Spain finally passes the “Google Tax”
It has been in the works for awhile and now Spain has passed an intellectual property law that can result in fines for news aggregators that do not pay for snippets.
The Hollywood Reporter covered the story:
After more than a year in the works, Spain passed on Thursday its Intellectual Property Law, with its hotly debated, so-called Google tax that allows for fines on aggregators that show snippets of content without paying for it.
The law, known as the LPI, will take effect January 2015 and allows for sanctions of up to $758,000 (€600,000) for linking to pirated content, including newspapers and Spanish publishers which also try to protect their property rights.
Google reacted immediately to the law’s passage.
“We are disappointed with the new law because we believe that services like Google News help publishers bring traffic to their sites. As far as the future is concerned, we will continue working with the Spanish publishers to help increase their revenues while we evaluate our options within the framework of the new legislation,” a statement read.
Google is coming strong off a similar situation in Germany where German publishers’ demand for Google to pay for its links backfired, leaving newspapers with no traffic after the aggregator followed the German law to the tee and eliminated all links.
But even beyond the aggregator tax, the law that passed only with the ruling conservative party’s votes in favor found little support further afield, with parliamentarians from other parties calling the measure “a disaster” and “a missed opportunity.”
Read the full story on Hollywood Reporter