Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
The Disruptive Competition Project(DisCo) has discovered a provision in a French law which requires search engines to pay royalties for the images they index. Although the Freedom of Creation Act was passed in late June, this particular provision in the law hasn't received much attention until now.
Under the provisions of the law, whenever a visual work is published online, the reproduction rights are automatically transferred to a collection agency authorized by the French government. Search engines must get a license from the collection agency in order to index the work and will pay a royalty in return. It will then be up to the collection agency to distribute the royalties to the creator of the work.
Source: http://techraptor.net/content/french-law-requires-search-engines-pay
(Score: 4, Funny) by Nerdfest on Monday August 29 2016, @04:33PM
I'm still somewhat of the opinion that France still misses the Germans and created a sort of cargo cult. The level of bureaucracy occurs because they think if they have lots of rules, they'll become as efficient as the Germans.
Just a theory.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Monday August 29 2016, @06:04PM
The law seems specific enough to require payments to the French government, but strangely vague when it comes to dismemberment of funds to the artist. So theft by government seems the motive here.
The Germans took the art, by the train-car load. The French just take the money.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DutchUncle on Monday August 29 2016, @08:36PM
"dismemberment of funds"? Are you suggesting that it might cost an arm and a leg?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday August 30 2016, @12:55AM
Damn You Auto-correct!!!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @09:06PM
> The Germans took the art
Exactly like Napoleon, and the revolutionaries before him and basically everybody else, from ancient times up to clay tablets in Iraq and Saddam's gold plated guns (yes, those guns are art, maybe bad art... I'd rate them a bit better than anything Warhol's...)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @04:48PM
Image searching will become a thing of the past in France.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @05:47PM
Indeed. It won't be worth it to search co's to pay royalties on many millions of cached images such that they'll make image search text-only, an oxymoron.
At least allow thumbnails below a certain resolution. That's a reasonable compromise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @07:43AM
At least allow thumbnails below a certain resolution. That's a reasonable compromise.
Not when the rationale is "we want Google to pay us, because our business model is not working in the digital world".
Just like several European countries have laws that forbid Google News from indexing local news (without paying), with the result that Google doesn't send any potential customers their way.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday August 29 2016, @05:59PM
Exactly what I was thinking. "We're going to make so much money!". We're sorry. This service is not available in your region. Much, much, MUCH simpler just to exclude the content availability by region than to attempt to keep track of this monster-sized mess.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 29 2016, @07:09PM
Given the candidates for the upcoming presidential election, I wouldn't be surprised if discouraging image search was considered a positive side-effect.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday August 29 2016, @10:54PM
Yep. Google is already quite adept at customizing content to regions. Surf using onion routing protocols or VPN and you can see Google/YouTube acting differently depending on exit node already.
What will happen is that the images tab for search results will be missing, or more likely, have a warning explaining why this service is missing or modified for "your" area. I get them all the time as I don't surf the net from the US anymore.
The whole thing is effing stupid because French users that want to see the images will simply VPN around it and switch the language to French. Meanwhile, France will go "dark". It will become common in France to describe the images in flowery words and prose since the images themselves will be an 'access denied' message :)
Even if royalties were less than a fraction of a Euro, it would cost Google millions upon millions. I doubt the artists (government cronies really) are going to set a reasonable number anyways.
Do the French understanding the purpose of a search engine in the first place?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday August 30 2016, @02:03AM
Even if royalties were less than a fraction of a Euro, it would cost Google millions upon millions.
I doubt that Google would even be bothered about the royalties. They could make it up by increasing the charge on ads to/from France, etc. The REAL nightmare is having to keep track of those millions of pennies in a way that would survive some auditing process by the French government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @08:30PM
The entire net will vanish for them if they push it..
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @04:55PM
Whoa! This doesn't appear to be limited to even French works, works not published for profit (uploaded via Google Photos), or works explicitly published under "free to use, plz attribute" licenses. It appears that, under this law, Facebook must pay France for a Creative Commons licensed image uploaded from the USA to a private page. Retarded law is retarded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @05:28PM
I've had an entire album of my photos swiped from my Facebook account and used without permission or attribution on another website. Seems fair to me in certain cases.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Monday August 29 2016, @05:32PM
Why on earth would you post something to Facebook if you didn't expect it to somehow eventually end up being made public?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday August 30 2016, @01:01AM
Why on earth would you post something to Facebook if you didn't expect it to somehow eventually end up being made public?
Your wishes don't appear to enter into it.
French law says the upload becomes the the property of the French government.
the reproduction rights are automatically transferred to a collection agency authorized by the French government.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by pgc on Monday August 29 2016, @05:34PM
Did the search engine (Google) swipe these?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @06:22PM
I don't know how they were found, my work is supposed to only be shared with people on my friends list. The website that posted them said they forgot who they got them from. I threatened them with legal action if they didn't remove them or attribute them as my work, which they finally did. I've started watermarking everything to prevent future problems since then. I don't know if Google (or any other search engine) indexes Facebook photos even if your account is set not to let Google index your account. My advise is don't put anything in the cloud that you don't want used elsewhere. I've gone as far as deleting everything on web based storage, Google Drive, Dropbox, Onedrive, etc.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday August 29 2016, @06:35PM
my work is supposed to only be shared with people on my friends list.
Well, that was a stupid and naïve mistake right there. Anything you post on Facebook is public, period. If you don't want everyone in the world seeing something, don't post it on Facebook. I don't care about your "friends list", and neither does Facebook: they're infamous for not following those privacy settings, which they never wanted to implement in the first place, and only did to mollify people and keep them using Facebook. People are constantly getting in trouble because they post something on FB to their "friends only" and then someone else like their employer or some friend-of-a-friend sees it. Those privacy setting on Facebook are nothing more than mere suggestions, and are subject to change at any time.
My advise is don't put anything in the cloud that you don't want used elsewhere. I've gone as far as deleting everything on web based storage, Google Drive, Dropbox, Onedrive, etc.
This is good advice here. The only way any of that stuff is safe for your private data is if you encrypt it before uploading it there.
(Score: 2) by https on Monday August 29 2016, @09:19PM
Anything you post on facebook is facebook's, period.
FTFY
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @09:28PM
Some of your friends could have easily uploaded the images somewhere else. If you can see in on your computer screen, it can be copied.
(Score: 1) by fraxinus-tree on Monday August 29 2016, @06:55PM
Good luck collecting royalties the french way
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @05:39PM
It will then be up to the collection agency to distribute the royalties to the creator of the work.
Yeah, sure. Because these guys are craving to give all those millions of creators their money instead of stealing it[1] arguing that weren't unable to find them (because are not members and is too much work to try to contact them) or for most of the members that it's a too small amount and you need to wait until a threshold is reached in a year (€100). Adding all up they have racked billions, literally.
[1] Like SGAE, DAMA, CEDRO et al in Spain do.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday August 29 2016, @06:21PM
only charging when google get's it right - I'm still amazed at how bad google image search is. It seems to get the first row almost right, and then pages of ads/rubbish/wrong.....
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday August 29 2016, @06:43PM
Google's reverse image search seems to work pretty well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @06:52PM
Always have trouble using google for that. I prefer TinEye Reverse Image Search [tineye.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @01:47AM
They want to cash in on the pictures of that sunbather in Nice taking off her burqini.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @03:06AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmoschner on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:11AM
I doubt that the search engines are going to pay per image. Most likely it will work kinda like ASCAP/BMI/etc. The search engine pays a yearly fee to deliver images and turns over logs of what images were displayed. Then the collection agency will take a cut to "Cover Expenses" and probably have a policy that checks are not written for anything under a Euro. So of the hundred million or more they will likely charge minus the 40% overhead divided by all the images shown a year, they will never have to pay out. Money collected earns interest. They roll in profit. Even if there are payouts, they will be few and far between.
If anything this seems like a privacy concern as logs of all the images people search for will be turned over. Probably with IP addresses and other metadata to "prevent abuse."
This is also ripe for abuse, not just from those running the show. People will write code to automatically search for their images over and over to game the system and payouts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @09:44PM
There's already malware that does similar to fake clicking on advertisements...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @09:51PM
The article is one step removed from the actual source, which is http://www.project-disco.org/intellectual-property/082616-unfortunately-typical-french-initiative-plus-ca-change-plus-cest-la-meme-chose/#.V8X_nC-qNhG [project-disco.org]