First And Only Snippet Tax Deal In Spain Is With Big Supporter Of Snippet Tax In Germany
from the maybe-just-a-coincidence dept
Two years ago, Techdirt wrote about an industry study of Spain's "Google tax", which requires a Web site to pay for sending traffic to publishers when it quotes snippets of their texts. Just as everyone who actually understands the Internet predicted, Spain's new law had a disastrous effect on the publishing industry there, especially on smaller companies. Despite that unequivocal evidence, the law is still in place, and it's a further sign of how pointless it is that only now has the Spanish Center for Reprographic Rights (Cedro) finally managed to sign up its first deal with a news aggregator, called Upday (original in Spanish). Cedro is claiming that this "pioneering" move possesses a "strategic importance" because it recognizes the rights of those whose publications appear elsewhere as snippets.
The fact that it has taken so long to find anyone willing to accept that point is bad enough, but it gets worse. Upday operates across Europe, and was launched in Spain at the beginning of March this year. It turns out to be a partnership between Axel Springer and Samsung. As Techdirt readers may recall, the giant publishing group Axel Springer is one of the biggest supporters of the Google tax in Germany. Initially, it tried to take a hard line against the US search company. But Axel Springer was soon forced to back down humiliatingly and offer Google a free license to post snippets from its publications. A two-week experiment without search engine leads caused Web traffic to Axel Springer's sites to plunge.
So, far from being a "pioneering" move that validates the whole snippet tax approach in Spain, Upday's deal with Cedro is simply a key German supporter of this daft idea trying to give the impression that the moribund Spanish Google tax is still twitching somewhat. It's pretty clear why Axel Springer and Cedro would be keen to do that now, after years of nothing happening in Spain. The European Union is currently revising the main EU Copyright Directive. Article 11 of the proposed text is an EU-wide version of the snippet tax, despite the fact that the idea has failed miserably everywhere that it has been tried. The agreement between Upday and Cedro will presumably be used as "evidence" that the Google tax is "working" in Spain. The fact that it is a "circular" deal between German and Spanish supporters of the idea proves the exact contrary.
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Filed Under: germany, google tax, link tax, snippet tax, spain
Companies: axel springer, google
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You jest, but during the whole spain debacle there actually were people arguing in the comments that Google shouldn't have been allowed to pull their service out of the country, and that doing so was somehow a bad thing in their part.
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It's a common rebuttal of copyright proponents - who have a huge bone to pick with Google - that if you don't like the terms given to you, you should do without. Apparently if they choose you don't even get to do without either.
And somehow, despite all this decision-making clout at their command, it's Google who has the monopoly.
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That was probably the funniest part of the whole debacle, watching the 'If you don't like the terms, do without' group suddenly have a huge problem when Google didn't like the terms and did without, and throwing out comments about how 'unreasonable' Google was being since they could 'easily' have complied with the law by jumping through thousands of hoops in order to get right back to almost where they were before the law was passed.
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That, of course, revealed the true nature of these moves. The publishers have been unable to effectively monetise the traffic that Google sends to them while, on the face of it at least, Google has done so (the reality being rather more complicated since Google don't directly monetise search results). So, they demand that Google pay them money to make up for the "loss", and cry foul when Google decides simply not to offer their product instead. Presumably because they are aware that they also need the extra traffic Google sends them for free.
Hopefully, saner heads will prevail before this is attempted across the EU, and people will note how lost traffic and zero additional income has resulted from previous attempts. But, we'll see..
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A Trump tweet about a talk show host is more pioneering, has more strategic importance, and a firmer grasp on reality.
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Can't wait to see how these taxes are disbursed to the actual copyright holders.
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I believe that one of the reasons they're pushing for an EU-wide Google-tax(besides greed) is that they figure that while Google can and will pull out of a country if faced with such toxic terms, they won't be willing to pull out of multiple countries as it would cause too big of a hit.
What they don't seem to realize is that so long as anyone in charge has any brains Google is much better off pulling service rather than paying the tax, as if they do they'll be nickle and dime'd to death, such that even pulling service from the EU would likely still be the better option.
(Not to mention by now Google has got to realize that even if the tax is implemented and used against them the same song and dance will occur. They'll be told 'pay up', they'll pull service, site traffic plummets, the same sites that were so looking forward to the free money that they were never actually going to get start screaming up a storm and begging to be re-listed, and the politicians either repeal the law or carve out a Google-specific exemption to it, leaving Google in an even better position than before.)
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You're right that Google should just go away for however long it takes for it to get through their skulls that this is not even wrong, just plain, basest stupidity.
Google's job is to aggregate stuff from around the web and present it to people how go to them in search of said content. The audience is there, willing and ready, and these numskulls would rather send them away than have them guided to their doorstep, at no extra expense of their own!
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Carving out exemptions would be even worse, I think. But I can see it happening.
Oh it wasn't a hypothetical, that's how it happened when they tried it in germany.
'Initially, it tried to take a hard line against the US search company. But Axel Springer was soon forced to back down humiliatingly and offer Google a free license to post snippets from its publications.'
They tried to shake Google down, Google dropped snippets in response, and inside of two weeks they were begging Google to re-list them after seeing their traffic plummet, to the point where they were even willing to offer Google 'special permission' to do so.
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Perhaps, but what's interesting there is that the main focus of this legislation - the Google News service - is not something that Google monetises directly. They may use the data gathered elsewhere, but they don't make money directly from people clicking through, and there are no ads on that page. Unless I'm mistaken about that, Google could probably pull the entire service globally and not take a major hit on revenue.
The publishers? Not so much. I suspect a lot of people use it like I do and use it to grab an overview of different headlines and viewpoints in an easy manner. This leads me to click through to numerous news sources I would never, ever go to if they didn't appear on this kind of aggregator. Without it, I'd revert to going to known trusted searches and never visit a lot of these publishers again. As usual, it comes down to the publishers not being able to correct monetise the extra traffic they're sent, then demanding Google pay them because they were able to do that.
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From: google@gmail.goog
Subject: Re: Re: Copyright Directive
EXACTLY.
>
>To: everyone@eu.eu
>From: google@gmail.goog
>Subject: Re: Copyright Directive
>What's a 'Canada'?
>
>
>>To: everyone@eu.eu
>>From: google@gmail.goog
>>Subject: Copyright Directive
>>Hey guys, do you remember what happened to Canada?
>>
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Ten times worse:
What's Upday?
(Oh, c'mon. Everyone was thinking it.)
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Paraphrases rather than snippets?
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Re: Paraphrases rather than snippets?
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