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June 11, 2018
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CEPIC Meeting with Google 31 May 2018

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:

  • Google can organize a workshop within the framework of the CEPIC Congress and the IPTC conference
  • This will take the form of a workshop, open to the public on invitation, and of a panel at the IPTC conference together with other image search engines
  • Google would contribute to the organisation of the workshop with €15.000, -

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

  • Luca Forlin – Director Product Partnership, UK based
  • Asif Makhani – Director Image Search, US San Francisco based
  • Ron Eden – Knowledge Counsel, US San Francisco based
  • Gary Illyes (Speaker for Thursday/ not present at the CEPIC Board Meeting) -

CEPIC to the CEPIC Board Meeting with Google, 31.05, 8:00 – 9.00 H

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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]:

  1. -They should allow users to search for images which can be legally licensed for different uses and refer them to such licensing sources;
  2. -Not remove any metadata on the images to allow proper attribution.
  3. -Licensing companies are in a position to provide the required information to Google to allow them to tag the images accordingly;
  4. -Once an image is tagged as requiring a license, the same image indexed from a client´s site cannot be displayed without any restrictions as otherwise, users will go to use the one indexed from the client’s or any infringer’s site.
  5. -By default images which require licensing to be used should be displayed first in the ranking;
  6. -For these images the following information shall be displayed under the images: this image is subject to copyright if you wish to license it please visit the rightsholder site.  
  7. -For all these images the save; view save and share options shall be disabled.
  8. -Inform all users of the importance of protecting copyright and the negative impact that unlawful use of content can have for the future of the visual content industry.
  9. The motion is trying to revert the idea that any use of the images is free, and it is not. We need to start educating users about copyright.
  10. -Ensure that search results are neutral and do not lead to anti-competitive environment:

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.

  • Removal of the VIEW Button

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

  • Copyright Education: Google is starting an awareness campaign on copyright. They say this is an area where there can be “cooperation” between Google and CEPIC.
  • Google Analytics. Google is working to extend the information available on Google Analytics to make it more useful to image providers
  • Copyright caption: The caption has been moved from the bottom right of the page to right below the image and in a brighter and bigger font. NEW in Germany: The caption now reads “Bilder sind in der Regel urheberrechtlich geschützt.“ Which translates into „Images are generally protected by copyright“ rather than „Images may be protected by copyright”.
frosch_redline
  • Showing Metadata: this point has been the subject of meetings with the German group in the Berlin meetings. Google has been looking into it but they find the metadata poor or inadequate. Under present circumstances, showing the metadata may actually be contra-productive and be turned “into a joke” (sic. Luca Forlin)

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:

  • There was a question whether the copyright notice in German language had only been introduced on the German .de domain or in all German language domains and when the notice would be extended to other languages. Asif did not know the answer but said he would come back [2].
  • Can the copyright notice be “The image is protected by copyright” when the metadata information is available.
  • The question was raised whether the licensing biased (proposed above) was possible. Google representatives explained that they were looking into “badging the image” but that the matter was still open for further discussion for the moment.
  • Concern were expressed about the fact that in the general search results there seems to be a preference given to partners of Google in such results such as Shutterstock and Getty Images Istock which is not based on objective criteria. Google representatives denied any preferences, insisting that most users coming on the internet were using an image as a pretext to their search but not to because they were looking to license images and that search was shaped to their needs.
  • The issues of the Share, Save and View Save buttons were not raised in the limited time of the meeting. However, the issue of the “format” of the images when they are shared was mentioned – as links (back to Google Images, which is the case for emails and for Twitter or as copy as in the fact of Facebook.)

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

  • 27 February 2017: Open Joint Letter to Google by German Association of Picture Agencies
  • 09 May 2017: First meeting in Berlin with Google. Delegation set up by BVPA.
  • 11 May 2017: Meeting organized by GESTE in Paris. Online publishers and Google are members.
  • 21 July 2017: Le Figaro-Benchmark send open joint letter to Google.
  • 05 October 2017: Second meeting in Berlin with the German BVPA initiative
  • 12 December 2017: Video conference with Google in which they show the latest developments on GI and seek support
  • 14 December 2017: First Meeting in Paris with Google; Delegation set up by Le Figaro (CEPIC Affiliate)

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 …

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