For many years, some of the world’s largest news publishers have been seeking ways to expand their power online. In Australia, they were able to do so through an unusual form of mandatory arbitration. But underneath these kinds of proposals, whether based in arbitration or otherwise, is a claim to a new sort of copyright right. Often styled as an “ancillary” copyright, such a right could—as described in a recent Copyright Office document—require payment to news publishers from any “online service that collects links to and sometimes snippets of third-party articles and makes them available to its readers.” In other words, this new right would allow big news publishers—and only news publishers—to extract fees from webpages that include links. Unsurprisingly, many have described this as a link tax. And it is now under study at the United States Copyright Office.
We believe link taxes are a bad idea. At a basic level, they are inconsistent with a free and open internet, which relies on the ability of any website to freely link to any other website. But we also do not see that they would achieve the stated goal of protecting journalists against unfair competition. Link tax payments wouldn’t actually go to journalists—instead, under current proposals, they’d go directly to publishers like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. This would only make it harder for small, independent, and innovative journalistic upstarts to compete; big companies like News Corp would get this new payment, while small independent journalists would not. Indeed, for these and a variety of other reasons, many have questioned not only whether such proposals support the public interest, but whether they are even consistent with the US Constitution. Supporting quality local journalism is something we can all stand behind, but imposing a link tax on the open web is not the way to do it.
As we have often mentioned, even well-intentioned changes to copyright law can have wide-reaching and negative effects on the online information ecosystem. That is why Internet Archive was proud to voice these concerns in a recent submission to the US Copyright Office and at a public roundtable on December 9, 2021.
This new copyright law needs to take care of all parties concerned and not just the BIG sharks. Else the internet won’t remain free!
You can be proud of voicing your concerns all you want to, I’m sure the US Copyright Office’s opinion has already been bought and paid for. They don’t give one hoot about what’s right or what’s fair.
aye, how many times newpapers use from online/. but perhaps are allowed the journalistic source. encroaching. some kind of royalty ?from original source i suppose? ay yie yie just make every packet a blockchain linked to your tax id ahhhhh.
their paywall is not working ?
so is it the back picks heh i mean back pings. or weird referal?
is this more about fair use ? or just the repeating also semi mockingbird filterereed through drops of waters.
I’m sure the US Copyright Office’s opinion has already been bought and paid for
Well, the powers that be want to extract as much money as possible from the populace. Part is greed and part is to fund their spending addiction. This is especially prevalent with the Dems running D.C.. They are like drug addicts and their drug of choice for their social spending, justice and reparations fix is $$. Beside links, someday we may be paying for each email. There is just no telling what they will come up with next. Progressives only get progressively worse. The politicians seem to think we have an endless supply of money to tax…so they can spend it. I have a large archive called ‘Diary of a Dying Nation.’ And that about sums things up with the path we are headed in.
…The link tax was hatched by Angelika Niebler, who is a conservative, but thanks for the rant.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150708/15115331584/eu-politicians-try-to-create-new-link-tax-to-protect-newspapers-who-dont-like-sites-linking-free.shtml