Competition laws should change so news publishers can tackle Google, says MPs' report

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Competition laws should not prevent local newspaper publishers in the UK from taking collective action against news aggregation websites, a cross-party committee of MPs has recommended. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee's report into the Future for Local and Regional Media says the issue should be re-examined by the Office of Fair Trading. In her evidence to the year-long inquiry in July, former Guardian Media Group chief executive Carolyn McCall told the committee that UK competition laws must be addressed to allow newspaper publishers to jointly discuss the threat of aggregators to their online revenues.

As a result of current law, "we as publishers cannot sit in a room together and talk about the issue of aggregators", she said.

"We would be in collusion. We have to, as individual players, think about this (…) we cannot sit in room and talk about this even with lawyers, because it would be deemed as anti-competitive," said McCall, who argued that local newspapers are not making money out of traffic directed to them by such aggregators.

"There's no real revenue model there [for local media]. All the money is going to the search engine. It is copyrighted content that they're taking (…) but taking it off Google would be unbelievably damaging. We'd be cutting off our reach and therefore our influence," she added. Through the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), several major UK newspaper publishers have recently attempted to clamp down on news aggregation websites using their content in commercial services by introducing new charges for linking to their sites.

But today's report also concludes that some criticisms of Google from local newspaper publishers "lack focus" and says it welcomes recent changes by Google News in particular to help local newspapers.

"[The committee] urges Google to be continually aware of the impact which its products can have on local newspapers and remain sensitive to the need for plurality in news provision," it says.

"While Google's success in news aggregation has been achieved through innovation rather than aggression and is not in breach of international copyright laws, its changes demonstrate a welcome awareness of the problems faced by local newspapers and other traditional publishers. It seems clear that Google's business is having a significant impact on traditional publishers' economic models and so we welcome new facilities such as Fast Flip and hope Google is sensitive to the need to maintain diverse, pluralistic sources of local news and information."