Google News to shut down in Spain • Hacker News Board

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#91

Post by mimighost » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:14 AM UTC

To be honest, I didn't see who could benefit from this law enforcement. If the government or whoever drive this believe this would force Google to pay for the news, they are wrong in the first place. The reason is simple, if Google pays to Spain, other countries would certainly require it to do the same, otherwise, why not? So if they are not stupid, the shutdown is what they have foreseen.

If that is the case, big local newpaper/portal will be happy. Because right now, there will be more people to buy the real newspaper/visit their site directly. Maybe they will see to a certain increase in their readership. However, the trend of information digitization is inevitable. Fundamentally ,internet is more efficient in collecting, organizing and delivering information than any other media. Eventually everyone will become loser.

I don't know how this is going to end, because law is not something that could be taken back easily. Hopefully, they will be smart enough to figure out something to bypass it.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#92

Post by throwawaytiger » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:14 AM UTC

vorg wrote: post #86

throwawaytiger wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how this totally nonsensical and erroneous reading of the post and subsequent comments have hijacked this thread, so at the risk of being patronizing allow me to explain this as simply as I can: Spain passed a law that "forces" news publishers to collect a levy from online news aggregators. Online news aggregators will be fined if they aren't paying the copyright levy (yeah it's that ridiculous). Nor pub…

Do you have any info on why Spain passed that law, such as white papers proposing the law or debates given in their version of parliament? Was it specifically to force companies like Google to shut down, or was that an unintended side effect? It's common for businesses in a supply chain to each pay a proportion of sales tax (e.g. GST in Australia, and in NZ), so it doesn't seem all that ridiculous for a country to do…

Best overview I could find: https://medium.com/@JulioAlonso/the-story-of-spains-google-t...

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#93

Post by exhilaration » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:14 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #72

AznHisoka wrote: post #10

Why can't the just display the headline and no snippet from the article text? Or does that count as a snippet? But wait... what about the actual organic search results? Do they have to remove Spanish news articles from that too?

Google should remove all deep links from the search database. Teach them a hard lesson.

Even better: keep the Spanish Google News operating but only link to Latin American news sources. Spanish citizens still get news in their preferred language but no traffic goes to domestic media outlets.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#94

Post by fpgeek » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:15 AM UTC

throwawaytiger wrote: post #59

rsync wrote: post #13

Things are going very badly for a global internet if we are discussing a web site "shutting down in spain". Of course we all know what that means and it seems very sensible in 2014, but remember - if someone had told you in 1998 that a certain website would not be operating in country X, you would have laughed and explained to them (like a child) that the Internet was a single global network and that if one had Inter…

I'm not sure how this totally nonsensical and erroneous reading of the post and subsequent comments have hijacked this thread, so at the risk of being patronizing allow me to explain this as simply as I can: Spain passed a law that "forces" news publishers to collect a levy from online news aggregators. Online news aggregators will be fined if they aren't paying the copyright levy (yeah it's that ridiculous). Nor pub…

> They are NOT GEO-BLOCKING IT.

FOR NOW.

As we all know, Google's reaction isn't the result the people pushing for the law intended. Do you think they will just give up? They've already gone through several rounds in several countries on this issue, so I don't. Considering that past experience, I'd say there's a substantial chance the law will be amended to be stricter and more far-reaching and/or it will be interpreted that way by the courts.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#95

Post by lotu » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:18 AM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #85

jessriedel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone comment on the goal behind designing the Spanish law this way? I speculate that they consider Google News to have monopolistic power, so that even if a fair market in snippets would set a finite price Google News would still use its clout to drive that price to zero by removing individual papers who tried to charge. A mandatory price would counter act this, similar to the way that government mandates to p…

I believe the goal/logic is "we want money. Google has lots of money, we should try and get some of that"

You also have to consider that the publishing industry is really hurting because of people moving online and the press has a lot of political power.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#96

Post by visarga » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:20 AM UTC

dyadic wrote: post #39

chetanahuja wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree with the sad trend. Though to be fair, the scourge of geolocation based blocking started with media companies (mostly American, but also bbc and others) in a bid to recreate the DVD region encoding bullshit on the internet. Add to that the NSA merrily slurping up data from the global firehose... there's no innocence left to corrupt at this point.

There are two sides to the scourge. WRT the BBC, they produce quality content, partly funded by us Brits and partly funded by exporting the content to other countries. With the internet they have limited choices: * Keep things off the internet and disappoint everyone * Put things on the global internet and lose export value * Put things on the internet but geolocate to the UK and retain export value Clearly for them,…

> Put things on the global internet and lose export value

If they don't feel like sharing, we can find other sources that will, there's no lack of quality content.

It's a pity that BBC sits on a million hours of TV and radio archived shows, that are collecting dust instead of being cited, posted, commented on, tagged, submitted, etc. Their loss. The web keeps growing and the BBC archives are offline. It's a kind of 'Encyclopedia Brittanica thinking' in an age of Wikipedia - trying to monetize at the expense of global accessibility.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#97

Post by rancur » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:22 AM UTC

throwawaytiger wrote: post #59

rsync wrote: post #13

Things are going very badly for a global internet if we are discussing a web site "shutting down in spain". Of course we all know what that means and it seems very sensible in 2014, but remember - if someone had told you in 1998 that a certain website would not be operating in country X, you would have laughed and explained to them (like a child) that the Internet was a single global network and that if one had Inter…

I'm not sure how this totally nonsensical and erroneous reading of the post and subsequent comments have hijacked this thread, so at the risk of being patronizing allow me to explain this as simply as I can: Spain passed a law that "forces" news publishers to collect a levy from online news aggregators. Online news aggregators will be fined if they aren't paying the copyright levy (yeah it's that ridiculous). Nor pub…

so, what about hacker news, reddit, etc?

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#98

Post by beberlei » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:25 AM UTC

wtbob wrote: post #80

rgbrenner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, Google is subject to this law because Google operates and has offices in Spain. It seems reasonable that Google should comply with the laws of where they do business.

But the law itself does not seem reasonable. It's a violation of fair use. Lest we forget, Google News links to the articles themselves . It provides a service to news organisations, for—as far as I'm aware—free.

Fair use is an american thing. Spain cannot violate US copyright law

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#99

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:28 AM UTC

wtbob wrote: post #80

rgbrenner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, Google is subject to this law because Google operates and has offices in Spain. It seems reasonable that Google should comply with the laws of where they do business.

But the law itself does not seem reasonable. It's a violation of fair use. Lest we forget, Google News links to the articles themselves . It provides a service to news organisations, for—as far as I'm aware—free.

[deleted]

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#100

Post by diminoten » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:32 AM UTC

raldi wrote: post #82

rsync wrote: post #13

Things are going very badly for a global internet if we are discussing a web site "shutting down in spain". Of course we all know what that means and it seems very sensible in 2014, but remember - if someone had told you in 1998 that a certain website would not be operating in country X, you would have laughed and explained to them (like a child) that the Internet was a single global network and that if one had Inter…

You've misinterpreted the story as, "Google News won't be accessible to browsers in Spain." The actual story is, "The 'Spain' version of Google News won't be accessible to anyone."

What if I post a Spanish story to HN (or Reddit) and use the title of the article as the submission title?

Will the company hosting the site have to pay up?