Appraising Potential Legal Responses to Threats to the Production of News in the Digital Environment

像音乐和其他出版分支一样，新闻业在过去二十年里面临着根本性的挑战。有关于“报纸之死”的讨论，也有关于新闻业未来的问题（“谁杀死了报纸？“，《经济学人》，2006年8月24日）;以及《复兴的补偿食谱》，《重建新闻，数字时代的大都市新闻》，安德森，2013年）。在音乐、书籍和电影方面，对现有商业模式的最大威胁被视为未经授权和无偿的家庭复制和点对点分发，而在新闻报道方面，挑战来自广告没有跟随印刷报纸向互联网的转变。鉴于传统上报纸收入的一半以上来自广告，报纸的利润率受到严重影响，许多工作岗位流失，报纸停刊。北美和欧洲先进经济体的地方和区域报纸的情况尤其困难。因此，新闻记者，包括摄影师和相关的自由创作者，对他们日益脆弱的经济状况和令人不满的法律的地位表示失望。但是，如果核心问题不是盗版，那么最大的问题是与版权相关的商业模式是否是解决方案的一部分。当然，一些报纸开始将版权和准版权作为其商业战略的一部分：使用防火墙系统，对新闻聚合网站（如谷歌新闻）采取行动，这些网站被视为“吸走”广告收入;最激进的是，呼吁增加法律的权利，包括新闻本身的权利。与此同时，聚合器和其他正在寻求新的商业模式，通过使用新闻档案和其他新闻文本和图像资产。这导致了许多商业模式的融合，例如英国初创企业Summly的出现，该公司通过移动的手机提供新闻聚合服务，并于2013年3月被雅虎收购。由于在线新闻机构越来越多地使用多媒体技术，这与电视和电影的版权问题越来越重叠。我们对新闻的研究有三个维度。首先，我们将探索和绘制正在使用的商业模式（广告，订阅，防火墙，免费增值，公共资金，公民新闻，慈善目的）的范围，以评估该行业如何适应，并通过制作各子行业的经验说明，为行业参与者提供实用指导。第二，我们将考虑评估这些变化的方法，不仅是在经济上，而且在社会上。这些转变对新闻的“质量”以及不同阶层的公众获得新闻、分析和辩论的机会有何影响？这一分析触及了CREATe所从事的核心研究问题的核心：我们如何判断文化和信息产品的生产水平是否在生产数量及其多样性和质量方面都是最佳的？第三，我们将考虑决策者在这一领域发挥何种有益的作用。如果对新闻质量的担忧是真实的，那么它们就触及了一个运转良好的民主制度的核心。对这一问题可能有不同的答案，从加强对媒体所有权集中的限制到使用公共补贴。一些商业行为者希望探讨“辅助版权”（目前德国议会正在审议）和“热点新闻”版权保护的价值，这反过来又提出了有关表达自由的具体问题。这类制度的历史经验可以为所涉问题和这类法律可能产生的影响提供一些指导。

Like music and other branches of publishing, news journalism has faced radical challenges over the last two decades. There is talk of the "death of the newspaper" and questions raised about the very future of journalism ('Who Killed the Newspaper?', The Economist, 24 August 2006) ; and countervailing recipes for revival, Rebuilding the News, Metropolitian Journalism in the Digital Age, Anderson, 2013). While with music, books and films, the greatest threat to existing business models have been seen as the unauthorised and unremunerated home copying and peer to peer distribution, with news journalism the challenge derives from the fact that advertising has not followed the shift of print-newspapers to the Internet. Given that more than half of newspaper revenue traditionally comes from advertising, newspaper profit margins have suffered badly, many jobs have been lost and titles closed. The situation has been particularly difficult for local and regional newspapers in the advanced economies of North America and Europe. Consequently, news journalists, including photographers and associated freelance creators, have expressed dismay at their increasingly fragile economic and unsatisfactory legal position. But, if the central problem has not been copyright piracy, the big question is whether copyright-related business models are part of the solution. Certainly, some newspapers are starting to deploy copyright and para-copyright as part of their business strategies: using firewall systems, bringing actions against news aggregation sites (such as Google News), which are seen as "siphoning off" advertising revenue; and, most radically, calling for addition legal rights, including rights in news per se. At the same time, aggregators and others are pursuing new business models arising from the use of news archives and other news text and image assets. This has given rise to a number of business model fusions, such as the emergence of a UK start-up, Summly, which offers a news aggregation service via mobile phones, and its acquisition in March 2013 by Yahoo!. Because on-line news organisations increasingly use multi-media techniques, there is growing overlap with copyright concerns in television and film. Our research into news would have three dimensions. First, we would explore and map the range of business models being utilised (advertising, subscription, firewall, freemium, public funding, citizen journalism, charitable purposes) in order to appraise how the sector is adapting, and by producing an account of the experiences of various sub-sectors offer practical guidance to participants in the industry. Second, we would consider the methods of assessing these changes not just on the economy but on society. What is the impact of these shifts on the "quality" of journalism and the level of access enjoyed by different sections of the public to news, analysis and debate? This analysis goes to the very heart of the core research question with which CREATe is engaging: how can we judge whether levels of production of cultural and informational goods are optimal in terms of both the quantity of production and also its diversity and quality? Third, we will consider what useful role policy-makers play in this field. If concerns over the quality of journalism are real, they go to the heart of a well-functioning democratic system. Diverse answers may be given to this question, from the case for stronger restrictions on concentration of media ownership to the use of public subsidy. Some commercial players wish to explore the value of "ancillary copyright" (currently before the German Parliament) and copyright protection for "hot news," which in turn raises particular issues with regard to freedom of expression. Historical experience of such regimes can provide some guidance, both as to the issues at stake and the likely effects of such laws.