EU News publishers could charge search engines for story extracts under new rules
News publishers could charge search engines for story
extracts
Copyright reforms by European Commission would require
likes of Google to agree terms
about 8 hours ago
European news publishers will be given the right to levy
fees on internet platforms such as Google if search engines show snippets of
their stories, under radical copyright reforms being finalised by the European
Commission.
The proposals, to be published in September, are aimed at
diluting the power of big online operators, whose market share in areas such as
search leads to unbalanced commercial negotiations between the search engine
and content creators, according to officials.
The move will heap further pressure on the already
strained relationship between Silicon Valley and Brussels, which are embroiled
in increasingly fractious arguments over issues covering competition, tax and
privacy. On Wednesday, the US Treasury department attacked commission moves to
levy billions of euro from Apple for alleged underpayment of taxes in Europe.
At the heart of the draft copyright plan, news publishers
would receive “exclusive rights” to make their content available to the public
in a move that would force services such as Google News to agree terms with
news organisations for showing extracts of articles.
Failure in past
Citing dwindling revenues at news organisations, the
commission warns that failure to push on with such a policy would be
“prejudicial for . . . media pluralism”, according to one internal document.
Critics of the idea argue that similar efforts to charge
Google for aggregating news stories have failed in both Germany and Spain.
Google responded to a mandatory levy in Spain by shutting down Google News in
the country. In Germany, many publishers opted to waive the charge in order to
still appear on the search engine’s news results after suffering big drops in
traffic.
Julia Reda, a German MEP and copyright reform activist,
said: “They recognise that German and Spanish rights did not work well, but
structurally they are trying to do the same thing.”
But she said the size of Google would make it difficult
for publishers to reach a deal even with the exclusive right. “It is insane to
believe that companies would win this battle,” she said. Google declined to
comment.
Under the proposals, news publishers would not be obliged
to levy a fee for an aggregator to show a segment of content, and could offer
it for free. Officials have made clear that simply linking to publicly
available content is not covered by the EU’s copyright rules, a fact that will
not change under the proposals.
Christian Wigand, a spokesperson for the European
Commission, said: “Let’s be clear: granting such rights to news publishers
would not affect the way users share hyperlinks on the internet. It would
recognise their role as investors in content.”
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016
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