Spain's 'Google tax'

http://www.sharecast.com/news/spain-s-google-tax-could-kill-facebook-and-twitter/21898804.html

by currysausage • 12 years ago

53 56 12 years ago

More details: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&ie=...

More opinion: 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• 12 years ago

It's not about linking, it's about re-posting titles and excerpts of news, like Google News does (did?)

visarga2• 12 years ago

A 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.

currysausage2• 12 years ago

The Heise article says that a mere link to the URL is enough (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8091162). I really hope they mistook some Spanish source.

dagi3d• 12 years ago

and 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

w1ntermute• 12 years ago

When they are already in such bad economic shape, why are the Spaniards so eager to push themselves into further irrelevance?

tormeh2• 12 years ago

Well, 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.

Oletros3• 12 years ago

Doesn't help that they have legal cruft dating back to the medieval ages

Can you give examples of that?

Udo2• 12 years ago

Because 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.

lince2• 12 years ago

Spanish 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.

toqueteos3• 12 years ago

Same here, had no idea about this. News are just a diversion (basically just 30 minutes of sports) to keep people "busy" while they (politicians) keep doing whatever the hell they want.

Thanks to OP for posting it here.

Daishiman2• 12 years ago

Because Spanish politics is an inbred kind of politics.

People joke in Latin America about Spaniards because of their remarkably low knowledge of foreign languages and outside culture, or the fact that they watch American films overdubbed whereas others just watch them with subtitles.

It's a subtle thing, but there's a perception, to me not unfounded, that some sectors of Spanish society just don't look outward much, which is the reason they get these crazy ideas that wouldn't even be considered for a second anywhere else.

lince2• 12 years ago

I agree with you until last paragraph. As I said in another reply, I think that this law is based on economical protection of the two main political parties.

The lack of knowledge of foreign languages is clearly a issue. I think that our country is solving this making B1 mandatory to get you graduated and enforcing bilingual basic education on the capital. Not so much, but it seems to start giving some results.

We have to watch doubbed films when we're in groups because this problem. I know people that prefer original versions, but you can not exclude your friends when social watching.

eng_monkey2• 12 years ago

It's a subtle thing, but there's a perception, to me not unfounded, that some sectors of Spanish society just don't look outward much, which is the reason they get these crazy ideas that wouldn't even be considered for a second anywhere else.

Does not that contradicts the fact that, for example, Spain has one of the largest high-speed train networks in the world, that the electricity they produce is >50% from renewable sources, that big civil engineering companies are involved with building major infrastructure around the world (including airport terminals at Heathrow, Sydney), that their medical service is within the top ten in the world, that same-sex marriage has been completely legal (including adoption) for almost a decade now, etc. These facts do not seem to fit your perception of a backwards-looking country.

Oletros3• 12 years ago

which is the reason they get these crazy ideas that wouldn't even be considered for a second anywhere else.

Yes, that crazy idea would never have been considered in Germany, for example

marak830• 12 years ago

What if your searching for something and the engine displays some of the article - as search engines do. Bloody idiots.

pyneapple_tree2• 12 years ago

As a spanish guy I can't agree more. Bloody idiots.

spindritf2• 12 years ago

From 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.

Udo2• 12 years ago

The 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.

visarga2• 12 years 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.

spindritf2• 12 years ago

Now I want to be true. Hopefully, it will have an inoculating effect.

ekianjo2• 12 years 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• 12 years ago

I 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.

Buge• 12 years ago

A link isn't a quote though. It's an address. It's metadata. It's not in the content of the article.

pyneapple_tree2• 12 years ago

On a press note (http://www.mecd.gob.es/prensa-mecd/actualidad/2014/07/201407...):

Google+, Twitter, Facebook and other social networks won't be subject to this tax.

ajmurmann• 12 years ago

Too bad. I hope those will stop linking to Spanish news outlets (especially those who pushed for this) regardless. A few days of that and the law is history.

chiubaka• 12 years ago

This 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...

toqueteos3• 12 years ago

First 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• 12 years ago

Spain'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• 12 years ago

By EEUU did you perhaps mean the US? (EEUU is the acronym for Estados Unidos in Spanish)

toqueteos3• 12 years ago

Damn, my bad, yeah I meant the US. It's a bit late here 02:00 AM and I need some rest.

Vik1ng• 12 years ago

   First taxing the sun

They never taxed the sun. They taxed people for using the power grid infrastructure.

eng_monkey2• 12 years 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• 12 years ago

i seriously don't get why the newspapers don't want people linking to them. what am I missing?

mikeash• 12 years ago

This 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• 12 years ago

This is mainly done to prevent linking and hosting pirated material; think movies and music. Newspapers and blogs are just collateral damage.

mathetic• 12 years ago

Well, 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.

balls187• 12 years ago

Wait, 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• 12 years ago

But then Google would be a less valuable search engine. I guess they would sue and eat it in the meantime.

ekianjo2• 12 years ago

Hardly less valuable. It's not like news search is the killer function of Google's services.

x0x03• 12 years ago

The 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• 12 years ago

Looks 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• 12 years ago

If 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• 12 years ago

How is this a Google Tax? Websites indexed by Google give permission in their robots.txt file (or lack thereof)

wmf• 12 years ago

The publishers view robots.txt as a catch-22: be indexed and lose money or refuse to be indexed and lose money. So they're trying a third option: demand to be indexed and demand to be paid.

x0x03• 12 years ago

how exactly does this require indexing?

snvzz• 12 years ago

Disclaimer: 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• 12 years ago

Germany 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.

Spain's 'Google tax'

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