Jeff Jarvis: Finding copyright peace between platforms and publishers - Main contents

Continuing the series of guest posts on my blog, I’d like to welcome @jeffjarvis, @BuzzMachine blogger, professor and author of Public Parts, What Would Google Do. In this post, Jarvis shares his viewpoint on copyright, platforms and publishers.

If I may be so bold as to suggest, now is the time for Europe to make friends, not former friends. In the wake of the U.K.’s inexplicable Brexit, European nations and industries need to forge alliances and partnerships around the world, especially in the arenas that will guide our future: technology and the net.

In the recent past, Europe chose to wage war on Silicon Valley. Prompted by news publishers wielding their political clout, Germany and Spain instituted new copyright laws aimed at protecting legacy business models, and now the European Commission is considering similar efforts. The EU is protracting its antitrust probe of Google in a manner reminiscent of its pyrrhic prosecution of Microsoft. Google also suffers the inconvenience — and the net the censorship — of the European Court of Justice’s right to be forgotten doctrine.

I have been critical of these actions, fearing they paint Europe as inhospitable to technology, invention, and investment. Protectionism is no path to innovation. But I will say this (even if Google is loath to admit it): Europe’s slings and arrows have brought Google to the table. So now, I argue, it is time to shift from war footing to business footing.

Google formed its Digital News Initiative with leading European publishers more than a year ago. This friendship pact has yielded a new and open standard for speeding up the mobile web, a new YouTube player and deal that will enable media companies to reap added video revenue, and — most important — greater understanding among platforms and publishers. It also spawned a €150-million innovation fund, though I see that more as a blackmail pot than as a strategic benefit to a struggling industry: bags of coins tossed to drowning journalists.

On a three-city European tour of publishing conferences in June, I saw the opening of a path to real strategic benefit for the news industry: the first, tentative discussions aimed at getting Google (and then, one hopes, Facebook et al) to share their true pot of gold — namely, data about users (with privacy protected to Europe’s higher standards). With information about users’ interests and desires, publishers could serve them with greater relevance and value. Thus publishers could create deeper, more engaged relationships; increase advertising value; open up new revenue streams, such as commerce — and perhaps see a way to escape their dying mass-media business model. These discussions were just a beginning but I see the opportunity for Europe and Silicon Valley together to build a new and sustainable business model for news.

Beware, though: There is competition seeking this same opportunity. I have met with forward-thinking Latin American publishers who see the chance to define and build a model relationship of mutual benefit with Google and other technology companies. Progress is being made there. Silicon Valley could find better friends to its south than to its east.

There is work to be done on both sides of the table. Google and more so Facebook need to become more transparent (the latter made a small step in the right direction in June, revealing the broad principles that govern its News Feed formulae). I hope to see the internet giants devote their best strategic, technological, and business minds working with journalists to reimagine what news could be; it would be good business for them. I say they should help train my industry (and educators such as me) in the skills and worldview that makes them successful in serving users.

For their part, Europe — and nations everywhere — must get their acts together and negotiate tax structures so that multinational companies are no longer expected to decide what their fair share is; that is the law’s job. And before reinventing copyright and other established institutions, I would urge governments to recognize that it is too soon to define and regulate the net. It took 150 years after the invention of Gutenberg’s press before anyone thought to publish a newspaper. In Gutenberg years, this is 1480. We still don’t know what the net is and what it can be.

I would like to see Europe encourage large-scale investment in technology, rewarding risk, which is the only way to create the next Google. As an educator, I see an imperative to reinvent my industrial-age institution, with schools operating as incubators for creativity and innovation; Europe is well-positioned to lead there. And I wish that across many challenged industries — news and the rest of media as well as automotive, retail, travel, and more — European officials would use their standing to open diplomacy with Silicon Valley, not so that technology companies avoid punishment but so together these powerful forces can build a better, richer future. I believe that is possible. But then, I’m an American: optimist, to a fault.