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Bron Maher
Justin Smith told Puck’s Grill Room podcast back in January that although Semafor's currently chasing the big growth markets in the global economy - the “global south and global east,” in his words - that “we will double back to Europe in 27".
Asked about rumours Semafor has been tapping up reporters in Brussels, Ben Smith tells me: “We are always talking to great journalists all over the world, and I’ll be in Brussels next month chatting with people” - but says there’s “no plan or timeline for a European launch."
Looks like that exec said something he wasn't meant to: YouTube have been in touch fully walking back the claim they're working on publisher paywall integration.
They're not saying he was misquoted - only that "at the moment, there are no plans to launch a paywall integration with news publishers."
Notably, given the NYT's AI licensing deal with Amazon, he also questioned how viable publisher AI licensing deals could be long term, whether they were direct or facilitated through pay-per-crawl means: www.amediaoperator.com/news/ag-sulz...
New: NYT publisher AG Sulzberger says the company has now spent more than $20 million in its lawsuit against OpenAI that began two and a half years ago.
In a broader speech to WAN-IFRA in Marseille today Sulzberger decried a "tragedy of the civic commons" being encouraged by major AI companies, who he said had "raided civilization's entire corpus of original works."
Bron Maher
Bron Maher
For the avoidance of doubt, here's what he said in full:
Big news: YouTube is working on integrating its platform with publisher paywalls, according to its vice president for Europe - a move that could fundamentally reshape the news industry’s relationship to the traditionally free-to-air streamer
www.amediaoperator.com/news/youtube...
