Lucas Grindley on Google news
Compared to some of the hysterical debate surrounding the matter, this is relatively calm analysis - basically looking at Google News’s position against copyright law (basically, they don’t come out smelling of roses).
His proposal is that robots.txt should grant permission rather than have the potential to opt out. Which is the general idea behind the ACAP initiative.
I’ve banged on about this quite a bit in the past, but in the end - we are simply balancing one unknown against another: The threat of losing our role as a starting point for news discovery against the opportunity of bringing in traffic and users. A little more quantification and a little hunch-based assertion might make decision making a little easier here.
Other useful round-ups on this one from Martin Stabe - here, here and here.
Lucas wrote:
Thanks for pointing out the ACAP initiative. Somehow I’d missed that, so I’ll take a look.
And thanks for the link. I think we do need a thoughtful conversation about fair use and copyright that doesn’t start with the suggestion anyone who disagrees is a moron who doesn’t understand the Internet.
Posted on 11-Apr-07 at 3:31 pm | Permalink