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Google News to shut down in Spain

googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com

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Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#161

Post by yaeger »

kh_hk wrote: post #136

"the worse the better", I am happy about this. Articles about this have been going around Spanish news aggregators for a while. Now that there's an official statement from Google, message will finally go around the world showing what kind of stupid laws the Spanish government is passing around with the influence of the powerful copyright lobbies. Now, about the recent Spanish Intellectual Property reform. The particu…

This sounds almost exactly what the GEMA is doing in Germany in regards to music. They get to collect money for songs being made public. Prime example in the digital age is now youtube. And they also have something called the GEMA assumption. They do not even need to check if the author or general right holders to a particular song are represented by them. They do not even need to check if the song in question is public domain. They can just assume they are responsible and thus make youtube block basically all music on their site proactively. And then, an individual can come forward and proof that a particular song needs to be unblocked cause it is public domain or they hold the rights to it and they are not associated with GEMA to do their bill collecting.

In essence, if I were to write a song, record it and put it on youtube and it gets enough exposure, the GEMA will find it and make youtube to block it because they did not pay the GEMA for this use. Even though I am not a member of GEMA and have never told them to be my intellectual property rights enforcer.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#162

Post by Oletros »

exhilaration wrote: post #93
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What makes Google News helpful is not only the language, it is the content and Latin American news are not very helpful to Spanish people

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#163

Post by gcb0 »

calbear81 wrote: post #19
gcb0 wrote: post #6

"we don't make money because we do not advertise on that site" is a huge fallacy. This sounds like a bluff because if that gets traction in the US then their search business will collapse. Imagine $0.01 for every search that shows a snipet of wikipedia to the wiki foundation?

It's a bit disengenous because although they don't directly make money on the News portal, it reinforces their market position and keeps users in the Google ecosystem. Those users in turn run searches that DO display ads.

that is exactly what i implied.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#164

Post by antr »

adventured wrote: post #31
franciscop wrote: post #5

Things are getting pretty freaky around here in Spain. We've got some horrible (freedom-wise) laws passed recently and we're all angry about them. They've been trying to for several years, and now that people is tired of fighting these stupid laws back they can pass them. This basically means that Google would need to pay to index newspapers.

As an American I watch Europe pretty closely, and I've seen some things that are worrisome such as increasing amounts of fascism (anti-freedom / anti-privacy)... but, things seem to be getting pretty freaky almost everywhere, freedom seems to be on the retreat globally. For Spain, speaking sociologically, how long can an advanced country have 30%-35% real unemployment, before there are severely destabilizing effects…

I don't know where you get the "30%-35% real unemployment" figures, that to me seems absurd given that European economies are known to have large underground economies in the region of 15% of GDP... and in the case of Spain somewhat larger[0]. Albeit, unofficial, the number of jobs created by a shadow economy of €253bn is too large to ignore. Now, 25% of GDP is underground economy, and 25% unemployment seem to have something in common, don't you think? The problem to me seems to be a budget balance issue: how can Governments pay for services that a large number of the population uses, but doesn't pay. This, in my opinion is what is causing a collapse: lack of funds to pay for services, and obligations (debt), and loose cost/investment policies.

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/30/spain-black-...

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#165

Post by calgoo »

gasull wrote: post #157
etanol wrote: post #24

This is one example of what happens when the population gives absolute power to a single political party: lobbying paradise. We spaniards have the politicians we deserve.

The similar "Sinde Law", that penalized P2P file-sharing, was approved with the votes of both PSOE (then in Government) and PP, the two main political parties.

Yea, 5 minutes before Sinde left office... Just saying.... Anyways, as someone who lives in spain since 20 years, im so tired of this right winged politicians that are removing all the socialist's advancements of the last 30 years. Healthcare: Crap. Education: Crap. And still people vote for the same right winged nuts. But i guess that is what you get when most of your population never learned any other language then Spanish. TV here is a horrible mess of crap programming (more less like the UK). I mean, our political leader refused to meet Media people directly, instead using a plasma screen to talk to them.

I wish Google would just block all their spanish services starting tomorrow. Also get MS and others to join in, and block all major internet services to Spain. I think it is even easier: block facebook and we have half the political party screaming because they actually have to work.

[Sorry for the rant. Just get so fed up with this BS...]

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#166

Post by crucialfelix »

yaeger wrote: post #161
kh_hk wrote: post #136

"the worse the better", I am happy about this. Articles about this have been going around Spanish news aggregators for a while. Now that there's an official statement from Google, message will finally go around the world showing what kind of stupid laws the Spanish government is passing around with the influence of the powerful copyright lobbies. Now, about the recent Spanish Intellectual Property reform. The particu…

This sounds almost exactly what the GEMA is doing in Germany in regards to music. They get to collect money for songs being made public. Prime example in the digital age is now youtube. And they also have something called the GEMA assumption. They do not even need to check if the author or general right holders to a particular song are represented by them. They do not even need to check if the song in question is pub…

This is incorrect. YouTube were a bit naughty in blaming GEMA when the issue is that the two sides have not agreed on a price. Gema is asking for too much, but they are not specifically blocking the content. Google preemptively blocks anything that might be GEMA to avoid being retroactively assessed billions of euros in some future decision.

Performance royalties for music are quite standard, this is one of the primary business models for music. Broadcasters earn money through advertising and pay content producers for the use of the content.

The Spanish news situation is different, since these are just search results excerpts leading directly to the news website.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#167

Post by ars »

tonfa wrote: post #152
ars wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should charge for listing, and it would be a nice coincidence - totally random of course, that the amount they charge is exactly the same as the amount they have to pay. Kind of like what amazon did when France forced them to charge shipping.

Side note: there was no loophole for Amazon and shipping in France, just good PR that made people think there was.

Eh? Explain please.

They made a law of no free shipping, so Amazon charged 0.01 for shipping. Seems like a loophole to me.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#168

Post by Thimothy »

exhilaration wrote: post #93
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, that's probably what is going to happen. Google news will will continue operating, just without the spanish sources.

Probably at some point some guy in some country without strong ties to spain (Probably not south america) is going to wise up, make some kind of spanish-content-only Reddit from there, and earn a shitton of money from the ads.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#169

Post by walshemj »

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."

no Spanish publishers will not be in either google news or have any news content featured the main google serps

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#170

Post by Maken »

wbillingsley wrote: post #150
rdlecler1 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they are. But will this have the effects the legislators tried to impose. This doesn't get google, it hurts Spain.

I hate to break it to you, but Google are not the only game in town. There are plenty of news aggregators (that generate revenue e.g., from advertising), and plenty of places that would be only too happy to step in and be the news-site-of-choice for the customers Google is leaving. Google departing the market will not "hurt Spain" in any meaningful way.

Of course, there are famous Spanish news aggregators like Menéame, which unlike Google can't abandon the boat and are already considering closing the website or banning any local news source. The "tax" imposed by this law is too big for making any aggregator profitable, and like other similar Spanish "taxes" managed by private entities, the law is so ambigous that you can't even expect to be fined nly once.
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