European Commission Asked To Clamp Down on Online News Aggregation
By Anna Johnson on July 20th, 2009A group of major European newspaper and magazine publishers have called on the European Commission to strengthen copyright protection, in an effort to prevent the (mis)-use of their work by online news aggregators and others who they believe are undermining their online business models.
In a letter to Viviane Reding, the European media and telecommunications commissioner, the publishers – including News Corporation, Independent News & Media, the Daily Mail & General Trust, and others – requested changes to European copyright law to give them greater control over secondary use of their work that generates revenue.
Apparently the publishers didn’t specify how the law should be changed or how they planned to use their greater control over the secondary use of their work.
According to The New York Times (not a signatory to the petition), European publishers have previously wanted Google and other news aggregators to use a system called the ‘Automated Content Access Protocol’ which would allow publishers to control how search engines and others used their content.
