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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

#31

Post by adventured »

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 that tumble out of that (culturally, politically and so on). Greece is facing a similar context and similar extreme unemployment problems. I would think it dramatically increases the risk of getting dangerous politicians that start making fantastical promises, with voters increasingly willing to buy into them.

There has been a near total collapse across Europe of the system of promises that were made, that support the premise of the modern welfare state. Only a few countries have been spared (either partially or totally), such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, etc. France's economy for example is smaller than it was in 2004 inflation adjusted. GDP for the whole of Europe is still below 2007 levels. Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe consequences.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#32

Post by magicalist »

jessriedel wrote: post #8
jonathansizz wrote: post #2

A pertinent quote from the Guardian article on this story: Germany passed a similar law to Spain’s and Google removed newspapers from Google News in response but in October publishers reached an agreement with the company after traffic to their websites plummeted.

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…

What is a "fair market in snippets"? I'm having trouble imagining a market of companies bidding on being able to include a sentence from a news article.

This seems much more like the reverse, where indeed the government is trying to prevent individual publishers from benefiting over others by not charging for snippets of their stories, but it seems much more in service of propping up the existing oligopoly of the news world.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#34

Post by iancarroll »

notjackma wrote: post #26
iancarroll wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you can afford to subsidize something doesn't mean you should. HR has a purpose inside Google, it has an output (payroll, disputes) fair to the input ($$$). Google News would take in $$$ and return nothing.

Yet they're already spending money on Google News: programmers, servers, electricity. So obviously they're getting something out of it, right? There is a purpose to Google News, whether it's tracking cookies or something else; they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

I can't imagine Spain makes up a large majority of Google News's traffic.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#35

Post by adventured »

notjackma wrote: post #26
iancarroll wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you can afford to subsidize something doesn't mean you should. HR has a purpose inside Google, it has an output (payroll, disputes) fair to the input ($$$). Google News would take in $$$ and return nothing.

Yet they're already spending money on Google News: programmers, servers, electricity. So obviously they're getting something out of it, right? There is a purpose to Google News, whether it's tracking cookies or something else; they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

Google has started all sorts of programs and then shut them down because they didn't turn out as hoped. I don't see why Google News losing money, and, say, becoming especially non-economical or burdensome to the company and being shut-down, would be any different.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#36

Post by onetimeusename »

I am reading through the official law and essentially it is saying that the Spanish government finds this necessary to reinforce intellectual property protections, the ip here being the news/stories. The thing that isn't clear from the law was whether anyone had actually complained about what Google was doing or whether Google was actually found violating any ip laws in place(it doesn't seem so). The whole thing is 40 pages so I probably won't read it all. Can anyone clarify if there had been some sort of issue here?

edit: Something that sticks out is that the law dictates how any agreement involving ip is to be done even if previous agreements are in place in order to cover costs "equitably". Yet I can't see how Google isn't already beneficial. The wording suggests Google would be causing damages since damages can be included in payments under this law.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#37

Post by deeviant »

jzwinck wrote: post #23
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…

This case is less "Google News is not accessible to people in Spain" and more "Google News can no longer publish content originated in Spain." The effect may be similar because Spaniards often want Spanish content, but what's happening seems different to your characterization.

Well, they are not just removing all Spanish news sources from the Spanish Google news site, they are removing the Spanish Google news site, which seems pretty consistent with his characterization.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#39

Post by dyadic »

chetanahuja wrote: post #15
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…

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, the quality of their shows, and for the British public, the last option is the best.

It's a strange system because the BBC is considered public broadcasting but is still funded (i.e. paid) by us citizens. You have to take the UK only as a subscription that we have implicitly paid. Of course, it would be great if they offered an outsider subscription, but there are undoubtedly internal political reasons why they haven't.

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