Google's announcement that it plans to pull the
plug on Google News in Spain in response to a restrictive copyright law
there is the first time the U.S. tech giant has removed a local version of its
news-aggregation service from any country. The law, which comes into effect in
January, requires publishers to charge news aggregators for showing even small
excerpts of articles alongside headlines and links. There is no opt-out; the
“right to charge” can’t be waived — no publisher can simply give up its right
in exchange for staying on Google News.
It gets even more complicated: The law makes no
specific provision for any punishment for publishers who don’t charge
aggregators. But for news aggregators that don’t pay the obligatory charge,
they could face fines of up to $744,000 for each infraction beginning with the
second. Google has long said it isn’t willing to pay to display snippets, and
that it believes its Google News service benefits publishers by driving traffic
to their sites.
On Dec. 16, Google News Spain will no longer exist. All
other Google News services will still be available for Web surfers in Spain,
but no Spanish publisher’s content will be on them. In fact, no Spanish
publisher’s content will appear on any Google News service world-wide.
The publishers’ articles, though, can still appear in the
results of a general Google search in Spain or abroad. Social networks also
won’t be affected, as the law only targets aggregators. Latin American versions
of Google News and Spanish-language content from Latin America will be
available to users in Spain.
Aggregators like Google will now have to choose whether to
negotiate with publishers and the government to establish a set of rules. These
talks, should they take place, will determine fees and rates that aggregators
will be asked to pay for using content, depending on yet-to-be-agreed metrics
that may include the length of citations as well as page views to publishers
generated by the referrals. Even if Google doesn’t take part in this process,
it would still be bound by the rules, should it revive Google News in Spain.
Spain’s media would be represented at the negotiations by
the big newspaper lobby AEDE, which includes the owners of all the largest
papers in the country, and is widely seen as the main force behind the bill. However,
AEDE members wouldn’t be the only ones receiving fees. This number was
calculated to include Google’s potential share. Smaller newspapers not
represented by AEDE, as well as Web-only news sites, would also receive some of
the money.
The collection of these fees would fall to CEDRO, a
quasigovernmental organization that would then be in charge of dividing the
proceedings among the news generators.
In Germany, a similar but less restrictive law was passed in
October, but publishers had the option to opt in or out. Some of the publishers
who opted to charge Google for displaying snippets of their content suffered
a huge and immediate loss of Web traffic when Google instead removed their
snippets. Within weeks, the publishers opted out, giving Google News a free
license.
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