[raverbashing]

Well, you're absolutely right, but the law did go from a complete shitstorm to something more manageable.

> Maybe the rights of publishers not to have their content seen by users?

Well, it was always their right (as they could use robots.txt) but now Google gives them a more fine grained control over it.

Though to be honest I'm very, very happy they're trowing a fit right now. Yes, please, use the panel and take your content off of Google.

> But certainly the freedom and right of a news consumer in France was harmed as they have less access to news in a convenient fashion.

True. But they can always go to the website of their favourite news org and go from there.

[shkkmo]

> Well, it was always their right (as they could use robots.txt) but now Google gives them a more fine grained control over it.

Does it? I am pretty sure Google already provided on page directives that gives sites full control of image indexing, snippet usage and even snippet length. [0]

The differences is that now all news sites are opted-out by default, a legal agreement is required to opt in, and the force of law ensures compliance.

I don't really see how this actually does ANYTHING to help anyone except lawyers. I guess it makes it harder for small aggregators to get going...but is that really a result we wanted?

[0] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710

[raverbashing]

> Google already provided on page directives that gives sites full control of image indexing, snippet usage and even snippet length

Yeah I heard so also as well (your link might be missing some things though), though now they can do it through an UI?

> The differences is that now all news sites are opted-out by default, a legal agreement is required to opt in, and the force of law ensures compliance.

I don't think a legal agreement is required to get back in, or it might be a simple one. Of course if you let Google show it and forget about the others then you're just encroaching its position (but hey isn't that what everybody said it would happen? tough)

> I guess it makes it harder for small aggregators to get going...but is that really a result we wanted?

Yeah... I'm actually sad Google is not asking for money to show full results for them, it would have been funnier.