... being struck be more than the article points out.
My written English is not so good - so please apologize.
Here in Germany there are actually two laws in making:
1st: they try to build a law, which would allow the state to break up any company, that has a monopoly position even if the firm is not misusing it (against customers or competitors). this aims directly against google.
2nd: the publishers want a fee for published content. in germany everybody owning a tv-set has to pay a fee for public braodcasting. even owning a pc is enough to have to pay. something like this the publishers (especially print-publishers) want for themselves.
so while reading nearly only online-news, i would have to pay, to back up a business-model that is not working anymore.
and yes - a lot of german publishers do not understand the internet. some time ago they went to court against a small meta-news-serachengine, claiming, that any deeplink (or any link at all) was a copyright infringement. long before google news was born (exactly in 1999) newsclub.de startet, and some publishers went to war via court. the young man, that i happen to know, who invented this serachengine did not have the money to fight till supreme-court. that did google some time later. a link, since then, is not a copyright infringement at all.
so while there is no chance via copyright law, they now try some other way.
and a lot of german politicans stand by to pass these laws. especially a party called FDP, that claims to be a civil rights party (while being a neo-economists-party).
so just wait and see while our politicans kick us back into digital stoneage. :-(
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by sin-tax.
Being a German and...
My written English is not so good - so please apologize.
Here in Germany there are actually two laws in making:
1st: they try to build a law, which would allow the state to break up any company, that has a monopoly position even if the firm is not misusing it (against customers or competitors). this aims directly against google.
2nd: the publishers want a fee for published content. in germany everybody owning a tv-set has to pay a fee for public braodcasting. even owning a pc is enough to have to pay. something like this the publishers (especially print-publishers) want for themselves.
so while reading nearly only online-news, i would have to pay, to back up a business-model that is not working anymore.
and yes - a lot of german publishers do not understand the internet. some time ago they went to court against a small meta-news-serachengine, claiming, that any deeplink (or any link at all) was a copyright infringement. long before google news was born (exactly in 1999) newsclub.de startet, and some publishers went to war via court. the young man, that i happen to know, who invented this serachengine did not have the money to fight till supreme-court. that did google some time later. a link, since then, is not a copyright infringement at all.
so while there is no chance via copyright law, they now try some other way.
and a lot of german politicans stand by to pass these laws. especially a party called FDP, that claims to be a civil rights party (while being a neo-economists-party).
so just wait and see while our politicans kick us back into digital stoneage. :-(
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by sin-tax.
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