CEPIC Meeting with Google 31 May 2018
The present summary is meant for internal purposes only, not for public distribution.
Background
Following a series of meetings in Germany and in France (see list below), Google had proposed to “do a workshop together” (sic.)
After consultation with the participants to the “German Initiative” set up by BVPA and with the board of CEPIC, a compromise was found that:
The agreed date was 31.05. In addition, a meeting between the CEPIC Board and the representatives of Google was scheduled on that day for one hour at 8 AM. Google sent three representatives to the Congress who attended the conferences on the 30th and 31st, the welcome reception and the annual industry party, mingling with CEPIC delegates and getting an insight in the challenges faced by our industry.
Google delegates
CEPIC to the CEPIC Board Meeting with Google, 31.05, 8:00 – 9.00 H
CEPIC delegation:
o Alfonso Gutierrez, CEPIC President
o Sylvie Fodor, CEPIC Executive Director
o Marisol Muniz, Legal Counsel, AGE Fotostock
o Lars Modie, CEPIC Vice President, representative of BLF (IT)
o John Balean, representative of BAPLA, (TopFoto)
o Magali Tribalet, representative of SNAPIG, (AGE Fotostock)
o Martin Skultety, representative of BVPA, (Stockfood)
o Sergi Grigno, representative of AEAPAF, (Album Archivo Fotográfico)
o Marcos Bori, IT manager at (Album Archivo Fotográfico)
o Paul Vestegren, BLF President
Time: The meeting lasted one hour as scheduled.
Alfonso Gutierrez made a general introduction on the situation of the picture industry and how it is affected by Google's practices. He pointed to a number of technical solutions to support the licensing industry and the defense of copyright online in order to provide tools to minimize copyright infringement as a result of the use of Google Image Search,such as [1]:
Google presentation
Asif MAKHANI, Director of Image Search, summarized the meetings that had taken place in Berlin and Paris, cumulating in his presentation with this Board meeting. He went on to explained what Google had done so far to fix some of the issues that had been presented to them and what they had planned to do.
Note: In some instances, it was noticeable that they had attended the presentations of the Innovation Day, as they made references to the conferences and pitches. Luca for instance mentioned the possibility in the long term of integrating blockchain technology into the internet eco-system.
Asif mentioned a recent article in Search Engine Land reporting on the positive effect of the removal of the VIEW button on the traffic of original websites.
https://searchengineland.com/its-alive-image-seo-is-back-from-the-dead-298751
Questions/ comments:
From Google: Who are the big players in the industry besides Getty Images and Shutterstock (with whom Google has an agreement). The answer was that they were the two dominant players indeed but that some players were dominant on their territories. In general 95% of the industry is made of micro businesses (with up to staff of 10).
From CEPIC:
Next steps
As a conclusion of the meeting, Luca FORLIN, director of Product Partnership, proposed to set up a “technical committee” to progress on the image search and have “regular meetings”. This was agreed. He later wrote to Alfonso to express this wish again.
Afternoon Workshops
The workshop proposed by Google was labelled Understanding Google Image Search and How to Optimize For It. The IPTC panel was labelled “Smart Photos and Smart Search Engines” with Stan ASSIER of Qwant facing Luca FORLIN of Google.
Number of participants:
- Google Workshop, approx. 100 participants
- IPTC Panel: A maximum of 30 participants
The workshop Understanding Google Image Search and How to Optimize For It was a standard SEO workshop, not well calibrated to the audience. However, with a room packed, the Q&A session covered all the concerns of the industry, foremost the lack of metadata, attribution and “fair” visibility of all content. Representatives of Google (Luca Forlin and Asif Makhani) answered most of the questions, referring to their “collaboration” with CEPIC.
The SEO workshop was highly branded, with Google T-shirts distributed at the end, soccer balls being sent for each question (they were all gone at the end) and Google branding in the room.
In contrast, Luca’s presentation addressed more generally the points of the morning Board meeting. It went into the general philosophy of the Google’s search, how images enhance search and how progress has been made on how to protect the licensing source of these images [3]. An introduction to the Copyright Hub[4] was made, cards were exchanged.
Unfortunately, all delegates had gone back to their meetings [5].
MILESTONES and MEETINGS with Google in 2017
Milestones
February 2013: Google introduces controversial image search features, which immediate impact is to drop the traffic on image source websites. These changes are introduced all over the world except in France and Germany.
November 2013: CEPIC lodges a competition complaint in Brussels at DG COMP
April 2016: Getty Images lodges an additional competition complaint (withdrawn in January 2018°
February 2017: Google introduces disputed features in two last territories: France and Germany. Opposition in both countries takes shape.
Meetings
Sf, 06 -11/06/2018
[1] This list of requirements had been discussed at the CEPIC AGM and the points came up in different order during the meeting.
[2] Indeed, the changes have only been introduced on the .de domains …
[3] (Qwant’s presentation was very weak.)
[4] http://www.copyrighthub.org/
[5] Luca Forlin later expressed his surprise that there were so few people attending part II …