[JohnStrangeII]

Protection by enforcing applicable copyright law, not in the sense of "helping someone out".

The news companies can opt to give away their content to Google for free. The directive merely gave these companies more choice, by stopping illegal web scraping without asking first.

[jhall1468]

They already had the ability to opt-out of Google scraping their articles. They already had a choice, just like they did in Germany. And the German news organizations realized views plummeted after they did this (https://searchengineland.com/german-publisher-group-sues-goo...).

This was never about choice, which they've always had, this has always been about both having their cake and eating it to. When French publishers inevitably see their traffic plummet, they will almost certainly sue Google for it.

[JohnStrangeII]

I totally understand your position.

The point is that it is always opt-in, though. There is no such thing as "use it as you like unless the copyright holder opts-out" anywhere in copyright law. You cannot just e.g. use substantial portions of someone else's texts in your own publications[1], sample a part of someone else's music for your own song, use someone else's graphics as your own, use an unlicensed font, etc., without a written permission by the copyright holder.

The EU directive merely ensures that existing laws are enforced instead of being systematically violated by large corporations.

Independently, of course, you could ask whether copyright law should be that way. I personally don't think so, and think it should be changed in various ways that strongly disfavor large corporations, but that's a completely different discussion. What I try to explain here is the rationale of the EU commission, which primarily thinks in legal terms, not my personal views about that matter.

If you ask for my personal views, I do find it appalling that large companies like Google (and Uber, Microsoft, AirBnB, etc.) continue to try to circumvent laws in ways that no small companies could get through with in court, simply because they have the business power and enough lawyers to give it a try.

[1] beyond fair use, which is very limited and does not apply int his case.

[theamk]

I it is not about opt-in, it is about getting both money and traffic from google. This quote from the parent linked article is very telling:

> After the passage of the law Google asked German publishers to explicitly opt-in or be excluded from search results as protection against liability. Publishers opted-in but filed an antitrust complaint, arguing they were effectively forced by Google to waive their copyrights.

[cameronbrown]

> sample a part of someone else's music for your own song, use someone else's graphics as your own, use an unlicensed font, etc.,

No, but snippets are considered fair use. At least, they were until Article 13 killed the concept.