Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
This is being widely (and extremely poorly) reported all over the world, so I thought I could make a thread about the situation over here before somebody takes Forbe's or CNN's articles as factual and comes with another silly "mean euros are trying to tax another american company".
I'm quoting Associated Press' piece just fore purely informative purposes, since it's quite aseptic.
Effectively, this means no more Google News in Spain. This the first time Google shuts down its News service in a democratic country. And publishers are freaking the fuck out. But there's a lot more to it. Allow me to explain:
With print sales at their lowest levels and their reputation in tatters, Spanish newspapers, grouped under the AEDE banner, lobbied hard in order to tax Google and get a hefty sum. In exchange, they offered their compliance, promising the government not to keep disturbing the powers that be with muckraking coverage about their numerous scandals.
Their reasoning behind the farce was fairly transparent: Google profits from linking to our articles, so we need to receive a compensation as content creators. Furthermore, while we argue that Google is profiting from our work, we don't want to be removed from Google News; instead, we want Google to keep linking to our articles and ensure that this tax is universal and mandatory, with AEDE aligned members as sole receivers of said money. This means that even if Google News removes all AEDE content and decides to exclusively link to non-aligned news sources (which are quickly eroding AEDE's readership), we'll still reap the benefits.
Google saw the law, noticed that nobody was willing to compromise (it's less of a tax and more of dailight robbery), shut down Google News and told everybody to fuck off. Now every single outlet is having a panic attack. Alas, not only the biggest newspapers will take the hit, but also smaller, unaligned pubs that enjoyed Google News' reach and were quickly becoming bad news for the same traditional newspapers that pushed for this "tax".
Enrique Dans (whom I generally despise) explains it better:
I'm actually shocked by how superficial are most of the reports I've found over the largest international outlets. I can only assume that they don't want to delve too much into the noxious relationship between newspapers and governments, lest not awake some actual conscience among their own journalists.
PS: Tax me if old.
I'm quoting Associated Press' piece just fore purely informative purposes, since it's quite aseptic.
Google on Tuesday followed through with a pledge to shut down Google News in Spain in reaction to a Spanish law requiring news publishers to receive payment for content even if they are willing to give it away.
The company's Spanish Google News page, normally full of aggregated news content, vanished and was replaced by a message saying Google was "incredibly sad" to announce the closure plus a lockout of Spanish publishers from its more than 70 other Google News sites around the world.
Spain's law takes effect Jan. 1 and Google said it wasn't worth it to consider paying the publishers for linking their content because its popular news aggregator makes no money.
The law, nicknamed the "Google Tax," was pushed through by Spain's AEDE association representing large news organizations.
Effectively, this means no more Google News in Spain. This the first time Google shuts down its News service in a democratic country. And publishers are freaking the fuck out. But there's a lot more to it. Allow me to explain:
With print sales at their lowest levels and their reputation in tatters, Spanish newspapers, grouped under the AEDE banner, lobbied hard in order to tax Google and get a hefty sum. In exchange, they offered their compliance, promising the government not to keep disturbing the powers that be with muckraking coverage about their numerous scandals.
Their reasoning behind the farce was fairly transparent: Google profits from linking to our articles, so we need to receive a compensation as content creators. Furthermore, while we argue that Google is profiting from our work, we don't want to be removed from Google News; instead, we want Google to keep linking to our articles and ensure that this tax is universal and mandatory, with AEDE aligned members as sole receivers of said money. This means that even if Google News removes all AEDE content and decides to exclusively link to non-aligned news sources (which are quickly eroding AEDE's readership), we'll still reap the benefits.
Google saw the law, noticed that nobody was willing to compromise (it's less of a tax and more of dailight robbery), shut down Google News and told everybody to fuck off. Now every single outlet is having a panic attack. Alas, not only the biggest newspapers will take the hit, but also smaller, unaligned pubs that enjoyed Google News' reach and were quickly becoming bad news for the same traditional newspapers that pushed for this "tax".
Enrique Dans (whom I generally despise) explains it better:
Google has announced that it is closing its Google News service in Spain, prompting extremely negative coverage around the world from media as diverse as TechCrunch, The Guardian or SearchEngineLand that raises questions about Spain’s press freedom.
Today’s sad news is very much a chronicle of a death foretold: on September 17, along with several other people, I met with Richard Gingras, the Senior Director of News and Social Products at Google, who told us that faced with a situation where it would have to pay for providing links to news stories, the company would have little option but to close the service in that country.
...
The result of this stupid law will be to harm Spain’s image internationally, as well as hurting the very organizations it supposedly aims to protect. Spain’s image has already suffered as a result of being at the center of the terribly wrong “right to be forgotten,” now we have this.
So how did we get here?
- The AEDE called on the government to create a tax on all news links as a way to mitigate the losses its members are suffering as a result of its failure to adapt to the internet.
- A government obsessed with negative media coverage starts negotiations with the AEDE, whose members already benefit from generous institutional advertising, about making Google pay, on condition they tone down their criticism.
- The AEDE accepts, and soon after, the country’s three main newspapers, La Vanguardia, El Mundo and El País, all replace their editors with more docile journalists. In any other developed country, this shameful episode of corruption and censorship would be enough to bring down the government.
- The AEDE and the government set to work, taking their inspiration from legislation passed in German, but with the aim of making sure Google pays this time. In Germany, Google simply converted Google News into a voluntary service, whereby newspapers would have to explicitly renounce payment. This would be done by paying payment for providing links “mandatory and inviolable.”
- Despite huge opposition from all non-AEDE media and warnings from experts and the rest of the internet community, a draft on intellectual property right is presented to Congress, although the version sent to Brussels doesn’t include such a polemic article (link in Spanish).
- The new measures are fast tracked through Congress with little debate, and are set to come into law in early 2015, although no details have been announced about how payment will work, who will pay, or on what basis, etc.
And now Google has stuck to its guns, announcing the closure of Google News in Spain. In theory, the company could have paid, why would it for something that makes it no money? Google News carries no advertising. And that is leaving out the sacrosanct principle of just not paying for providing links. Google coughing up “because it can” would have left all those other media that can’t afford to pay, and that have said they won’t in any case, to fight the good fight alone.
So, congratulations to the Spanish government. Following the instructions of the AEDE, one of the most archaic organizations in the world, it has once again highlighted the corruption that has come to characterize this country, whereby just about anybody with the money can dictate their terms to the government, and where newspapers will sell their editorial line in return for government cash, and where the government has no idea about what the internet really is, and doesn’t care anyway.
I'm actually shocked by how superficial are most of the reports I've found over the largest international outlets. I can only assume that they don't want to delve too much into the noxious relationship between newspapers and governments, lest not awake some actual conscience among their own journalists.
PS: Tax me if old.