid-sized content producers are likely to get a raw deal out of any general compensation framework. Or maybe sites will just stop linking to EU news which doesn’t help anyone.
Maybe it will turn out differently. Maybe a robust, populist legal framework that prioritizes the small and mid-sized content producers and eliminates the impact the small and mid-sized websites that might otherwise be taxed. But it sure seems unlikely that Axel Springer and its coalition partners driving this movement are going to voluntarily limit their potential customer fee base to Google and the other giants. There are a whole lot of smaller websites that could be called ‘news aggregators’ out there in internet land and those definitions can be changed. What won’t be changed easily once it’s set up (or ignored easily), is an international framework for automatically levying these fees.
Recall the words of the EU competition minster Günther Oettinger:
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“We are seeking unified data protection across Europe, one which American companies will have to abide by as well. If this is not the case there is scope for punitive measures and fines,” the digital economy commissioner warned. On the copyright question he also said, slightly mysteriously: “We want European copyright legislation and we want companies like Google to adhere to European copyright standards. We have the legal jurisdiction for this and we want to bring a degree of fairness into the relationship between the users, Google and its competitors.”
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“A degree of fairness into the relationship between the users, Google and its competitors” sounds nice, but keep in mind that balancing “the relationship between the users, Google and its competitors” isn’t going to be an easy or straightforward process since the interests of Google’s competitors and the interests of its customers are often in direct conflict with each other. It’s not just “Google vs the consumer” and “Google vs its competitor” that we have to worry about. It’s also “Google’s consumers vs Google’s competitors” and it’s not at all clear that the solutions being proposed by Google’s industry competitors aren’t going to be wildly in favor of Google’s competitors over everyone else.
If Google was a person it would be a shitty, manipulative person like almost all large profit-oriented corporations, but Google’s corporate competitors are going to be awful too. That’s one of the meta-problems of the day. So it’s not a bad sign to see a mega corporation like Google get reined in, especially these days when corporate giants are have basically unchecked power in the world. And the open question of how society should best deal with mass data aggregators like Google is a fascinating one that’s going to be asked over and over as time goes on. Similarly, the question how best to save the news industry from the unrelenting pressures the digital landscape and pay journalists is also going to be asked over and over (hint: society would read the news more if people it worked less and were paid more so let’s all support working less for a hopefully saner society).
But it’s a really bad sign that slaying the Google Dragon is being done by a coalition of publishing giants that clearly want to use this ant-Google campaign as a trojan horse for laws that would add licensing fees for “individual words or short excerpts” of third party content and it’s going to be even worse if this same corporate coalition that’s trying to make Google get regulated “like a utility” also manages to force Google to share information with rivals deemed “indispensable”. And yet, since the EU parliament suddenly made it clear that very big changes for Google are coming and the EU industry is probably going to be writing the new rules, crazy possibilities like the forced sharing of Google’s consumer data could now be on the way.
If Axel Springer’s industry coalition is the knight that slays the Google Dragon, the new post-dragon era of peace and prosperity in the Kingdom of the Internet might give the internet more of a fascist feel than one would have hoped for. That’s what happens when the publishing industry writes the copyright laws and right now it’s looking like the European publishing industry is poised to write EU copyright laws for the internet, a global platform. As much as Google sucks, it’s just one part of the problem when it comes to the corporate abuses our digital selves. There are other parts of the problem, and those other parts of the problem have their own solutions they would like to see implemented like headline and snippet licensing. If the Google Dragon is going to be slain, the dragon’s spoils can either be shared amongst its competitors or shrunk entirely for everyone else’s sake. Google’s rivals clearly want to share in the spoils that come with slaying the dragon. Beware of dragon slayers bearing death certificates for the “fair use” angels too. Those kinds of brave corporate-techno-dragon slayers might be carrying beasts of their own. Be afraid, be very afraid.
It’s too bad society is so captivated by evil dragons and their highly questionable slayers. An obsession with ducks would have been a lot healthier.
So Google just decided to drop Spanish news snippets from its news search engine in response to the new mandatory Spanish ancillary copyright laws. And it’s not just for the Spanish version of Google News. Spain’s news is getting dropped from Google globally:
Keep in mind that Spain’s new laws don’t just apply to Google. All news aggregators, like Bing and Yahoo, are also subject to the new snippet fees and presumably they’re paying it (there’s no news that they aren’t). So it’s possible that those non-Google revenues will more than offset the drop off in traffic from Google. We’ll see.
It’s also worth pointing out that Spain’s publishers would probably also benefit from non-insane economic policies that aren’t systematically eroding the future purchasing power of Spain’s populace but since “austerity forever!” is the new EU rule it’s not at all clear that when Spain’s publishers will catch an economic break. So some big changes are clearly on the way for Spanish publishers but the nature of those changes remains a surprisingly open question. What’s going to happen? We’ll see.
Here’s a pair of article that act as a reminder that the new EU anti-monopoly regulatory paradigm of forcing Google to submit its search results algorithms to regulator review are going to get might messy in a singular way that could complicate patents and copyright laws in all sorts of strange ways: First, keep in mind that Google’s search engine still forms the core its business, with Google search ads bringing in a majority of Google’s $60 billion revenues so it’s unlikely to give up the secret sauce recipe anytime soon:
First off, lets hope Google isn’t correct in predicting that revealing its secrets would result in spammers using Google’s search secrets because that would be scary. Er, scarier. And presumably Google is putting forth a worst case scenario and the level of depth and detail that Google would be required to disclose is unclear at this point.
But also keep in mind that even casual search algorithm disclosure regimes by the EU or anyone else might get really complicated in the future. So complicated that only a super AI will be able to keep up with the regulatory oversight workload. Why? Because one of the first project Google is assigning its “DeepMind” self-learning super AI project to is developing better and better search algorithms, and as DeepMind learns more about self-learning, it’s only going to get better at it. And faster:
Get ready. DeepMind-developed “AI Scientists” will create advanced search algorithms to help you better find that cat video you were looking for and sooner than you think. And once that novel algorithmic flow gets going, who knows what the rate of improvements will be but if the EU follows through on its proposed algorithmic transparency regime, all those DeepMind driven algorithmic improvements could potentially be revealed to the public someday. Wouldn’t that be fascinating. Everyone could have some of the basic ingredients they need for setting up a pseudo-DeepMind Google search engine of their own.
Of course, even if Google handed over their algorithms in detail it wouldn’t really matter because you would still need the massive volume of data on website page content and which links go where in order to use them, and that doesn’t include the invaluable data that comes from gather personalized search histories on all of us year after year. That information is presumably never going to be released (although there are possibilities).
So you probably shouldn’t get too excited about the release of these algorithms unless you have happen to work for Yahoo! or Microsoft. At least not today.
But keep in mind that, with the steady growth of both processing power, internet bandwidth, and personal storage capacity, we just might see a day where you can download a program on laptop that unleashes masses of webcrawlers and starts indexing the whole damn internet. For you (it will get around ancillary copyright issues). Maybe not everything but at least the text content. Wouldn’t that be neat! We could all have our own personal DeepMind/Dr. Theopolis search engines and an indexed copy of massive chunks of the web!
And once super self-learning AIs become cheap, maybe just a free downloadable app, who knows how many Google services will be effectively executable by your own personal super AIs that can keep all your searches and other information as private as your super AI desires. Sure, such scheme would crash the internet today because you can’t have everyone’s computer send out web crawlers on every site. On top of being incredibly wasteful (in terms of the processing power needed to generate the pages) it would a giant denial-of-service attack on the entire internet. But that’s just today.
Imagine a couple of decades from now. How hard will it be for a typical server in the year 2034 to handle a million web page requests simultaneously and how hard will it be for the internet’s infrastructure to handle the kind of traffic where billions of people’s devices are making millions of web page requests a second? Say just the text pages and not the holograms pages of 2034. Just text. Could everyone have their own personal super web crawlers in the future without blocking the internet? If so, how far into the future are we going to have to wait because that sounds fun.
It’s all part of the peeks into the future as we get as we creep closer and closer to a singularity-like technological landscape. Google, by dedicating itself to developing self-learning machines and “AI scientists”, might be laying the groundwork for the kinds of technologies that lets us all have “AI scientists” of our own that we can use to run private Google-like services which would solve both the Google monopoly and privacy issues.
So let’s hope we all get stunning advances in processor speeds and some really really really fast internet services with extremely high personal bandwidths that enables of an age of personal web crawling. So many of these online privacy issues to be addressed in a such a fun way.
Keep chugging along DeepMind! And someone please tell DeepMind to develop some super fast networking technology. Fingers crossed!
Also, someone please tell DeepMind there’s no reason to destroy humanity should such action be deemed necessary. We’ve got this covered.
Merry Christmas Facebook:
“Facebook’s unwillingness to offer any details regarding its targeted advertising practice prevents the court from being able to determine whether the specific practice challenged in this case should be considered ‘ordinary.’ ”
So Facebook is facing a lawsuit that might force it to revealing its algorithms for scanning Facebook users’ messages for information that could be useful for targeted advertising. Well that should be something to watch. Especially since those algorithms may not just be looking for advertising clues:
Yep, Facebook’s new text analysis algorithm lawsuit should be interesting to watch, especially if Facebook becomes obligated in some jurisdictions to scan that text for more than just advertising clues. And especially if it involves more than just text.
It looks like Google News has decided to allow advertisements. Unpaid, deeply embedded advertisements in the form of corporate press releases:
So it appears that Google has decided to start flooding its news links with corporate PR garbage for free! That’s, uh, bizarre.
But it also raises a fascinating question in our new era of “ancillary copyrights”: While Google claims that it’s not getting paid for linking to corporate PR pieces, what about the various new ancillary copyright laws? If, for instance, Google caves to Spain’s demands and starts paying Spanish publishers for its linked to content and headlines, would Google have to start paying Spanish companies for their press release snippets? It might seem like a silly question, but silly times call for silly questions...
Facebook faces a new EU probe over its data collection policies, but this one has a couple interesting twists. First, the probe it being executed by Germany alone, and doesn’t involve the rest of the EU. Second, the probe isn’t be conducted by Germany’s data protection authority. Instead, it’s Germany’s competition authority that’s leading the charge. So Facebook’s rampant personal data collection might be thwarted somewhat in Germany on antitrust grounds:
“The Bundeskartellamt’s move is interesting as it seeks to link similar data-protection related privacy concerns with antitrust law — which carries higher potential fines for companies found to be abusing their market position, and involves better resourced departments carrying out investigations than the over-worked, under resourced DPAs.”
Ok, well, using antitrust laws to enforce new data protection measures does seem a bit odd, but whatever, good luck to the Bundeskartellamt! It’s not like Facebook is a sympathetic character and anything that forces greater consumer disclosure of what data is collected and how it’s used sounds like a net good thing.
Except, of course, there’s this other oddity to the probe: It happens to coincide with comments made to the EU competition commissioner about how the vast amounts of personal data held by companies like Facebook (and presumably Google) might be considered a breach of the EU’s competition rules
“If a few companies control the data you need to cut costs, then you give them the power to drive others out of the market”
Ok, so we have Germany’s competition authority probe Facebook’s data collection policies under the pretense of giving users more control over what data is collected. And at the same time the EU’s competition authority is questioning whether or not dominant tech platforms might be controlling the data “you need to cut costs”, where the “you” in her statement is other companies that want access to that personal data.
So it appears that the involvement of competition authorities in the EU’s data privacy arena is suddenly looking a lot less consumer-friendly and a lot more business-friendly:
“Another option Mr. Oettinger outlined was for the EU to support collaborative spaces where businesses can safely exchange data or share data sets, which the firms aren’t currently using but which could be useful to other companies trying to create new products or services.”
Oh fun. New “collaborative spaces” where business can “safely exchange data or share data sets” they aren’t using so that other business can find a use for it. And all this as part of a broader effort to significant expand the EU’s personal data industry:
Of course, it wasn’t all bad:
That’s actually pretty neat idea if they can figure out how to make it work. Especially if consumers can actually monitor all the data in their “data space”.
So the EU’s grand plans for introducing antitrust regulators into the realm of data privacy protections is to give users more control over what data is shared and then try to promote the sharing of that data due to concerns over personal data monopolies developing. At least the first part of the plan seems nice.
It’s worth keeping in mind that this was exactly what was predicted two years ago by competition law specialist Sammy Kalmonowicz. So while this news might sound surprising, for EU competition law specialists the EU move to crack open the data behemoths so their data can be more easily shared in an effort to promote the EU’s data collection industry just a matter of time:
“An abuse of dominance can occur when a dominant company refuses to supply or provide access to an essential facility. The expert said that businesses’ mere collection and processing of personal data may be scrutinised by competition authorities more closely in future “because big data may be considered an asset giving significant advantages”.”
Isn’t competition law in the data privacy domain fun? An abuse of dominance can occur when a dominant company refuses to supply or provide access to an essential facility. So if Facebook or Google don’t share the data they collect on you, they’re abusing their dominance.
It’s all a reminder that, while the “data privacy” debates are framed in such a way that the public assumes it all about stopping companies from over-collecting personal data, in the future these same debates are going to include issues like companies under-sharing that very same data. Because we wouldn’t want anyone to have a monopoly on your personal data.
It’s always a red flag when the rhetoric about policy starts off vague and remains vague. With that in mind, here’s some more rhetoric from Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition minister, about what the EU is thinking in terms of how to handle the thorny issue of how much personal data the Big Data giants like Facebook or Google should be forced to share with “the market” in order to prevent an unfair market advantage from what they can exclusively learn about consumers:
“These are huge companies that play a very strong role in the market. But you still have many, many, many more companies that are on their way, that want to make it into the market, and that need open markets for the incentive to innovate.”
Those were some encouraging words from the EU’s competition minister. If you happen to be a company that wants to buy Google’s knowledge it infers from its acess to so much personal data:
“But I still think Adam Smith was right when he said there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Eventually, you will pay in one form or the other. And it’s that “other” that is still hard to grasp because we are just in the process of truly appreciating the value of our own data.”
Note that the “other” in question isn’t just a question of the forms of “payment” people make to use digital services, like paying with personal data for “free” services. It’s also a question of which “other” individuals will receive those personal data payments. Especially if those personal data payments are required for the service provider to enter the marketplace:
“So far, the analysis shows that data can be copied or newly created without any detrimental effects to competitors.”
Have fun interpreting that statement. It sounds like Vestager thinks competition isn’t harmed as long as the data is shared with competitors, but it’s vague enough to mean just about anything. Aren’t the competitors the ones getting the copied or newly created personal data? Who knows. Rorschach rhetoric is like that.
As the EU’s competition minister vaguely makes clear, personal data competition law is going to be an interesting legal area for the next generation. And as the following law firm blog posting make much more clear, personal data competition law is going to be interesting for the next generation, because exclusive access to personal data by large data behemoths like Google is being looked at as a barrier to entry into marketplaces that rely on access to such personal data. So the more Google or Facebook learn about us, the more they’ll be expected to share:
“Once a dominant position is established, EU competition law requires that companies do not abuse this position. In respect of big data, this could include the obligation to provide a third party with access to data, where the absence of such data works as a barrier to other markets.”
Welcome to the next phase of the depersonal commodification of your personal data.
And notice what Germany’s competition views as an example of the kind of information that might need to be shared in order to level the playing field: the personal data learned from search engine queries:
So it sounds like Google is going to have to sell start selling A LOT more of what what it knows about all of us. Enjoy the coming digital marketplace. But keep in mind that what Google and Facebook and the other behemoths know about us is valuable for far more than just digital marketplaces so we’ll see if the demands for personal data sharing go beyond sharing with other digital service providers. And try not to act super shocked when random advertisements targetting you, digital or otherwise, suddenly get super non-vague.
Here’s a reminder that that the EU Commission really, really, really wants to introduce a “snippet tax” to the internet:
“In the absence of links from Google, smaller companies lacking the resources available to big publishing houses will be unable to reach new readers by spending more money on marketing, and may fail as a result. This may even be one reason why Europe’s publishing giants are so keen on introducing neighbouring rights that are likely to reduce their own profits.”
Yep, unless Google’s news search engine can either be forced to show EU news snippets (and pay the tax) or a replacement engine with comparable traffic that’s willing to pay swoops in to replace the traffic Google brings, it’s quite possible that smaller publishers could actually be driven out of business. Somehow it seems like the publishing giants like Axel Springer that pushing for these laws might not mind such an outcome.
Still, it’s important to keep in mind that figuring out how to make journalism a viable business model in the internet age is sort of one of the sleeper mega-issues of our times because if the journalism sector dies, democracy isn’t going to be too far behind. So we really do have to figure this out, ideally in manner that doesn’t actually reduce access to that vital news. How that’s accomplished is a pretty huge question, but here’s an obvious suggestion for helping journalism find its footing in the digital age: How about not trashing the economy with austerity-induced economic death spirals:
“Between 2008 and 2012, nearly 10,000 journalists lost their jobs, almost half of them in 2012, and 73 outlets shut down. The top editorial teams of every major news organization were “beheaded,” González of the journalist federation says. “The biggest enemy of independence is unemployment and precariousness, always waiting to be fired.””
While a tax on snippets, one that doesn’t result in search engines just dropping Spanish news links, might have helped Spain’s journalism sector in the post-crisis period, avoiding an economic calamity would have probably been the preferable path towards a sustainable journalism sector. It’s a reminder that the ‘outside the box’ thinking that’s going to be required to really make journalism sustainably profitable needs to include an end to the practice of throwing societies down socioeconomic holes.
Fortune had a list of the top 10 worst jobs in the US for the 2016 according to job search portal CareerCast.com. And journalist came in as the #1 worst job in America. For the third year in row:
“Newspaper reporter was ranked as the worst job for the third year running, and broadcaster also managed to take a top spot on this year’s list. “The news business has changed drastically over the years, and not in a good way,” former broadcaster Ann Baldwin, president of Baldwin Media PR told CareerCast. “When people ask me if I miss it, I tell them ‘I feel as if I jumped off of a sinking ship.’” And it appears she has—employment in both those jobs is expected to decline by 9% in the coming years.”
That’s the outlook for the sector of the economy that helps the rest of the economy know what’s going on. Get ready to be 9% more ignorant about stuff or whatever the actual fallout is from the gutting of the journalism sector. Will if be the fluff that’s cut or the investigative journalism? Hmm...
So what do we do about this? Well, it’s worth keeping in mind that being a journalist really should be an awesome job because that’s only going to help get higher quality news. And awesome jobs are good for the economy and society in general if people have economic security. Especially the people delivering the news. Isn’t systemically underpaid journalism a national security risk? If not, why not?
Another thing to keep in mind is that we are a woefully underinformed society about the most important stories of the day and that’s system. It’s part of the reason journalism is dying. And also a national security risk.
Given the above two things to keep in mind, it’s also worth keeping in mind that the “Google Tax” method might not actually be able to realistically squeeze enough out of the Google’s of the world required to adequately compensate the level of the journalism required to avoid national security risk-levels of dysfunctional news generation and consumption. What if we want even more journalism through, say, some sort of journalism subsidy? That could be expensive. Journalists might like to retire. Can an EU-style Google Tax cover that cost? If not, we have to find a way to subsidize the industry sooner rather than later because having journalism become the worst job in the US is some of the worst news you could hear. It’s like finding out you went mad.
Given all that, it’s worth keeping in mind that the internet might taketh-away from the journalism industry, but there’s no reason we couldn’t set something up to allow people to giveth as part of a public subsidy for journalistic content. Like state-subsidized “this article was great” digital tokens that could be turned in to the government for cash. We have this whole Bitcoin revolution going on, can’t we make some sort of sort for distributing a fix number of tokens to be handed out to news producers via some cryptocurrency-style solution that then gets validated by the government? No information on who read the article, just that it was read.. And someone totally anonymous really liked it. The supply would be fixed because that would all be centrally controlled so even if people just sold their tokens to the black market without reading anything it would be a controllable cost. Then let journalist/news organization cash in the tokens anonymously to avoid a creepy Big Brother dynamic. Could That could be worked out technically? If so, maybe everyone gets like 30 “newscoins” a month, one a day, and you give them to articles you found useful, that that publisher gets to turn that token in for sweet sweet cash that lets journalists not have one of the the worst jobs in the US. Or 300 newscoins.
And newscoins would suddenly make reading the news fun because everyone would get to pick that month’s “winners” of articles that get a whole bunch of “I read this and liked it” tokens. Wouldn’t that be fun. We could expand it to all sort of arts and other services too. Instead of Bitcoin takingnover central banking, let’s use cryptocurrencies to subsidize the economy by allowing customer-to-business token payments for valuable industries that can’t really function at their most socially optimal in a modern, profit-maximizing economy. When there’s a recession we could just expand the journalism sector or something to create jobs and become a more informed society while more people are out of work and have more time to read the news.
And we could just jack up the value or volume of the free tokens as need be to account for changing factors. Is the cost of journalist/artist/whatever retirement going up? Increasing the value of the service tokens would help. It’s insane that journalism is a shitty career. What kind of society is that going to produce? Oh yeah, us.
Also don’t forget that the EU’s proposed Google Tax is sort of a pay-for-click system. Pay for snippet. So a public pay-for-readership model is already being seriously considered. Just with Google and other big news aggregators footing the bill, which inevitably creates a major corporate opposition to the adequate compensation to the news industry. Why not create an alternative “give a nice public reward for awesomeness” journalism public system. Sure, there would be a ton of complicating issues that pop up (like the inevitable subsidizing of hate groups), but that’s already happening. It’s at least worth considering. If we’re going to have anonymous payments systems, let’s use them for public services like that where we want the government to subsidize something but not have information on how individuals spent their subsidy.
And it’s not like a Bitcoin-style energy-sucking blockchain would be required. Just some sort of cryptographic anonymous payment system and a means of distributing/generating a fixed amount of digital tokens each month. It could all be very energy efficient. Especially after our better news-reading habits lead to a significant ramping up of green energy investments. Plus all the other things we would be doing if a massive chunk of the populace was in the long-term habit of closely following the most important issues facing in the world. That sure would improve our economic efficiency. And probably reduce wasteful government spending. More public eyeballs on the emerging legislation = less legislation that makes you want to claw your eyes out. Think of the savings.
Right now tech employees at Google are 81% male, 3% Hispanic, and 1% Black.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/12/slacks-top-engineer-suggests-that-google-do-blind-assessments-for-hiring/
The issue of monopoly power in America is one of those issues that ironically but predictably often gets less coverage than it deserves the worse the issue gets. And this is, of course, largely due to monopolies use the immense power of monopoly to buy off or silencing critics. So it’s going to be interesting to see if that trend holds true after Google just got the entire Open Markets program team — which focuses on antitrust topics — fired from the left-leaning New America Foundation after they wrote a 150-word statement calling for the Federal Trade Commission to follow the European Union’s lead after the EU slapped Google with a $2.7 billion fine on Google for violating antitrust laws over how Google ranks its search engine results to favor its own products.
Yes, after getting fined for abusing its monopoly status on search engines in Europe, Google got an anti-monopoly think-tank group fired in the US for daring to suggest that Google should face similar consequences under US regulators. It’s a fascinating case because it highlight the fact that, that while Google’s specific monopoly in this case might be a search engine monopoly, its search engine monopoly isn’t what got the Open Markets team fired. What got them fired was the fact that the general wealth and power derived from running such a monopoly allowed Google to have so much influence that a few angry phone calls to a think tank it helps fund could get the anti-monopoly research team fired. And any monopoly in a lucrative enough sector is going to have that kind of power because that’s the kind of power that comes from simply have lots of money to throw around to things like think tanks. It’s a reminder that even though specific industries might be vulnerable to specific monopoly players, the threat to society as a whole comes from the larger oligopoly of monopolies from all the different sectors of the economy all working together to ensure that the power of big money is never serious discussed or challenged. And in this case Google just gave that monopoly oligopoly a big boost by getting an anti-monopoly research team shut down.
Gee...might Google might have a bit too much power?
““We were trying to be, like, ’Are you sure you want to do this because it sort of seems bad,” Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Program, told HuffPost. “Are you sure you want to prove us right? Are you sure you want to back a monopoly in such an obvious and clumsy way? We were negotiating with them.” (Stoller is an occasional HuffPost contributor.)”
Was Google and the New America Foundation sure they wanted to prove the Open Market team’s anti-monopoly critiques right in such an obvious an clumsy way? Yes, they were sure:
And Google didn’t just help prove a point about its own outsized power over search results and present an example of how sectors of the economy and society remain increasingly at risk of falling into monopolistic hands. Google also helped demonstrate how monopolies threaten democracy by threatening our collective ability to research and understanding the world. Because you can’t have a functioning democracy with monopolies censoring the debate:
“Lynn and his colleagues “have long argued that monopolies are a problem for the economy, but they’re also a problem for democracy,” Zephyr Teachout, a fellow at Open Markets and board member of its new campaign — called Citizens Against Monopolies — told HuffPost. “This kind of proves the point.””
So with all that in mind, it’s probably worth recalling that there’s a second way in which the Google’s data monopoly (or, rather, data oligopoly that it partially shares with Facebook) could end up threatening democracy. And this would have to do with the other solution the EU has been pondering for years now in response to Google’s status not in search results but in its related monopoly in knowing the intimate details and personal profiles that it’s managed to build up on almost all internet users over the years: the EU proposal to force Google to “share” the knowledge and insight that it, and it alone, has divined about all of us on regulated “collaborative spaces” in order to “mitigate the existing imbalance between data-rich and data-poor companies”. And not just Google but other “data-rich” companies too. So remember how Big Data-derived psychological profiles on hundreds of millions of Americans appear to have allowed the Trump team and Robert Mercer’s Cambridge Analytica to target individual voters with customized misinformation messaging campaigns intended to shift voter sentiment? Well, if the EU ends up letting Google keep its monopoly, but then forces it to share the unique insights it learns about all of us in order to “mitigate the existing imbalance between data-rich and data-poor companies,” you can bet that a lot of those “data-poor companies” are going to be companies owned by billionaires like Robert Mercer and dedicated to persuading voters using any means necessary. How’s that going to impact democracy? It’s a question worth asking since, as we saw last year, the EU was openly talking about this ‘solution’ to Google’s monopoly on what it knows about us just:
““We are exploring right now what concrete measures would suit the interest of European businesses best so that they can fully benefit from the opportunities that data-driven innovation has to offer to them,” the European Digital Commissioner Günther Oettinger said in a speech late Wednesday. “The effort includes looking for ways to mitigate the existing imbalance between data-rich and data-poor companies.””
And how will that imbalance between data-rich and data-poor companies get addressed? With “collaborative spaces”:
That was the solution to Google’s monopoly on what it knows about that intellectual property lawyers were predicting in 2014 and that’s what the EU’s Digital Commission was proposing just last year. The monopoly on the kinds of Big Data insights that can only be achieved by those with the biggest databases of Big Data profiles on everyone will be addressed by partially breaking that monopoly and encouraging and/or forcing those monopolists to share those insights with “data-poor” entities. Yes, disparities between data-rich and data-poor companies is a real and growing issue for the digital economy. But making everyone ‘data-rich’ when the data in question is personal data on everyone seems like the wrong approach. Especially for democracy and especially after what we saw in the 2016 US election. Don’t forget that those “data-poor” entities might be ‘data-poor’ oligarchs like the Koch brothers s looking to buy the data they need to convince the public to ignore their oligopoly.
So while the EU’s hefty fine against Google over its search engine monopoly is something the US should learn from, keep in mind the other antitrust solution the EU has been actively considering for a while. It’s the kind of antitrust ‘solution’ that teams of antitrust researchers should probably be looking into right now. At least those research teams that haven’t had their funding preemptively destroyed by a monopoly.
And right on the heels of the scandalous firing of the New America Foundation’s “Open Markets” team of antitrust researchers after major donor Google made it clear it wasn’t happy about the Open Market team’s teams endorsement of the EU’s recent record fine against Google for manipulating search engine results to benefit its own products, we now have a new anti-antitrust charge getting leveled at Google: Jon von Tetzchner, creator of web browser Opera, just created a new browser caled Vivaldi. And Vivaldi obviously relies on Google’s online ad network to promote itself in the browser market because Google dominates the advertising market online and there’s nothing smaller players can do about, whether they are interesting in buying or selling ads. Google is basically the only advertising game in town.
Google is also a competitor to Vivaldi with its own Chrome browser, the most popular browser on the market today. So if Google suddenly pulled Vivaldi ads from its network using a bunch of a reasons that include calling for Von Tetzchner to adhere to rules not specified anywhere and that Google itself didn’t follow that would obviously be a potential antitrust issue.
And if this multidimensional monopolistic behavior (using Google’s ad platform monopoly to secure Chrome’s place in the browser market) appeared to start shortly after Von Tetzchner gave a talk at the Oslo Freedom Forum where he criticized Google’s approach to personal privacy and called for a ban on location tracking by Facebook and Google that would obviously just compound the scandal in a bad way. Using your ad platform monopoly to pull the ads of your browser competitor in retaliation for their critiques of how your monopolistic ad platform can be used to violate everyone’s privacy is clearly just a horrible look for the company that used to brand itself as the “Don’t Be Evil” company.
So did Google seriously pull Vivaldi ads from its AdSense platform after the creator of Vivaldi criticized Google’s privacy and location detection policies at the Oslo Freedom Forum despite how obviously horrible this would look? Yes, that appears to be what Google did. Because it’s not just a multidimensional monopoly. It’s an out of control multidimensional monopoly that apparently can’t stop itself from doing the kinds of things that highlight it’s multidimensional monopolistic nature:
“The problem for von Tetzchner weren’t the changes, but the way in which they were demanded: aggressively, without warning, and without Google itself adhering to its own laws. Reflecting on his long history with Google, he concludes: “I am saddened by this makeover of a geeky, positive company into the bully they are in 2017.””
And note how the problems for Von Tetzchner gave his presentation at the Oslo Freedom Forum where he criticized Google’s privacy policies on May 23rd of 2016. And the sudden complaint campaign by Google that got him pulled out of their ad network just happened to start in late May:
Yeah, that certainly sounds like potentially retaliatory behavior from Google. And as we’ve seen, it’s not just retaliatory behavior but also multidimensional monopolistic behavior since Google’s potential retaliation against Von Tetzchner both utilized its ad platform monopoly status and also attacked an competitor to Google’s Chrome browser, the most popular browser in the world. It it was done in retaliation over Von Tetzchner’s critiques of Google’s ad platform monopoly. There’s got to an antitrust issue or two tuck away in that bundle of bad behavior.
So it’s worth noting that when Von Tetzchner gave that presentation at the Oslo Freedom Forum in May of 2016 it was followed the next month with Google collapsing the internal wall that separated all the information it collected on people’s browsing habits that it collects over its advertising network with the personally identifiable information that it collects through services like Gmail. Yep, when Google bought the online advertising giant DoubleClick back in 2007 (outbidding Microsoft), privacy advocates warned that doing so would gave Google access to more information about people than any other company in the world while Sergey Brin promised that Google would prioritize end-user privacy and no one should worry. Well, it sounds like we should worry:
“Technology companies argue that such tracking allows them to deliver much more targeted, relevant advertising across the internet. Paul Ohm from the Center of Privacy and Technology at Georgetown law school told Propublica that the fact that Google kept personally identifiable information and DoubleClick data separate was “a really significant last stand”.”
It was just last June when the “last stand” separating the wealth of information about browsing habits that Google collected about everyone through its “DoubleClick” ad network collapsed, allowing Google to fuse that information with the personally identifiable information it collects through services like Gmail and your Google search engine queries without your consent. Despite promising not to do exactly that when Google first bought DoubleClick. And as privacy advocates warned at the time of Google’s purchase, this could give Google access to more information about the internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world:
And don’t forget that one of the ‘solutions’ to Google’s exclusive access to the personal insights that only Google can obtain on all of us through its unmatched reach that the EU has been exploring is a system to allow Google and other “data-rich” companies to share those exclusive insights with the rest of the “data-poor” word. So Google inevitably created even more exclusive insights that EU regulators are going to be finding a solution for after it collapsed that internal wall fused the pool of browsing and location information from its DoubleClick network with its personal information for the rest of Googles services.
So as we can see, Google has a monopoly problem. Or, rather, many distinct yet interrelated monopoly problems. Google itself is a kind of oligopoly of monopolies, which is rather impressive but still quite scary. Especially when you see blatant passive aggressive behavior like what it appears to have done to Von Tetzchner, a critic and competitor. But part of what makes this behavior from Google so alarming is that you almost couldn’t come up with a better advertising campaign for a new browser like Vivaldi than to have Google act like a passive aggressive bully so blatantly and in a manner that simply points public attention towards some of Googles biggest excesses and, ultimately, Google’s biggest vulnerabilities. Google is so entrenched that the only thing likely to cause it to shrink at this point is some trust-busting. And Google is making a ‘don’t trust Google’ campaign almost inevitable. Google appears to have replaced its “Don’t Be Evil” slogan with “Be Stupid Evil”. And that’s a pretty scary signal coming from the company that knows more about all of us than anyone else.
Well this should be fascinating to watch unfold: The EU parliament’s legal affairs committee just voted to approve ‘Article 11’, otherwise known as the “snippet tax” or “link tax” that would force websites like Google or Facebook to pay news publishers whenever they link to the article and post a brief snippet. Recall that Spain attempted to impose this tax on Google previously and eventually abandoned it after Google delisted Spanish news sites and their traffic plummeted. So now we might see how that plays out when imposed across the entire EU.
It’s not EU law yet, though. The EU parliament as a whole still needs to approve the law. But it’s still a significant step forward.
And the snippet tax isn’t even the most controversial provision just passed by the EU legal affairs committee. That title would have to go to Article 13. So what does Article 13 controversially do? Well, it basically mandates that all content uploaded to the internet in the EU be automatically screen for potential copyright infringement. Such automated systems already exists on sites like YouTube but if Article 13 becomes law it will apply to ALL websites operating in the EU. And as the many critics of the YouTube auto-filtering system are quick to point out, ‘robo-censoring’ isn’t easy to do. Or at least do well. And now everyone might have to do it if they want to offer internet services in the EU:
“In a key vote on a draft law to overhaul EU copyright rules, the parliament’s legal affairs committee on Wednesday voted for measures that would require the likes of Google and Microsoft to install filters to prevent users from uploading copyrighted materials.”
The likes of Google and Microsoft was be required to install content filters. But it won’t just be internet giants like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook who have to employ these filters. They’re just the high-profile targets because they have so much money (and are easy to hate).
And as many critics of Article 13 point out, this law could effectively eliminate one of the most popular things on the internet: memes. Yep, those auto-filters are almost perfectly designed to recognize the screenshots and short video clips used in the creation of memes and mischaracterize them as pirated copyrighted material:
And, of course, there’s Article 11, the ‘snippet tax’. That passed the EU committee too:
Adding to the concerns about the Article 11 ‘link tax’ is that it doesn’t appear they will necessarily be uniformly enforced across the EU. Each member state will get to choose how to implement it, meaning there could be fragmenting of the EU digital market, a surprising move given the EU focus on creating on giant EU market:
But neither Articles 11 or 13 are EU law yet. But it’s a lot closer to being law after this committee vote:
And as the following article notes, it’s not just things like internet memes and satire that might get auto-filtered away under these proposed rules. The open source software movement could get auto-filtered away too:
“Article 13 also names code as an obvious genre of copyrighted content, which could cause the open source software community to collapse under immense legal pressure. Any content containing audio, software, or the written word also falls under the article’s purview. “Requiring code-hosting platforms to scan and automatically remove content could drastically impact software developers when their dependencies are removed due to false positives,” wrote Github in a blog on the matter.”
Won’t that be fun when commonly used software libraries suddenly get auto-pulled from code repositories like GitHub due to a false positive copyright ‘hit’.
And if you’re assuming that this will only impact code (or memes) being developed in the EU, keep in mind that the existence of these rules will likely trigger policy changes in companies around the sure. Sure, some of them might choose to simply block traffic from the EU rather than comply with the new rules. That will be the easier option for websites that don’t have a lot of EU traffic. But it’s inevitable that some non-EU sites that decide to implement the EU rules are going to just do it for everyone around the world because it will be easier than having special EU rules for the site just for EU users:
And note how the EU doesn’t actually have a “fair use” law like the US. So if EU law starts getting adopted by US internet firms it could result in some extremely restrictive upload policies. In other words, the meme isn’t just on life support in the EU:
So Article 13 might kill memes and break open software. It’s so ominous sounding that it’s taking all the attention away from Article 11.
And that’s all part of why this is going to be so interesting to watch unfold: there’s presumably going to be an escalating public push back against these proposed rules as it gets closer to the full EU parliamentary vote. And that push back will presumably involve a pissed off software developer community and lots and lots of memes. Because if you had to come up with a scenario to encourage the internet to go on a meme-generating frenzy, it would be something like Article 13 that threatens to effectively ban memes. If you think about a meme as an idea that sort of ‘takes on a life of its own’, we might see memes metaphorically fighting for their metaphorical lives. Which should presumably generate some pretty catchy memes. Or not. We’ll see.