Google News To Shut Down In Spain On December 16th

An anonymous reader writes The news aggregation services offered by Google is set to be no longer available for Spain, starting December 16th, 2014. The decision of Google comes as response to new Spanish legislation that gives publishers the right to claim compensation for republishing any part of their content. This follows news of services of startup Uber being forbidden in countries like Spain as well as Germany and some city councils worldwide like Delhi, or other services like AirBnb being put under pressure to cope with local laws in other jurisdictions.

Comments

They will either change their mind

[uberbrainchild8437]

or go out of business as soon as they notice that more and more people are no longer finding their news site.

Re:They will either change their mind

[Anonymous Coward]

> the shutdown of Google News in Spain may be greater on smaller, less-well known news publishers than on name-brand news sites

Which seems to be the goal of most new legislation: protect the big established players, kill the small upcoming competition.

Re:They will either change their mind

[mjtaylor24601]

Assuming the summary is correct (I know, I know), the legislation doesn't require payment by Google, it only allows the original publisher to collect payment from Google. If the small publishers want to have links to their sites show up in Google News without Google paying them, all they would have to do is send a letter to Google granting them permission. It would be up to each publisher to decide which way they want to go.

From what I've read the Spanish law specifically does not allow publishers to opt out.

"If you are a digital editor that publishes with a copyleft license, like myself, and you minimally understand how the internet actually works, you cannot decide to not charge Google News. It is compulsory. More than a right it is an obligation. Therefore, Google cannot exclude sites requiring payment from Google News. It would still need to pay for those it includes, even if they do not want to be compensated."

Things happen outside US!!!

[squiggleslash]

This follows news of services of startup Uber being forbidden in countries like Spain as well as Germany and some city councils worldwide like Delhi, or other services like AirBnb being put under pressure to cope with local laws in other jurisdictions.

Pretty much the only thing I can see that connects these three are that a US company operating abroad sometimes doesn't find a service that's legal in the US to be legal or practical in $RANDOM_COUNTY_THAT_ISNT_MERICA

As for the story, it's a shame, but that's how the Spanish media wants to operate, the Spanish government agrees with them, and so be it. It's not a big issue, or at least, if it ends up causing hardship, the political process will be followed again and changes will be made again.

Re:Things happen outside US!!!

[mcvos]

It's not anti-American to recognize that countries that are not the US have laws that differ from American laws. The US has just as much history of legally protected rackets (software patents, spying on behalf of American corporations, banning Tesla from selling cars, telco monopolies, in fact, I think the US has a far worse record than Germany on this).

So why is it to anti-American to expect companies to obey the laws of the country they operate in? Maybe because American companies are used to buying laws? Guess what: that's what just happened in Spain. That mess is as American as you can get.

Yes, that Spanish law is stupid, but the summary is stupid for trying to connect it to Uber and Airbnb. Uber, by the way, are a bunch of thugs who even many Americans agree should go out of business as soon as possible.

Censorship

[javilon]

I am from Spain. The most interesting thing about this is that this stupid law was rushed throught the parlamentary process by surprise, with an ammendment added at the last minute. On the same period, three of the most important reporters that were critical to the government in the big spanish media were fired.

There is especulation that the two things are linked and this was a deal between the Spanish government and the owners of the big media conglomerates in Spain. The media got this law against Google in exchange for supporting the ailing government party which is 50% down in the polls as compared to the last general election, and panicking.

So the big media owners got what they wanted in exchange of censoring news critical to the government. What they do not realize is that this is going to hit their bottom lines because Google is not going to fold down. The are going to lose lots of money and media, and other newspapers from outside Spain are going to increase their share. At the end they will run to the government asking them to remove this law. Or they may even do it before the law is in place, when they see that Google is going to shut them down. The will deserve the humilliation. And this will tarnish their credibility because of the deal they did with the government. They are fools.