Brussels, 05/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - The Spanish government has decided to impose a tax on the US giant Google and other sites which post links and excerpts of newspaper articles. This is the first time a European Union country has passed such a law. The aim is to compensate the press every time articles are listed by services. The “intellectual property law”, which has become commonly referred to as the “Google law”, was passed on 30 October and will come into force in January 2015. “This is about tackling those who illegally facilitate localisation of content and, more particularly, web firms which aggregate and list links towards this content” (our translations), said José Ignacio Wert, Spanish Education and Culture Minister. This is a decision which could snowball among other member states.
Google is very unhappy with the move and has threatened to close the Spanish news portal, believing that Google News helped publishers increase the traffic on their own web sites, playing a leveraging role for the sector. The measure might be challenged in the courts by Google, EU Court of Justice case law having established that a link to a freely accessible page cannot be subject to copyright. The new commissioner for the digital economy, Günther Oettinger, however, said in an interview with a German daily on 28 October, just before he took office, that he backed such a levy, stating: “If Google uses and handles intellectual property in the European Union, the EU can protect that property and can demand payment of commission” (our translation). He added that such a piece of legislation could be in place as early as 2016. During his hearing with members of the European Parliament, Oettinger said he wanted to boost the European digital market in the face of the hegemony of the US giants, and stated that he wanted to tax the activities of Google by overhauling copyright protection rules (see EUROPE 11166). (IL)