Google has announcedthat it will be permanently shut down theSpanish version of Google News , effective from December 16 , 2014 .
The closure comes in direct response toamendments to the Spanish rational property law(Ley De Propiedad Intelectual ) imposing a compulsory fee for the usage of snippets of text to link to news program articles , by online news aggregators that furnish a hunt service .
A similar fee was first introduced in German law in 2013 , where it was described as an “ ancillary copyright ” ( or Leistungsschutzrecht ) . But the fee in reality has no heritage in copyright police , which save the right to make quotations without remunerationunder international law(in fact , it is the only such mandatory limitation to copyright ) . The German law has been a manifest failure , where publisherswillingly forfeitedtheir right to requital from Google , as soon as they realized how much dealings they would lose from not being index on Google News .
Spain decided to one - up Germany by making the rightfulness to payment unalienable , so that even the news organization quoted is not let to waive it . The shuttering of Google News was therefore predictable , and it is hard to see what note value this has attain for the press in Spain or for Spanish ( and Spanish oral presentation ) cyberspace user . fourth dimension will order whetherYahoo Newswill fall out suit — since Yahoo , unlike Google , does monetise its news service with ads .
Are these law just a big marijuana cigarette for European countries to apply against with child US tech companies ? Certainly , that is part of the motive ; authority are implicated that US - based tech company are profiting from European data without paying their fair portion of tax on the revenue earned . But if that was all this was about , there would bemuch more lineal waysof call it than by passing special - interest amendment to right of first publication constabulary to profit press publisher .
What concern EFF more is that these appurtenant right of first publication laws form part of a broad trend of derogation from the right to link up . This can be insure when you analyse the other part of the Spanish copyright amendment that take effect in January ( herein PDF)—notably place criminal indebtedness on site operators who refuse to remove bare nexus to copyright - infringingmaterial .
on-line intermediaries may be a convenient scapegoat for the fade destiny of European paper publishers , but banning the role of text snip alongside web site links is a misguided and — now self - evidently — counter - productive coming . Once it becomes illegal for aggregators to freely link up news show summaries to publicly - uncommitted website , it becomes that much easier for those who need to prohibit other sorts of links , such as link topolitical YouTube picture , to make their pillowcase .
The chickens have already begun to get home to rest for Spain with the withdrawal method of Google News , and this should vocalise alarm clock bells for the Commissioner and for other European countries considering similar measures . It ’s sentence for Europe to become back from this ill-conceived itinerary of net content regulation before more damage to the open Internet is done .
This post firstappeared on Electronic Frontier Foundationand is republished here under Creative Commons license . Image by AP
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