9 ms·
Spain's 'Google tax'
- mathetic 12y agoWell, doesn't that mean that big websites will just filter out all links to those websites? It sounds very counterproductive. If they insist I think they would eradicate Spanish news agencies completely.
- currysausage 12y agoMore details: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FUrheberrecht-Spanien-besteuert-Web-Links-2268747.html https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&ie=... More opinion: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/07/26/spanish-congress-comission-approves-aede-tax-or-google-tax/ http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/07/26/spanish-congress-co... Maybe someone who speaks Spanish could provide a more detailed article? The English-language web appears to be shallow this time.
- mahouse 12y agoIt's not about linking, it's about re-posting titles and excerpts of news, like Google News does (did?)
- visarga 12y agoA few days of Google-FB-Twitter blackout for Spain would reverse this law, but the newspapers that proposed it should be banned forever from the search engines and social sites, to teach them a lesson.
- currysausage 12y agoThe Heise article says that a mere link to the URL is enough (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8091162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8091162). I really hope they mistook some Spanish source.
- dagi3d 12y agoand the point is that these publishers don't realize that all these news aggregators are sending a considerable amount of visits to them this is a picture of an editorial celebrating that this law was passed and how they include the buttons to send the article to the aggregators: http://mnmstatic.net/cache/21/eb/thumb_medium-2223027.jpg http://mnmstatic.net/cache/21/eb/thumb_medium-2223027.jpg
- jerf 12y agoThere's no hypocrisy there. The law appears to be based on the idea that sending the article on social media should produce money for the article writer... obviously this would be a reason to encourage flowing the article out to social media rather than inhibiting it.
- w1ntermute 12y agoWhen they are already in such bad economic shape, why are the Spaniards so eager to push themselves into further irrelevance?
- tormeh 12y agoWell, you have to remember that Spanish politics is completely fucked up. American politics are only recently beginning to come close, to add a sense of scale. Doesn't help that they have legal cruft dating back to the medieval ages, but that's separate.
- Udo 12y agoBecause they have been led to believe other EU countries will follow suit, which is not entirely outside of the realm of possibility. Personally I also suspect that there is extensive "sponsoring" by the content industry going on. They see Spain is vulnerable, so they probably see it as a cheap foot in the door for the entire EU. Living in Germany myself, the cynic in me can already envision the German adaptation of this, which would include the same definition of the crime, but they would allow arbitrary lawyers to send cost notices of, say, €10k to private individuals and owners of small websites. The €300k will then only be enforced if you don't pay up. While that is going on, large companies will do backroom deals so they can carry on like before. These laws are never designed to stop Google, Twitter, or Facebook. They'll be just fine, as long as they pay enough behind the scenes. It's always about the little guys.
- lince 12y agoSpanish user here. The main political parties have economic interest in mass media companies (like PRISA group). They are covering the hand who feds them. Talking with other citiziens, they have no idea about this law being passed or does not support it.
- marak830 12y agoWhat if your searching for something and the engine displays some of the article - as search engines do. Bloody idiots.
- pyneapple_tree 12y agoAs a spanish guy I can't agree more. Bloody idiots.
- spindritf 12y agoFrom what I understand, Twitter only posts content from the linked site (expanded tweets) if the site is a partner or (twitter cards) if the site actively includes code for Twitter. Anything you can squeeze into 140 characters is surely protected as a (very) limited quote. Which makes me question this article. Did they really pass a law requiring payment for quoting small parts of an article? Seems unlikely. Paying for merely linking to a site would be even crazier.
- Udo 12y agoThe Heise article says so - arbitrarily small citations fall under this law, and it includes hyperlinks. A link is enough. The fine can be up to € 300k or six years in prison. The Spanish education minister hails this as a pioneering effort designed to be followed up by the EU at large.
- visarga 12y ago> arbitrarily small citations fall under this law, and it includes hyperlinks This will do wonders for the SEO of these newspapers, not to mention their presence at all in the discourse.
- spindritf 12y agoNow I want to be true. Hopefully, it will have an inoculating effect.
- ekianjo 12y ago> arbitrarily small citations fall under this law, and it includes hyperlinks. Is this law retroactive? What do you do with the already existing links on the Spanish web and Spanish wikipedia ? It's not just a Google tax, it's a Hypertext tax.
- opendais 12y agoI suspect it'd be easier to just move your global, internet operation out of Spain completely with no legal ties for them to sue you with.
- 12y ago
- chiubaka 12y agoThis is ridiculous... seems to me that much of the role of news reporting and publishing is being increasingly filled by social media. I think this is a pretty good thing because it democratizes the press and lets people decide to publish what they think is most important. These laws seem like a step in the wrong direction...
- toqueteos 12y agoFirst taxing the sun, now this. EEUU, please invade us. It's ridiculous how fucking idiotic our politicians can be and people still keep voting them. EDIT: Typo.
- ytifle 12y agoSpain's politics just keep going lower and lower. I wonder how much longer it will take untill we are kicked out of the EU.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y agoBy EEUU did you perhaps mean the US? (EEUU is the acronym for Estados Unidos in Spanish)
- toqueteos 12y agoDamn, my bad, yeah I meant the US. It's a bit late here 02:00 AM and I need some rest.
- Vik1ng 12y agoFirst taxing the sun They never taxed the sun. They taxed people for using the power grid infrastructure.
- eng_monkey 12y ago> EEUU, please invade us. Sure, but be prepared to say goodbye to your high-end medical system, social rights (e.g. same-sex marriage, unemployment benefits), food culture, etc.
- outside1234 12y agoi seriously don't get why the newspapers don't want people linking to them. what am I missing?
- mikeash 12y agoThis is uninformed speculation, but I imagine two reasons: 1. You can skim an aggregated list of headlines and get a quick glance of current events without ever clicking through to the actual sites, thus causing them to lose out on ad revenue. 2. Newspapers like being linked to but don't want their competitors linked to, and think they'd be better off overall in a world where people directly visited the web site of their preferred news outlet.
- coder23 12y agoThis is mainly done to prevent linking and hosting pirated material; think movies and music. Newspapers and blogs are just collateral damage.
- balls187 12y agoWait, who wins here? Google would presumably stop returning results for Spanish content to avoiding getting charged, resulting in dropped traffic, and less ad dollars.
- mvid 12y agoBut then Google would be a less valuable search engine. I guess they would sue and eat it in the meantime.
- x0x0 12y agoThe hypothesis is that google is, on the whole, parasitic to news organizations. I think, unlike the hysteria on HN, that it is far from obvious this is wrong. We'll hopefully get to see the results of the experiment.
- cromwellian 12y agoLooks like the experiment has a good chance of being run soon. If News and Search drop these sites, we'll see whether the 'parasite' has been good or bad for the host.
- timdierks 12y agoIf this were true, presumably some smart news organizations would be blocking Google from extracting this value by excluding themselves from the index via robots.txt, yet I'm not aware of any.
- MarkMc 12y agoHow is this a Google Tax? Websites indexed by Google give permission in their robots.txt file (or lack thereof)
- snvzz 12y agoDisclaimer: Sort-of-spanish here (Catalan). These newspapers sales on-paper are dropping alarmingly. They're looking at this as a way to monetize their online versions. What has already happened: A major spanish social link aggregator (a-la-digg) is boicotting these newspapers. What will happen: Google will remove them from the index. They'll lose exposure, and therefore make even less.
- _up 12y agoGermany introduced a similar law over a year ago, some german news organisations want 11% of Googles world wide gross sales as compensation! They also argue that Google isn't allowed to delist them because of its market power. Theire chance to win this are probably almost zero but they will use that to get a better law next time.