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Great piece, really interesting! I attended a media conference in London recently where they touched on this topic and a number of the considerations you've mentioned above. Apparently stats show that the growth of smart speakers is faster than smartphone growth at a similar stage. Many UK media outlets are now investing in 'audio' teams to investigate how to efficiently make this all work together. It's difficult to see how decent revenue can be brought in, and discoverability of content is an issue too. As you say, there's rightly concerns about how radio is adapted, but it seems like this tech will only advance - best make friends with it now.
Two issues, fair dealing and reputational issues.
The idea of google being technologically capable of breaking a news broadcast into its constituent stories is more fit for a legal journal and the subject of a 3000+ word essay in Copyright Act. This involves the re-transmission or communication of segments of sound broadcasts by the google service.
I know this having achieved an HD in IP1 law and DN in IP2 law at UNSW.
In short, given that the google service will use algorithms to re-transmit and communicate short news stories rather than re-transmitting the whole news service, could google claim 'fair dealing' under the Copyright Act (Cth). According to s103B(1)(b), that an entity is not infringing copyright if the news item is for the reporting of news. Since the Copyright Act does not define reporting, reporting involves the gathering of facts and preparing the facts for a report. The google service does not do that, but re-transmits or communicates. The google services does not broadcast news segments because it is a point-to-point demand service not a continuous stream, s6 Broadcast Services Act (Cth) and s10 Copyright Act (Cth). Hence the use of communication, re-transmission NOT broadcasting.
If the google service is monetised, a royalty to the source broadcaster would be apt for each news item sourced by the source broadcaster.
Another issue to consider is the reputation. Given the algorithms will aggregate news stories from diverse sources, could the reputation of the source broadcaster be tainted by another source broadcaster's news whose editorial policies may be lax or whose news stories may be fake?
In sum, the issue of the google service being able to marshal diverse news stories presents itself issues of Copyright and fair dealing under Australian Law, but also Copyright Law from other jurisdictions. Then we have to consider reputational issues. For example if news items from reputable broadcasters such as the ABC or SBS or Macquarie Media being mixed with news items from dubious sources such as fake news or lax editorial policies, how would the reputable broadcasters feel that their news items are being 'mixed' with the fake or lax broadcasters?
Acknowledging the source news items from reputable and not reputable news sources may not be enough to allay the 'fears' that good news is being mixed with fake news.
The topic is huge,
Regards
Anthony of exciting Belfield