I think this is part of a recurring pattern in tech of pushing boundaries around copyright.
In the last few years, we had Google scanning books, Google threatening to shut down News in Canada rather than pay publishers, LLMs summarizing articles on social platforms, crawlers bypassing paywalls, and so on.
Each time, the industry frames it as their interpretation of the current law, which were usually not written with these specific future use cases in mind.
In my view the current discussion regarding Gen AI is similar.
i still dont see why google should pay news publishers for each reader google sends to the publisher. like the publisher is getting that view already and can monetize it how they see fit
The Canadian and Australian news link taxes are a naked hand out to powerfully connected individuals like Rupert Murdoch. They're completely incoherent as policy without that fact.
Big Tech spinelessly folded when they should have just banned news links instead. Google has no obligation to index or link to extortionist news media at all. Watch Murdoch U-turn in ten seconds when no one can find his trash online.
In general, there's far too much compliance with protectionist mandates from corrupt foreign governments. One silver lining of the mostly dark cloud of deglobalisation is the fact that US businesses should no longer care what Australian or Turkish or Russian laws say at all, if they're not in those markets.