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0 pointswombatmobile5y ago0 comments

> Doesn't that exactly demonstrate that the legistlation is necessary?

It seems to be a response to the government's threat to legislate, albeit a ham-fisted one. Responding to a threat doesn't mean the threat is valid, or that the response is of any use to anybody.

The difficulty with any analysis of the impact of Google and Facebook on news in Australia is that news has never been funded directly. It was traditionally paid for by advertising revenue which was obtained from advertising products that were co-delivered, interspersed among news products.

Google's advertising model superseded Murdoch's traditional advertising model, but Murdoch's core advertising businesses were not killed by Google alone. They lost out to direct internet competitors:

Seek took the classified advertising revenue for jobs

Domain took the classified advertising revenue for property

eBay, Gumtree, Facebook and Google took the display advertising revenue

If the government's concern is that journalism has suffered, the evidence it can point to is that 50% less people are employed in journalism compared to 20 years ago. The most sensible remedy for that problem is not to transfer wealth from Google and Facebook to Murdoch's entertainment corporations, but rather to fund grassroots journalism through programs that directly result in the production of news by journalists, in ways that preserve editorial independence.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

hypertele-Xii5y ago· 3 in thread

> Responding to a threat doesn't mean the threat is valid

Quite fundamentally disagree there. Responding to a threat definitely validates it. If it's not a valid threat, there's no need to respond.

shakna5y ago

Cats attack laser pointers. People flail when they encounter a spider's web. They are responding to a perceived threat, in which there is no threat at all.

Responding to a threat is not a validation that there is a threat.

hypertele-Xii5y ago

Did you know there exist spiders in our world that can kill you if they bite you? Sensible reaction.

I don't think cats are threatened by laser pointers.

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wombatmobileOP5y ago

> Responding to a threat definitely validates it.

I'm not sure what you mean by "valid threat". If you mean the capability of the threat to cause damage if carried through, that's something we don't find out until the party that made the threat tries to carry it out.

If you mean the grounds on which the threat was made, such as here, the Australian governments claim that Google owes Murdoch money, then that's not something that is "validated" by a response. A response to a spurious threat, or an illegitimate threat can be prudent whether the threat is real, imagined, justified, or totally bogus.

In this case, will the Australian government actually impose a tax on Google's practice of linking to content which is allowed by the sites own robots.txt? That seemed pretty audacious to me when I first heard about it, particularly since I don't buy the case that Google owes Murdoch money. But maybe they will try, if they think they can get away with it at the ballot box. I don't know how to predict that outcome. At first I thought it would backfire on the government, but Google's ham-fisted bluff to exit Australia might end up backfiring on Google, if Google even carries out that counter threat, which is by no means certain.

We'll see.

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