Study Of Spain's 'Google Tax' On News Shows How Much Damage It Has Done
from the ancillary-copyright-is-a-bad-idea dept
As you may recall, governments across Europe, generally at the behest of traditional newspaper publishers, have been pushing for what they call an "ancillary copyright," but which is much better referred to as a "snippet tax" or a "link tax." Or, if people are being honest: a Google News tax. The idea is that any aggregator site that is linking out to other sources with little snippets telling people what's at the link, has to pay the original publication to link to them. If you think this goes against the entire concept of the internet, you're not wrong. Belgium was the first country to try it, and Google responded by removing complaining publications from Google News. In response, the publications then complained that Google News was being mean to them, even though they were the ones complaining. In Germany, a similar thing happened, whereby Google left the complaining publications in Google News, but without snippets since that was a key aspect of the law. Again, the publishers screamed "unfair" even though they were the ones who had pushed for the law in the first place.When it came time for Spain to try to appease its misguided and angry publishers, the government sought to avoid the tactics that Google had done in the past and thus made it mandatory to pay, saying that sites themselves couldn't even opt-out of getting payments, even if they didn't want them. In response to this, Google broke out the somewhat surprising "nuclear option" and shut down Google News in Spain entirely. It seemed quite obvious that this move would create huge problems for media properties that wanted to be open and wanted people to link to them.
After the law went into effect, the Spanish Association of Publishers of Periodical Publications (AEEPP) commissioned an economic study about the impact of the new Spanish ancillary copyright law -- and found (not surprisingly) that the legal change (and the shuttering of Google News and other aggregators) was absolutely harmful to the Spanish news media and innovation in general. It also found strong evidence that, contrary to what those fighting against Google News have claimed, aggregators expand the market for the original sources, rather than shrink it by acting as a substitute. The latter is based on a "study of studies" basically, looking at all of the academic literature in terms of the impact of aggregators -- all of which shows that it increases the overall size of the market, rather than shrinks it.
However, the really telling part of the report is that this law that was passed in the name of helping news publications, ended up doing tremendous harm to many online publications -- especially smaller sites that frequently (and happily) relied on Google News and other aggregators for a significant amount of traffic. The report points out that it wasn't just Google News that shut down because of this law: a whole bunch of local Spanish aggregators shut down themselves, switched business models entirely, or similarly left the Spanish market entirely. The report notes that sites like Planeta Ludico, NiagaRank, InfoAliment and Multifriki shut down entirely, as they were scared of the economic and legal liability from the new law. The report notes the case of NiagaRank is particularly troubling as it has a wider impact on innovation in Spain:
NiagaRank: ignoring the extent, quantity and methods followed to determine whether they should pay the fee, they preferred to close down. This case is remarkable because NiagaRank was not a “traditional” aggregator, but it analysed social networks to draw up lists with the most relevant news (“active listening”, as they used to call it). However, it is an example of the legal uncertainty that the lack of definition of key aspects of the act has caused.And all of this has had a tremendous negative impact on the press, rather than a positive one as those behind the law insisted.
[....]
For example, and as already pointed out, currently there are several services focused on the aggregation of content for mobile phones, such as the mobile applications Zite and Flipboard. The amendment to the act will discourage the introduction of this sort of services in Spain, as well as the potential development of new models. A clear example of this situation is the portal NiagaRank, an innovative aggregator based on the analysis of the content published on social networks (similar to News360 or Prismatic) which, as mentioned before, also closed down as a direct result of the law amendment.
The negative impact on the online press sector is also very clear, since a very important channel to attract readers disappears, resulting in lower revenues from advertising. In addition, the new fee is also a barrier to the expansion of small publications with little-known brands, and an entry barrier for new competitors, since they will be unable to count on these platforms to increase their readers’ base.Of course, for the major newspaper publishers, maybe that's what they really wanted all along: less competition. But it's difficult to see how that's a legitimate public policy strategy.
The evidence available so far shows that the impact on traffic has been negative and that less consolidated publishing titles, such as digital native newspapers, have been the worst affected. This is not only because the total number of publication readers has been reduced but, in the case of online readers that would be attracted anyway (that is, who would visit the publications web sites in some other way), they will surely end up visiting known publications with established brands, to the detriment of small and new publications, in line with the evidence in the literature analysed above
And, not surprisingly, looking at multiple different ways of measuring these things, traffic to all Spanish news sites dropped after the law went into effect:
A simple traffic analysis of Spanish digital newspapers in the first three months of 2015 based on data from ComScore also suggests results in line with the aforementioned. The impact of the closing down of Google News and some other aggregators has generated a decline of visitors to the 84 major Spanish online newspapers...The report notes that this is even more stunning given that overall internet traffic and usage in Spain has been increasing, so even the percentage drop in traffic undercounts the real impact, as it likely would have been growing.
The data, not surprisingly, shows that the impact on smaller news publishers has been the worst -- again consistent with the idea that all this law really does is lock out competition for the larger players:
A more detailed analysis, breaking down traffic depending on the newspaper size, also confirms that the effect has been uneven. Thus, for the sample of online newspapers in Spain, it appears that smaller newspapers have been the worst affected ones.All of this should really raise serious questions about just what is the intent of the Spanish government in passing this law. It does not appear to serve any legitimate public policy. At best, it appears to have damaged small news publications, making it more difficult for them to compete against larger publications, though it has also served to damage those larger publications' traffic as well.
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Filed Under: aggregation, ancillary copyright, copyright, google tax, innovation, snippet tax, snippets, spain
Companies: google, niagarank
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And, not surprisingly, looking at multiple different ways of measuring these things, traffic to all Spanish news sites dropped after the law went into effect.
I've joked before about newspapers needing to destroy the internet if they want to preserve their business model, but I never thought it would actually happen!
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Re:
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Fix for new law
2) Links MUST include snippets.
3) Tax MUST be paid on those snippets each and every time those snippets show up in search results whether or not the user clicks on them or even sees the page that the link would be on.
There you go. Shuts down all linking services.
As there would be NO more search engines, users would have to type URLs directly. And since mis-typing a URL is considered a felony breach of the CFAA, we can put all those pesky internet users into our lovely for-profit prison system.
The remaining Luddites will watch only the approved 3 channels of news and entertainment, only read news from approved media sources, purchase the new records that are released every week, and go to the movies on Saturday Night.
All better now - back to the "good old days" of a century ago...
In their dreams.
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Re:
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Be careful what you whish for...
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Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
This actually shows why Google should not be allowed to operate just however it chooses. But here it's blame Spain rather than the corporation that if can't use the values others create to gain money, then it'll deliberately harm them.
As always you-know-who the corporatist is defending the corporation that pays him.
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Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
This actually shows why Google should not be allowed to operate just however it chooses. But here it's blame Spain rather than the corporation that if can't use the values others create to gain money, then it'll deliberately harm them.
As always you-know-who the corporatist is defending the corporation that pays him.
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Re: out_of_the_blue is a corporatist!
Meanwhile the leaders of SABAM got themselves charged for corruption over demanding performance rights fees, but of course you're never going to mention those, because you're a corporatist for the RIAA's international incestuous clones.
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Using this logic, my local flower shop should be required to stock my software product FOR FREE, and e required pay me for anyone just looking at my software
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Putin needs to hire trolls that at least read the articles.
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Collection agencies should not be allowed operate however they choose either
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Re:
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Period.
Full-stop.
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Exactly! As is their right and responsibility to their shareholders! Spain's Government told Google to pay up or leave. Google did what was best for their shareholders, and the long term health of their company. They did EXACTLY what they were supposed to do! Isn't that what all the AA's and shill's want? Pay up or do without?? Isn't that what they did?
You shill's are so obvious. You don't want to protect the "artists / small guy", that's so much bullshit, you want Google's money, that's what you want. Everything is about "pay the pittance", and the only reason why you want them to "pay the pittance" is because your lazy ass won't go out and earn it yourself.
Google came up with a system where they could increase the value of the media's news offerings, and make some money while doing so. Instead of accepting it and thanking Google, media went straight for the knives and slaughtered the golden goose. Those idiots got what they asked for, and ironically enough, exactly what they deserved.
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Even the in-country businesses shut down rather than take that risk, and they presumably have an advantage. Even if it's not a corrupt advantage of knowing the regulators personally, it's an inherent advantage of knowing the culture.
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
If Google had as much power as you propose, the law wouldn't have been passed in the first place. Idiot.
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
I send a bunch of people that I have contracted for to a certain business when they need their small devices repaired. If that business started telling me that I have to pay them to do it, then not only would I stop, I would tell everyone not to go there anymore.
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Whats good for the Google...
"This actually shows why MAFIAA should not be allowed to operate just however it chooses. But here it's blame GOOGLE rather than the corporation that if can't use the values others create to gain money, then it'll deliberately harm them."
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Google is a for profit business. What you're advocating is that Google operate for free. That makes you a freetard.
Google refusing to do something because it can't profit from it is not deliberately harming them it's being a for profit business. Google created value as well.
and lets not forget the hypocrisy here. The RIAA/MPAA uses the value that others create the gain money. Distributors/publishers do exactly this. Yet I don't see you complain about it. Instead you complain about Google. You argue that it's OK for publishers to use the value others create to gain money because it's consensual. You wouldn't argue that when those distributors don't help those they don't benefit from or that don't consent to giving away their copy protections or receiving benefits from them they are deliberately harming them. Yet Google is also consensual, you can opt out. But when Google refuses to help those that offer them little to no profit all of a sudden they is deliberately harming them. You are such a hypocrite. Or, in all likelihood given your double standards, a shill.
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Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Re: Re: out_of_the_blue is a corporatist!
Don't feed the trolls. Just click "report" and move on!
The only reason they keep coming in and crapping all over these articles is because we keep legitimizing it by treating their crap like serious discussion.
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Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Google is not obligated to work/operate in Spain. They were offering them a benefit. If they later decide it's not worth it to operate in there in return for what they were receiving and so they decide to stop that's not deliberately harming them any more than me not wanting to work for a company because they decided to give me a pay cut just because the company was very hurt by the fact I left. Leaving the company doesn't harm the company it just denies it the benefit I was providing. But this shill really has twisted logic.
Google received a pay cut. They left. They're deliberately harming the country. So if I work for a company, receive a pay cut and leave then I must be deliberately harming them too.
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Perhaps it's not the point at all
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This whole thing is an old story retold.
The man replied "Make me blind in one eye."
The Spanish newspaper cartel got EXACTLY what they wanted.
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Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Re: Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Google started a business that provides lots of social benefit. The shill even admits to this by stating that the country was 'deliberately' harmed when Google left. They aren't required to provide such benefits but they do. That's analogous to me working for a company, doing better than everyone else by providing it with a benefit, and demanding more pay or demanding that I not get a pay cut. Lets say I work harder than everyone else and provide a better benefit. I naturally have more bargaining power over my pay.
Google likewise has bargaining power because they provide the economy with so much. The shill even admits to this. They have 'the power of a mega-national corporation'. They have plenty of power. They EARNED that power with what they provide (but aren't required to) the economy with in return.
The MPAA/RIAA and their members, OTOH, steal power through secretive meetings with politicians, back door dealings, greasing the palms of politicians, revolving door favors, and campaign contributions. The economy would be much much better off if the MPAA/RIAA doesn't get what they want (ie: copy protection extensions, expansions, etc...) but they get what they want not because their bargaining power stems from the services they provide the economy (and their refusal to operate is such a huge public threat that the public would get upset if the RIAA/MPAAA refuses to operate in return for the RIAA/MPAA not getting what they want) but their power stems from back door dealings with politicians. They didn't 'earn' their influence and bargaining power they subverted the democratic process, by buying politicians more directly, to essentially steal their power. but the shill would never make that distinction here.
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How would the taxpayers protest, now that anti-dissent laws are in force?
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Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Re: Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Re: Re: Re: spot on M. Wheeler
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1) Google is being blamed yet again for being so good
2) the news publishers etc etc are part of the overall entertainment industries and what they want is to take control of the whole Internet. they wont be happy until that happens or the Internet collapses. this is another thorn that was going to be removed when the MPAA launched it's plan to demonise Google, with the help of the Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood!
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You know what, let me put on my Troll-View©™® glasses and look at that article again...
Study Of ... Google ... Shows How Much Damage It Has Done
Well I'll be damned.
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It's not just GOOGLE, keep repeating, it's not just GOOGLE
Would the Google haters please read the whole article and stop focusing on just Google. Many new aggregators went out of business to avoid this mandatory tax under a very vague law that just tries to give publishers money for other businesses sending them more business.
Now Google AND MANY OTHER news aggregators stopped and the publishers have a lot of spilt milk to cry over as they end up with large drops in revenue because the advertisers are not getting page views anymore and ad rates WILL drop.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: spot on M. Wheeler
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Google drops Spain.....
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"Get the fuck out Google. What, you're actually leaving? You see how much of a dick Google is, guys?!"
"Why can't anyone compete with Google? It's too damn powerful! Let's pass a law that attacks its competitors then!" While the competitors still have it rather difficult even when Google is no longer in the fucking country. Still Google's fault
Yeah. Take THAT pirates!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Citation needed.
This actually shows why Google should not be allowed to operate just however it chooses.
So what's the problem exactly? Spain passed a law, and Google obeyed it.
But here it's blame Spain rather than the corporation that if can't use the values others create to gain money, then it'll deliberately harm them.
You're blaming Google for following the law? Or are you saying they should have obeyed the law in some other way that is less beneficial to Google and more beneficial to Spanish news organizations? Why?
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
As always you-know-who the corporatist is defending the corporation that pays him.
Missed this little gem. You're defending the Spanish newspapers why, because they pay you?
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Re:
Like this:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150725/14510131761/study-spains-google-tax-news-shows-how-m uch-damage-it-has-done.shtml#c79
Study Of ... Google ... Shows How Much Damage It Has Done
lol!
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Re: It's not just GOOGLE, keep repeating, it's not just GOOGLE
By getting rid of all the little players that freely link to news articles based on merit they can force the public to only choose news aggregators and have access to news articles and sites that they want.
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Re: Re: It's not just GOOGLE, keep repeating, it's not just GOOGLE
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Hoisted by your own Freeetrd!" I love it!
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Just think a minute
The Spanish government is happy; they again control the Spanish media though the major media sources of the country because the opposition media are not easy to find anymore. This makes the "proper" and official news the only locally available.
Win-Win for the sitting politicians yes?
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Re: ryuugami
Study Of ... Google ... Shows How Much Damage It Has Done
Well I'll be damned."
+1 insightfull
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Fair enough but I guess my point is that it's not a terrible enough use of it to ever get used that way. Which is why my belief that it won't be used this way actually stems from my lack of faith in humanity.
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Google shouldn't be allowed to shut down its operations in a country?
If Spain's entire economy relied on Google continuing operations quite so much, perhaps they shouldn't have taunted the company into leaving the country?
Extract more tribute... you mean, by sending more viewers to your website for free so you can earn more from your own advertising, notwithstanding any other mechanism you may have for monetising eyeballs? Darn them and their sneaky algorithms!
You're right, Google needs to be stopped! No wait, they stopped here voluntarily, and that was bad. They need to be forced to continue! But they also have to give us their money, and not just because we run their ads, but because we ... want it?
The fail is strong with this one...
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Go to Google News... how many adds do you see?
What's that? Zero?
Last I heard Google doesn't monetize Google News. It presumable gets some benefit (more users going to Google and using it's services) but money is not made by News. this is why they backed out of Spain. They had a free aggregation service, that made no money for them (at least directly), and the Spanish government decided they needed to pay fees to the Spanish sites to continue to provide this free service with no (direct) profit.
When there is no real profit, but no real loss either it's not so bad. But when there is no profit, and there is real loss, the business is untenable and you close it down, which is exactly what they did with Google News in Spain.
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
...by not providing a free service. I know you're obsessed with attacking the company for some reason, but when all you have is a criticism of what they're *not* doing, it's pretty weak. Are major studios also destroying the Spanish economy as well since your media masters have chosen not to allow Netflix to operate their service here until later this year? Is Wal Mart destroying the economy since they don't have stores here? Or, is your idiocy only reserved for Google? One day, your drooling inanity might even make internal logic, but not today it seems.
It should also be noted that you've deliberately ignored all the smaller companies mentioned in the article that have shut down or changed their business model as a direct result of the law. Funny that, but acknowledging reality is not your strong suit.
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Who hated the process of due
Each post that he'd made
Was DMCAed
And shoved up his ass with a screw
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
The problem is that if you don't have a consistent regulatory regime for such long term investments, they become significantly more risky, increasing costs. ISDS allows you to reduce the risk of such long term projects where a government changes its mind, so they do have a valid reason to exist where there's an issue of long term structural investment.
If you couldn't rely on a government to stick to its plans, you would find that most long term investment (e.g. power plants) would end up being significantly more expense. In the west, it's not too much of an issue as most countries don't screw people around like that, but if you imagine somewhere like Africa or South America, you run a significant risk of losing everything on the whim of someone when they are asking you to make a 20+ year commitment.
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Bizzaro Internet
We used to pay linking services to help us fool Google, et al., into thinking we were more popular than we actually were...so that Google would list us. We hire specialists to make our content sufficiently attractive to Google that our sites get indexed for free (reread that statement a couple of times). We pay Google to list ads about us, if our SEO efforts are too pathetic to get us desirably listed organically.
Google could open a new, paid service to index news for any news agency willing to purchase listings. There might be an auto-list option available, where Google would spider and index your news site, so you didn't have to do it for yourself. For a little more, the news agency could have Google enhance the listings of the news articles by capturing snippets of the content to include with the listings. Google could reduce or even waive fees for the small news agencies, as long as everyone agreed that Google was providing requested, commercial services according to the terms of a contract.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Buyer Beware. ISDS is an attempt to take the risk out of investing, but it is the taxpayers who suffer, not anyone else. No, ISDS is bad.
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Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
Google has not harmed anyone here, it has merely stopped helping them, because it was required to pay in order to help them. If Google's help is so unwanted, it makes sense for Google to stop, which is what happened.
The problem is that the Spanish news media (unlike the entire rest of the world) didn't realize just how much Google was helping them. For free. They just saw a big company with lots of money and wanted some of that. I also want Google's money, but I'm not so stupid to think that I'm going to get it simply because I feel entitled to it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
True. And then you know what you'd do? You wouldn't invest in those countries anymore. This is a self-correcting problem. There's no need to subvert a nation's sovereignty for this.
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Re: Re: Re: out_of_the_blue is a corporatist!
Just my C$0.02.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: out_of_the_blue is a corporatist!
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This is just like the Amanda Palmer situation. No one complains when an artist hires a backing band and pays them to play on stage. Artists have also charged people for the privilege of playing on stage with them and no one complained (because what musician wouldn't love to be able to play with their favorite artist). But when Palmer asked people to play with her for free, people freaked out. No money was changing hands therefore it must be exploitation!
I guarantee you if Google had been charging newspapers for the privilege of being included in Google News, none of this would've happened, none of these laws would have been created. It's because they did it for free, because no money was changing hands, that people think there must have been some exploitation going on. Even people who are in favor of "sharing the wealth," as our resident tard describes this Spanish Law, are brainwashed into thinking everything must be a transaction in the market, that money must be changing hands at all times.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: out_of_the_blue is a corporatist!
Double plus agree with that. Maybe an automatic duplicate deleter too.
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Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: out_of_the_blue is a Freetard!
I really ought to try the "link to this" and "view in chronology" buttons sometime and figure out what they do. Come to think of it, maybe the latter's what I'm looking for.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: out_of_the_blue is a Freetard!
Are you using threaded mode? Not everyone uses reply to this, but most do.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: out_of_the_blue is a Freetard!
i) Yes, ii) and I've noticed that. It's little more than a trivial annoyance for me, however. Just a "wish list" sort of thing. Maybe one of these days, I should read the documentation ("New to Techdirt?" link)?
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Re: Re:
The important question is if they can frame some aggregator for the crime.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
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Re:
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not the law as such doing harm, it's Google refusing to pay the pittance.
If the business doesn't want to accept that risk then don't invest in that country. It is not the government's job to guarantee a company makes a profit. And in the case of actual theft by a country's government use the local court system and/or blacklist the country in the future.
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The Spanish government is happy; they again control the Spanish media though the major media sources of the country because the opposition media are not easy to find anymore. This makes the "proper" and official news the only locally available.
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