[hk__2]

> By setting up this bait and switch, you hurt your own paywall - if the search engine can get a full copy, so can I.

I don’t get this. They do whatever they want with their content. Editors give free book copies to journalists; that doesn’t gives you the right to have one as well.

[stickfigure]

...and if they post their content to the public, the public can read it. Giving content to journalists is not the same as giving your content to Google to index in their search engine and caches. The later is not private.

[kube-system]

Journalists post quotes and snippets, just as Google does. Not that it matters. Just because I gave something to someone else for free, doesn't mean I have to give it to you.

The idea that a single public exhibition of a work is enough to invalidate any future sale of that work is totally silly. Are you gonna bust out the window of a Barnes & Noble because libraries exist?

[vorpalhex]

Google reproduces the entire page it searches. This is not some oversight or hidden secret - it is how it works.

[hk__2]

> Giving content to journalists is not the same as giving your content to Google to index in their search engine and caches.

It’s exactly the same. You give access to an entity that serves to promote your content. The fact that Google’s cache is accessible is a technical implementation detail; Google could remove access to that cache tomorrow and that wouldn’t change anything.

[vorpalhex]

> The fact that Google’s cache is accessible is a technical implementation detail;

It's intentional to fix the kind of abusive behavior you are engaging in. If you serve content to a search engine, that search engine will reproduce the content.

Search engines are for publically available content.

If you want to advertise, pay for it.

[hedora]

Publishers give books to journalists with the expectation that the journalists will immediately put an electronic copy of the book in a publicly-available CDN and then spend nearly-unlimited resources promoting the free copy?

[vorpalhex]

You can't give a free copy to the local library to drive sales and be upset when people borrow the book and read it from the local library.

[kube-system]

And you cannot take a book from someone who asks for money, refuse to pay, and say "but it's free at the library!"

The difference is consent.

[vorpalhex]

But we are literally getting the copy here from the library because the author gave the book to the library.

Google is obeying robots.txt. Google caches a copy of what you serve and gives that out. That is part of the deal.

[hk__2]

> You can't give a free copy to the local library to drive sales

Nobody does that. The comparison doesn’t hold.

[vorpalhex]

You are doing that when you let Google past the paywall.