Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

5.2.2 Copyrights 
Digitization and the internet have made it easier to copy and distribute content. For a number 
of media products (music, video) this has given rise to p-2-p networks or platforms such as 
YouTube where content, among which copyrighted content, is distributed and shared for free 
among users. Especially in the music industry this has led to substantial losses in the sale of 
their physical product (music CDs). Albeit not to the same extent as in the music industry, 
piracy is also a concern for news providers (European Commission, 2005a). 
A copyright issue with a larger impact for newspaper publishers is the practice of deep linking 
to articles and content by news aggregators such as Google News. News aggregators often 
link users directly to the relevant news content, thereby potentially enabling users to skip the 
front page branding and advertising of the original news source. This practice undermines the 
current business models for newspaper publishers’ online activities, for which branding and 
front page advertising are of major importance. Several publishers and press agencies, for 
instance Danish, Belgian and German newspaper publishers and French press agencies - have 
tried to stop (deep) linking to articles and pictures without consent or compensation (OECD, 
2010). In Belgium and Denmark news publishers have tried to stop Google from aggregating 
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In January 2011, the Dutch government decided to abolish a specific law for media cross ownership, because 
it interfered with the development of publishers into multimedia concerns. Overseeing market concentration 
has since then been left to Dutch Competition Authority (NMa). (Dutch Media Authority, 2011). 

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Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries 
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news from their websites. In Belgium, trade organisation Copiepresse (representing the rights 
of French and German language newspapers in Belgium) won a lawsuit and Google was no 
longer allowed to include links to articles from these newspapers in its Google News 
service.
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In Denmark, publishers wrote a letter to Google saying Google could not expand 
Google News to Denmark without permission (and until now, Google News is not available 
in Denmark). The Belgian and Danish Courts convicted news aggregators for deep linking to 
newspapers without paying royalties. In July 2011 newspapers who are members of 
Copiepresse have again been included by Google in the Google News index after 
confirmation that they would refrain from claims. 
The disagreements between Google and newspaper publishers have so far not been solved and 
newspaper trade organisations have continued their lobbying efforts. For newspaper 
publishers taking steps against Google, for instance by having the links to their content 
removed from Google News, is a not always the best solution, as they also benefit largely 
from the traffic which Google News generates to their websites.