Germany Votes for Google to Pay for News Aggregation
The German Parliament voted for Google and news aggregating websites to pay news publishers for the excerpts they show for their websites’ content. Google has been defiant about forking over some cash for providing a sentence or two of various articles both in its search results and on its Google News service, claiming that the practice is actually generating traffic for the publishers’ websites.
The hotly-contested vote (293 in favor, 243 against) would allow companies like Google to display “single words or very small text excerpts” when referring to publishers’ websites for free. Publishers, meanwhile, retain the exclusive right of use for any content exceeding these limits. The problem at hand, however, is that the bill has yet to draw a line on how short an excerpt Google and other news aggregates should use.
In a previous engagement, Google has said: “As a result of today’s vote, ancillary copyright in its most damaging form has been stopped. However, the best outcome for Germany would be no new legislation because it threatens innovation, particularly for start-ups. It’s also not necessary because publishers and Internet companies can innovate together, just as Google has done in many other countries.”
Google faced the same problem in France, which also plans on putting such measures of making Google pay for the content it displayed. The tech giant threatened to exclude French media websites from search results if the proposed law would take effect. Google and French media sites ended with an agreement of creating a $ 78 million fund for digital publishing, as well as an agreement on Google’s part to aid in increasing ad sales.
Source: Bloomberg, via Slashgera
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Tags: Aggregation, Germany, Google, News, Votes
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