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Google News to shut down in Spain
- jonathansizz 12y agoA pertinent quote from the Guardian article on this story: Germany passed a similar law to Spain’s and Google removed newspapers from Google News in response but in October publishers reached an agreement with the company after traffic to their websites plummeted.
- magicalist 12y agoSeems like the difference is they can't come to an agreement with publishers this time: "This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not" (though of course they may be overstating the requirement)
- mc32 12y agoWow. I imagine this also affects sites like Topix. What a shame. If one wanted to get news from Spain, or any other country with similar laws, how would one search on a topic, DMOZ?
- ars 12y agoGoogle should charge for listing, and it would be a nice coincidence - totally random of course, that the amount they charge is exactly the same as the amount they have to pay. Kind of like what amazon did when France forced them to charge shipping.
- eru 12y agoThey closed that loophole. Google would have to pay to a third party (equivalent of the American RIAA, essentially), but they would have to charge the individual websites.
- tonfa 12y agoSide note: there was no loophole for Amazon and shipping in France, just good PR that made people think there was.
- ars 12y agoEh? Explain please. They made a law of no free shipping, so Amazon charged 0.01 for shipping. Seems like a loophole to me.
- tonfa 12y agoFrance has fixed price for books, with at most a 5% discount from the price fixed by the editor. For online merchant, the law allowed the 5% discount to apply only on shipping and shipping can't be free. So it doesn't matter if amazon shipping is 1cts or 1 eur, as long as it costs less than 5% it is free for the customer. But while shipping is still free, they now have to sell more expensive books. From the point of view of the government the law worked as intended and there is no loophole, amazon and online booksellers just became more expensive than offline shops (since they can have both free shipping and 5% discount). Personally if find that amazon played very well there, they managed to have the public perceive as a win what was a total loss.
- dordoka 12y agoIt´s actually no overstatement. The law includes a clause specifically to avoid that, stating that paying the tax is an "inalienable right". Of course, as the law reads, it´s more an obligation that a right... As a spanish citizen, I´m equally ashamed and enraged of this old-fashioned, short-sighted and conservative law.
- eru 12y agoWhat makes it conservative? The law seems quite disruptive to me.
- yxhuvud 12y agoIt is conservative in that it tries to preserve the current order. Of course, as with most such conservative stupidities, it fails by not understanding how the current order actually work.
- JetSpiegel 12y agoConsidering the "current order" is Google News existing and as a result it doesn't anymore, that fits the disruptive tag perfectly.
- jessriedel 12y agoCan someone comment on the goal behind designing the Spanish law this way? I speculate that they consider Google News to have monopolistic power, so that even if a fair market in snippets would set a finite price Google News would still use its clout to drive that price to zero by removing individual papers who tried to charge. A mandatory price would counter act this, similar to the way that government mandates to publish open access give bargaining power to the researchers over oligopolies like Nature and Science.
- hggchgfhgfhg 12y agoTo avoid what happened in Germany.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoI think this would be much more monopolistic if Google charged publishers for the right to be listed in Google News. If Google News was arbitrarily picky about content they listed, that would be akin to censorship.
- kalleboo 12y ago"censorship" is too strong a word but it would be a barrier to entry to new entrants. Similar situation to the net neutrality debate. News neutrality?
- magicalist 12y agoWhat is a "fair market in snippets"? I'm having trouble imagining a market of companies bidding on being able to include a sentence from a news article. This seems much more like the reverse, where indeed the government is trying to prevent individual publishers from benefiting over others by not charging for snippets of their stories, but it seems much more in service of propping up the existing oligopoly of the news world.
- prawn 12y agoI think the goal is to placate local, entrenched media. Big news companies have complained for years about aggregation yet generally sulked when it's been removed (see Germany).
- KobaQ 12y agoThat's exactly how it has to be done. Google can't be allowed to copy the content or parts of it without permission of the creator. We shouldn't forget that they're making huge amounts of money by selling others work here. On the other hand Google claims to create "real value for these publications by driving people to their websites", which is often true in the short run. So the publisher can consider allowing copying parts of their articles. And Google could even consider charging them for this service.
- kalleboo 12y ago> Google can't be allowed to copy the content or parts of it without permission of the creator Do you also believe Google should remove the excerpts from web sites on search result pages?
- KobaQ 12y agoIf it's the substantial part of the content, yes. But in the case of most of the web search results it is not, so no. However, you've asked the tricky question. Is it necessary to go to the website or to the original news article or not? That's just my moral based evaluation, I guess from the perspective of a lawyer it's seen differently, much more strictly.
- kalleboo 12y agoIt seems to me if a news article can be summed up in the one-sentence excerpt shown on Google News, I could just get that from Twitter and it has very little value...
- kpommerenke 12y agoYour statement "Google can't be allowed to copy the content or parts of it without permission of the creator" doesn't take into account that "Publishers can choose whether or not they want their articles to appear in Google News" (from the post).
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- jpatokal 12y agoTL;DR: This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not. As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable.
- franciscop 12y agoThings are getting pretty freaky around here in Spain. We've got some horrible (freedom-wise) laws passed recently and we're all angry about them. They've been trying to for several years, and now that people is tired of fighting these stupid laws back they can pass them. This basically means that Google would need to pay to index newspapers.
- adventured 12y agoAs an American I watch Europe pretty closely, and I've seen some things that are worrisome such as increasing amounts of fascism (anti-freedom / anti-privacy)... but, things seem to be getting pretty freaky almost everywhere, freedom seems to be on the retreat globally. For Spain, speaking sociologically, how long can an advanced country have 30%-35% real unemployment, before there are severely destabilizing effects that tumble out of that (culturally, politically and so on). Greece is facing a similar context and similar extreme unemployment problems. I would think it dramatically increases the risk of getting dangerous politicians that start making fantastical promises, with voters increasingly willing to buy into them. There has been a near total collapse across Europe of the system of promises that were made, that support the premise of the modern welfare state. Only a few countries have been spared (either partially or totally), such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, etc. France's economy for example is smaller than it was in 2004 inflation adjusted. GDP for the whole of Europe is still below 2007 levels. Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe consequences.
- ddebernardy 12y ago> As an American I watch Europe pretty closely, and I've seen some things that are worrisome such as increasing amounts of fascism (anti-freedom / anti-privacy)... As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not escaped you. The NSA, the Can-Spam act, the TSA, Guantanamo Bay, how Obama gave a kill order on a US citizen without due process, how the hardline christian right and hardline libertarians across the pond would make most of our local extreme right wing clowns look like socialists, how some major libertarian voices in financial news are regularly cheerleading whacky anti-Europeans, the list could go on ad nauseam. > Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe consequences. Doesn't sound so dire... The main reason that inflation-adjusted income has increased in the average US family unit since the 1970s is that it went from one bread earner to two. (See e.g. Elizabeth Warren's research on debt or her books, for instance The Two Income Trap, for the gory details.) I'm not seeing pitchforks. In more seriousness, this is not meant to be a contest. The point is that things aren't as bad on the continent as you might read in Anglo-Saxon news outlets. There's some uneasiness and some distress, sure. Here, like on the other side of the pond, the main cause of it at the end of the day is economic woes, most of which stem from bailing out the well connected instead of having let the financial system collapse -- for better or worse. The most important take away, imho, is that we're at peace. Consider... Since the fall of Rome, we had been almost constantly at war with each other. Whereas besides the Balkans in the 1990s, and the ongoing skirmishes in Crimea, there has been no war here since WW2. That's the longest period of peace between Europe's major powers in history. And thankfully, no ending of this streak is on anyone's radar.
- gcb0 12y ago"we don't make money because we do not advertise on that site" is a huge fallacy. This sounds like a bluff because if that gets traction in the US then their search business will collapse. Imagine $0.01 for every search that shows a snipet of wikipedia to the wiki foundation?
- pkaye 12y agoThe Google News website doesn't show any banner ads.
- source99 12y agoBut it does lead to sites that likely show ads from google. So technically news.google.com doesn't generate revenue but it does direct traffic to news.spain.commercial.site that is showing google ads along side news.
- calbear81 12y agoIt's a bit disengenous because although they don't directly make money on the News portal, it reinforces their market position and keeps users in the Google ecosystem. Those users in turn run searches that DO display ads.
- gcb0 12y agothat is exactly what i implied.
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- sebicas 12y agoI am wondering if they will also remove newspapers from search results. Indexed search results of newspapers may also contain "News snippets"
- gasull 12y agoAccording to this article (in Spanish) they are not. The law only affects news aggregators: http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/12/10/actualidad/1418244333_431153.html http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/12/10/actualidad/14...
- AznHisoka 12y agoWhy can't the just display the headline and no snippet from the article text? Or does that count as a snippet? But wait... what about the actual organic search results? Do they have to remove Spanish news articles from that too?
- adventured 12y agoThere's no consistency or reason to be found in this, the approach is insanity. What they'll end up doing is jumping from one hot stove to another to another, policy is being made up as they go along based on consequences and political pull.
- kevin_thibedeau 12y agoGoogle should remove all deep links from the search database. Teach them a hard lesson.
- exhilaration 12y agoEven better: keep the Spanish Google News operating but only link to Latin American news sources. Spanish citizens still get news in their preferred language but no traffic goes to domestic media outlets.
- Oletros 12y agoWhat makes Google News helpful is not only the language, it is the content and Latin American news are not very helpful to Spanish people
- fwn 12y agoI guess it can be expected that the Latin American news sources will adapt and publish Spanish regional content. At least I see no reason for them not to do it. There is money on the table.
- Thimothy 12y agoActually, that's probably what is going to happen. Google news will will continue operating, just without the spanish sources. Probably at some point some guy in some country without strong ties to spain (Probably not south america) is going to wise up, make some kind of spanish-content-only Reddit from there, and earn a shitton of money from the ads.
- rsync 12y agoThings are going very badly for a global internet if we are discussing a web site "shutting down in spain". Of course we all know what that means and it seems very sensible in 2014, but remember - if someone had told you in 1998 that a certain website would not be operating in country X, you would have laughed and explained to them (like a child) that the Internet was a single global network and that if one had Internet access at all they would have access to the site in question. All of that simplicity and innocence has slipped away.
- chetanahuja 12y agoCompletely agree with the sad trend. Though to be fair, the scourge of geolocation based blocking started with media companies (mostly American, but also bbc and others) in a bid to recreate the DVD region encoding bullshit on the internet. Add to that the NSA merrily slurping up data from the global firehose... there's no innocence left to corrupt at this point.
- dyadic 12y agoThere are two sides to the scourge. WRT the BBC, they produce quality content, partly funded by us Brits and partly funded by exporting the content to other countries. With the internet they have limited choices: * Keep things off the internet and disappoint everyone * Put things on the global internet and lose export value * Put things on the internet but geolocate to the UK and retain export value Clearly for them, the quality of their shows, and for the British public, the last option is the best. It's a strange system because the BBC is considered public broadcasting but is still funded (i.e. paid) by us citizens. You have to take the UK only as a subscription that we have implicitly paid. Of course, it would be great if they offered an outsider subscription, but there are undoubtedly internal political reasons why they haven't.
- sounds 12y agoSo your dilemma could be a false dichotomy if (and I realize it's a big if): * BBC puts things on the global internet * Global users can discover it more readily * BBC becomes well-known as a provider of quality content * Demand for BBC content increases because of the online content already available * BBC can charge more for future content (which it can export first to high-profit-margin channels, then publish online later)
- caiob 12y agoSince when Google makes money by putting ads on their sites?
- caiob 12y agoAre we only allowed to say good things about Google in here?
- tempestn 12y agoYou're not being downvoted for saying bad things about Google; you're being downvoted because your post doesn't make sense. As other replies mentioned, everyone knows Google makes most of their money from ads; however, as the referenced blog post states, there are no ads on Google News.
- dragonwriter 12y agoSince approximately forever.
- pgodzin 12y agoNot sure if you're referring to Google making money off Google News, but if so, the post mentions that it never puts ads on the News page, and only drives traffic to the sites with content
- logicalman 12y agoCan they allow users in Spain to access Google News from a non-Spanish TLD but still serve those results in the Spanish language?
- Raticide 12y agoMaybe, but no spanish news sites will be included in the news results, so they'll still be missing a lot of local stuff.
- notjackma 12y ago"As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable. " Rubbish! Google's Human Resources department doesn't make any money either, yet it exists, along with other loss-making divisions. Google as a whole is a very profitable company, and it could easily pay publishers over the long run. It just doesn't want to.
- iancarroll 12y agoJust because you can afford to subsidize something doesn't mean you should. HR has a purpose inside Google, it has an output (payroll, disputes) fair to the input ($$$). Google News would take in $$$ and return nothing.
- notjackma 12y agoYet they're already spending money on Google News: programmers, servers, electricity. So obviously they're getting something out of it, right? There is a purpose to Google News, whether it's tracking cookies or something else; they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.
- iancarroll 12y agoI can't imagine Spain makes up a large majority of Google News's traffic.
- adventured 12y agoGoogle has started all sorts of programs and then shut them down because they didn't turn out as hoped. I don't see why Google News losing money, and, say, becoming especially non-economical or burdensome to the company and being shut-down, would be any different.
- uniformlyrandom 12y agoIf you think that HR department is a charity, then you do not really understand what HR department does. Try running a company without one, and see how much money you lose.
- etanol 12y agoThis is one example of what happens when the population gives absolute power to a single political party: lobbying paradise. We spaniards have the politicians we deserve.
- gasull 12y agoThe similar "Sinde Law", that penalized P2P file-sharing, was approved with the votes of both PSOE (then in Government) and PP, the two main political parties.
- calgoo 12y agoYea, 5 minutes before Sinde left office... Just saying.... Anyways, as someone who lives in spain since 20 years, im so tired of this right winged politicians that are removing all the socialist's advancements of the last 30 years. Healthcare: Crap. Education: Crap. And still people vote for the same right winged nuts. But i guess that is what you get when most of your population never learned any other language then Spanish. TV here is a horrible mess of crap programming (more less like the UK). I mean, our political leader refused to meet Media people directly, instead using a plasma screen to talk to them. I wish Google would just block all their spanish services starting tomorrow. Also get MS and others to join in, and block all major internet services to Spain. I think it is even easier: block facebook and we have half the political party screaming because they actually have to work. [Sorry for the rant. Just get so fed up with this BS...]
- gasull 12y agoMove abroad. I did. I'm originally from Spain too.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- abennobashi 12y agoGood for Google. Greedy, thieving socialist governments have no place in the free world. This new Spanish law stinks of "Anti Dog eat Dog" legislation. Downvote me to hell, but Who is John Galt?
- kalleboo 12y ago> Downvote me to hell Well, you told me to...
- Oletros 12y ago> thieving socialist governments have no place in the free world. Popular Party socialist? Please, don't downvote him so we can tell how wrong about the Spanish politic he is.
- mcv 12y agoI guess People's Party may sound socialist, but they're Spain's conservative party.
- Maken 12y agoThis is not socialism, just the usual libertarian lobby.
- onetimeusename 12y agoI am reading through the official law and essentially it is saying that the Spanish government finds this necessary to reinforce intellectual property protections, the ip here being the news/stories. The thing that isn't clear from the law was whether anyone had actually complained about what Google was doing or whether Google was actually found violating any ip laws in place(it doesn't seem so). The whole thing is 40 pages so I probably won't read it all. Can anyone clarify if there had been some sort of issue here? edit: Something that sticks out is that the law dictates how any agreement involving ip is to be done even if previous agreements are in place in order to cover costs "equitably". Yet I can't see how Google isn't already beneficial. The wording suggests Google would be causing damages since damages can be included in payments under this law.
- ryanhuff 12y agoYes. Newspapers have lobbied the government to impose a "Google Tax". http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jul/29/google-spain http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jul/29/goog...
- onetimeusename 12y agoFrom what I can tell, that seems to sum up the law pretty well.
- Throwaway9111 12y agoDoes still anyone believe that 9/11 was a terrorist attack. A lot of Europeans think it was the US government itself.
- juliocc 12y agoA lot of people believing something doesn't make it true.
- sounds 12y agoWhen you say "A lot of Europeans," can you cite a source, like a poll or even an internet forum, where like-minded Europeans express this view? I'm not challenging your assertion, I'd just like to see it in action and measure it for myself. Edit: in case you edit or delete your post, this is what I'm asking about: Does still anyone believe that 9/11 was a terrorist attack. A lot of Europeans think it was the US government itself.
- Throwaway9111 12y agohttp://www.globalresearch.ca/all-you-need-to-know-about-9-11-to-prove-it-was-an-inside-job/26517 http://www.globalresearch.ca/all-you-need-to-know-about-9-11...
- juliocc 12y agohttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Globalresearch.ca http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Globalresearch.ca
- ckarmann 12y agoThere is a Wikipedia article for everything: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_conspiracy_theories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_conspi... And specifically this international WorldPublicOpinion.org poll whose results are compiled there: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/911worldopinionpoll_Sep2008.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/911worldo... More or less, the opinion that the US government was behind the attack is clearly in the minority in all polled European countries. Interesting to see the differences between countries here. That said,one has to be careful with polls in different countries: people's answers are very sensitive to question wording, and I imagine translations can introduce biases easily.
- FileNimbus 12y agoCatchCrisis.com
- youssifa 12y agoMay not necessarily be a popular opinion on here, but I'll state it anyway: Google may not directly profit from Google News, but they still manage to extract value from it. We exist in a top-heavy paradigm where giant servers profiteer off the work of everybody else, capturing a disproportionate percentage of the total value created. It's unfortunate but not unexpected that Google's response is this snarky blog post. But I wish people wouldn't pretend this is somehow a giant government tipping the scales against "openness". I see this more as an institution in charge of making sure our collective greed not getting the better of us trying to distribute wealth to those who create it proportionate to the value being created. Is it a futile attempt, likely unaware of its own vision? Sure. I just wish Silicon Valley would get its head out of the sand and realize that the current paradigm isn't necessarily sustainable for anyone -- whether you're the one sitting atop Mt. Server enjoying crazy network effects or the person contributing value for peanuts (if you're lucky).
- Afforess 12y agoI disagree. The simple fact that a business benefits off another's hard work does not nessecary deprive the worker of their income. Economics is not zero-sum. Google News drives traffic to news sites that would otherwise be isolated to local communities. If anything, Google levels the playing field, allowing any nearby local news to catch as much traffic as the BBC or NYT. So to complain that Google is profiteering sounds like you want to kill the golden goose. If it becomes harder to consume the news, people won't bother. The economic pie for news sites in Spain is about to shrink drastically.
- kaoD 12y ago> If it becomes harder to consume the news, people won't bother. I don't know a single person in Spain who uses Google News. Did a quick survey and only 1 out of 20 people I asked knew what Google News was or that it even existed. Now, think why would the Spanish government do this if Google News usage is so marginal.
- youssifa 12y agoI didn't mean to make the point "that a business benefits off another's hard work does not nessecary deprive the worker of their income". Sorry, I guess it was lost in translation somehow. My point is that Google profits disproportionately off the work of others relative to the value it creates, and that its network effects tip the scales towards a more top-heavy, power law distribution that's not sustainable in the long-term under the guise of "openness" because, hey, we get everything for free. And that this is propogated as "free" and "open" when in reality it just represents a shift in who controls what.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- skybrian 12y agoI haven't seen any articles where Google News published the full text. Could you give an example?
- throwawaytiger 12y agoGoogle News does not 'republish the full text of basically every article of basically every newspaper' it actually accommodates paywalls just fine: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en also it ain't the reason newspapers aren't making as much money as they'd like to, it's just the most convenient target for the blame.
- bdt101 12y agoSerious question: how do you get Google News to display the full article text? All I ever see is a short snippet, and if an article looks interesting I click the title which takes me directly to the news site. As a result, I end up visiting news sites that I've never heard of or never would have otherwise found directly.
- bskap 12y agoIt never shows more than the snippet. The Spanish government is arguing that people read the snippet and then never go see the article, so Google should pay for posting the snippet.
- sparkzilla 12y agoIt only shows the snippet. To reproduce the full article would require Google to license the content from all the newspapers.
- ploxiln 12y agoAny newspaper that has a paywall and doesn't want their articles on Google News, can trivially prevent that from happening with a well-known two-line robots.txt. Google News doesn't even republish full text. Just intro paragraph. But newspaper sites seem to not be willing to pull their articles from Google News. They seem to be afraid that if they do, they'll lose all their traffic to the newspaper sites that are still in Google News. I don't know one way or the other., but I don't care that much.
- gasull 12y agoEven worse, this might affect Facebook, Twitter and Spanish Reddit-like site Menéame (very popular there): http://boingboing.net/2014/07/28/spain-pushes-for-google-tax.html http://boingboing.net/2014/07/28/spain-pushes-for-google-tax... Just like we have the term 'patent troll', maybe we need the term 'tax troll' for some Governments.
- vixen99 12y agoYes I think we do - nice one!
- Maken 12y agoIt's not even a tax, all the money will be collected by publishers' lobby groups.
- gasull 12y agoIt is a tax because it is imposed by the Government. It doesn't benefit people but some lobbies. That is true with all taxes to some extent, since a good amount of the money collected goes to subsidies or bailouts.
- mimighost 12y agoTo be honest, I didn't see who could benefit from this law enforcement. If the government or whoever drive this believe this would force Google to pay for the news, they are wrong in the first place. The reason is simple, if Google pays to Spain, other countries would certainly require it to do the same, otherwise, why not? So if they are not stupid, the shutdown is what they have foreseen. If that is the case, big local newpaper/portal will be happy. Because right now, there will be more people to buy the real newspaper/visit their site directly. Maybe they will see to a certain increase in their readership. However, the trend of information digitization is inevitable. Fundamentally ,internet is more efficient in collecting, organizing and delivering information than any other media. Eventually everyone will become loser. I don't know how this is going to end, because law is not something that could be taken back easily. Hopefully, they will be smart enough to figure out something to bypass it.
- kh_hk 12y ago"the worse the better", I am happy about this. Articles about this have been going around Spanish news aggregators for a while. Now that there's an official statement from Google, message will finally go around the world showing what kind of stupid laws the Spanish government is passing around with the influence of the powerful copyright lobbies. Now, about the recent Spanish Intellectual Property reform. The particular reform affecting Google is actually called the AEDE tax. This reform will affect any news aggregator operating in Spain. AEDE stands for Asociación de Editores de Diarios Españoles, as in Spanish Association of Newspaper Editors. This private association, together with another one called CEDRO, will take care of collecting this tax. Even if your publication is not associated with AEDE and because this reform is law, they will have the obligation to collect it. This reform smells exactly the same as an old anti-piracy law. Just change AEDE for SGAE (another association, related to authors and editors). For a while, any kind of media support was subject to this tax. Any media support, including hard drives and even cameras, on the pretense that these might be used to store content subject to IP. This law was derogated on 2011, but not completely. Now it's the state the one who pays this tax to SGAE. I can see this AEDE tax having poor results, and either the public or the state ending up having to pay for it. Funnily enough, this just shows how weird and different some people think. This tax is proposing that news aggregators cause loss damage to news producers just as torrent aggregators cause damages to Warner. Note that this IP reform also includes fines of around 150k to 600k euros for running a site that links to copyrighted material. Before, it was only an infraction if a site was causing "significant damages". This has been eliminated, as in, any damage is a significant damage. Just as a remark, let's not confuse this with the so-called "Google Tax", which is related to stopping Google and other big co's from evading taxes in Europe and has nothing to do with intellectual property. To be fair, I do not even know by now, as they call "Google tax" anything that is going to affect Google, nevermind.
- pmontra 12y agoI bet that google.com will still be visible in Spain. Search results include links to copyrighted material: web sites like elpais.com which id © EDICIONES EL PAÍS S.L. and a zillion others all around the world. Is Google removing this'd sites from the index for searches originating from Spain or it will pay the fine? This is to show how unreasonable that law is if it's really as general as it looks.
- carlesfe 12y agoI wrote a bit about this in July, when the law was passed, if you want an opinion from a Spaniard: http://cfenollosa.com/blog/spanish-media-just-shot-themselves-in-the-foot----or-maybe-in-the-head.html http://cfenollosa.com/blog/spanish-media-just-shot-themselve... Let's summarize what is happening here: Big media editors AEDE, most of which pro-government, in collusion with the corrupt Spanish politicians have managed a masterstroke which they think will: 1. Get them free money 2. Destroy the discoverability of smaller media competitors, usually critical with the government 3. Hinder the future of Spanish internet tech business, their main competitor 4. Get more exposure, since readers won't have access to media agreggation and will resort to reading just one or two outlets In reality, what is likely to happen is: 1. Google will close Google News Spain, no big problem 2. Spanish media aggregators will move their business abroad and won't contribute taxes to the country 3. Tech enterpreneurs will realize that Spain is a shitty country to invest money on 4. Without Google, the aggregators, and thanks to the increasing user boycott to AEDE media, those editors will lose traffic and money.
- SiVal 12y agoAccording to the article: This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not. This sounds as though it won't matter if Spanish news aggregators move abroad, because the law applies to the Spanish news sources themselves, not the aggregator. Unless I'm misunderstanding (and maybe I am, so correct me), if a news publisher inside Spain doesn't demand payment from an aggregator located outside Spain, the publisher in Spain gets punished by the Spanish law. This approach would be a nasty way to do as you said: limit the ability of smaller, alternative news sources, to attract readers. Unless they left Spain, they would not be allowed to volunteer their content to any free aggregator anywhere, and if they DID leave Spain, they would lose the ability to report on local Spanish issues.
- einrealist 12y agoI guess, the law may also be in conflict with EU law/rulings/contracts. Aggregator companies outside Spain have an advantage over those within the spanish jurisdiction. So those spanish companies can call the European Court to fight the spanish law.
- 6t6t6 12y agoSomething has to be understood. This is not against Google in particular, is against a tool that helped people to find news in alternative media and gave visibility to small news sites. This law is a victory for the big News Editors that are controlled by Government and economic powers in Spain
- amelius 12y agoWhy is this new law only limited to news, and not to random things put on HTTP pages in general (which could also be regarded as a news publication)?
- eva1984 12y agoInterestingly enough, I found myself searching through news.google.es and using google translate to navigate the local news about impending shutdown of itself. Pure irony. This reminds me the situation is actually bilateral. Unlike the precedent cases, it will block NOT ONLY Spain but also the WHOLE WORLD to access to a lot of Spanish content. In effect, this is, IMHO, even worse than China's infamous Great Firewall, which is evil but not stopping google to index local articles.
- Vladipoteur 12y agoThis type of laws will not prevent "paper news" to go to bankruptcy. The only way for a company grow is to innovate, Google News is a tool that could help. At the end of the day it is a lose lose situation: > readers > newspapers > Google
- santialbo 12y agoIt was really funny when they published an article in El Pais comparing news aggregators with piracy and you could see the social sharing buttons next to it including those news aggregators they hated so much. Like we say here, con dos cojones.
- blas01blas 12y agoI feel embarrassed of my government, they are so ridiculous, they fell so big headed that it is very good that google does these things to show them how foolish they are
- blas01blas 12y agoI feel embarrassed of my government, they are so ridiculous, they fell so big headed that it is very good that google does these things to show them how foolish they are
- tomelders 12y agoI do think this is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Why couldn't google exclude Spanish news sources from google News? If I were running Google (which obviously I'm not, and probably for good reason as what I'm about to say might indicate), I would use the companies enormous amount of capital to exclude all major Spanish news outlets and pay the the independent and fringe new outlets what the law demands as an F.U. to the AEDE. But that's just me. I understand that politics isn't Google's business, but Google (and the Internet) is fast becoming every Politician's business; And I mean "business" as in a way for them to make money for themselves. So like it or not, Google is going to get embroiled in politics. It would be prudent to nip this sort of stuff in the bud, and make a lot of noise while they're doing it.
- Miner_anonym 12y agoOk, but if i live in Spain and i use vpn with German IP, for example, i have no promblem, isn't it?
- gasull 12y agoYou do because you won't be able to read any news from Spanish newspapers. news.google.es will be down, and other Google News sites in Spanish (like the ones from Latin America) won't link to any media from Spain.
- NicoJuicy 12y agoSo they'll send a invoice to my Chinese hosting provider? :P
- taksintik 12y agoHorrible policies like this are the reason Spain's unemployment rate is at 25%. Short sighted bull headed.
- anon4 12y agoSo how is what google news is doing not piracy? I mean, we also have Peter Sunde's post about his ideals on the front page https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8734204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8734204 and a large portion of comments seem to be very pro-copyright. How come then, that nobody here is applauding this move? Google news is absolutely breaking copyright - they're publishing others' content without their permission and without paying them. Under any measure what they do is illegal. Why then, is everyone siding with Google news on this? This legislation simply extends compulsory licensing to news publications.
- hrayr 12y agoMainly because your comment: "...they're publishing others' content without their permission and without paying them." is false. The publications can choose to add or remove themselves from google news, meaning google has permission. Also because google news points to the publications and does not re-publish in whole.