11-December-2014
The news service hosted by Google (“Google News”) will shut
operations on December 16th in Spain as a result of the recent
reform in Intellectual Property regulation.
Google News is a section within the popular search engine
that offers news headlines and snippets, as well as links to news websites.
Under the new intellectual property law, that will be in force from January
1st, 2015, the reproduction of news by search engines and news aggregators will
generate an unwaivable right for economic compensation for news
publishers. Google News has declared
this to be “non-sustainable” and has decided to suspend the service in Spain.
Google News is a controversial issue across Europe, and each
country is testing different methods to compensate the publishing sector for
their alleged loss to the search engine. Germany has opted for a similar
regulation, with the difference that news publishers may waive their rights to
the compensation fee if they want. France decided last year on a completely
different approach, and Google and the Government signed an agreement to share
their advertising revenue with the publishing industry.