
Spain's 'Google tax' - currysausage
http://www.sharecast.com/news/spain-s-google-tax-could-kill-facebook-and-twitter/21898804.html
======
spindritf
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.

~~~
Udo
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.

~~~
visarga
> 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.

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balls187
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.

~~~
x0x0
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.

~~~
timdierks
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.

~~~
x0x0
there's an obvious collective action problem that this law fixes

~~~
Oletros
What obvious collective action problem is fixed with this law?

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snvzz
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
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.

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chiubaka
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...

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toqueteos
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.

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

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

------
currysausage
More details:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&ie=...](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)

More opinion: [http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/07/26/spanish-congress-
co...](http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/07/26/spanish-congress-comission-
approves-aede-tax-or-google-tax/)

Maybe someone who speaks Spanish could provide a more detailed article? The
English-language web appears to be shallow this time.

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

~~~
dagi3d
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](http://mnmstatic.net/cache/21/eb/thumb_medium-2223027.jpg)

~~~
jerf
There'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.

------
mathetic
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.

------
w1ntermute
When they are already in such bad economic shape, why are the Spaniards so
eager to push themselves into further irrelevance?

~~~
Daishiman
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.

~~~
eng_monkey
> 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.

~~~
Daishiman
I don't see the contradiction; competent engineering knowledge has little
correlation with political thinking, and is only limited to a small subset of
the population. It says nothing about the millions of unemployed and
underemployed people, the housewives, and politicians.

The aspects in health care and same-sex marriage are not and have not been
particularly controversial in Western Europe as a matter of social policy in
that time span. They are interesting points of policy but by themselves
nothing special when compared to the number of forward-thinking policies most
countries in Western Europe have.

What I have seen, from both personal experience and an amount of anectdote
that goes beyond mere personal recollections, is a remarkable lack of interest
and knowledge in foreign cultures, and an incredibly regressive management
culture in the workplace.

All countries have technological outliers. The point is that they're exactly
that, outliers.

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marak830
What if your searching for something and the engine displays some of the
article - as search engines do. Bloody idiots.

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

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outside1234
i seriously don't get why the newspapers don't want people linking to them.
what am I missing?

~~~
mikeash
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.

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

~~~
wmf
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.

~~~
x0x0
how exactly does this require indexing?

