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Comment by rjayatilleka | Hacker News Reader

Jeez. So do they have any proposed solution beyond "government intervention"? It's a fact that Google isn't going to pay to host Spanish news, nor can the government force them to do that. So either they need to

1. amend the law saying that Google is an exception, OR

2. amend the law to make payment for news snippets no longer an "inalienable right", OR

3. repeal the law.

Which in the end brings back the exact situation that was there before the law.

EDIT: Just realized that number 1 doesn't count. I don't think you can make an inalienable right and an exception to that right at the same time.

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In Germany all major publisher, including those that fought to get a similar law, signed contracts with Google allowing them to index without pay. All small aggregators and search engines still have to pay so the end result is that Google News Germany is more powerful than before. I expect something similar in Spain.

Yup, exactly. The only reason it didn't happen in Spain right away is the "inalienable right" clause, so that publisher's couldn't sign away the right to be paid. If that goes away, it'll be the same situation as Germany.

Good, it's even better

Now those imbeciles realize they shot themselves in the foot?

If they want Google to stay they should pay them. It's that simple

They probably thought the clause would force unity.

I'm guessing they analyzed the German situation as a failure of unity: some publishers "sold out" and signed no-money agreements with Google, which weakened the position of the holdouts. They -- possibly the same group of publishers lobbying for the German law -- presumably thought that if they forced unity, then Google would be forced to pay up rather than walk away.

This seems like a bizarre law. I assume that it only applies to news publishers, so that you can still publish open-source software or put CC licences on your own photos without needing to demand payment?

I haven't read the law itself, but I assume it only applies to news publishing. Simply banning the right to give your content out for free would be extremely broad and overly stupid for any government to do legally.

Do we have any insight into why they made an exception for Google? The obvious starting point is Google threatening to stop search indexing sites they can't use in Google news - there might even be technical justification for that. But presumably the publishers would attack that as abusing a monopoly position, it seems pretty much textbook definition. They must have known signing with Google while that law existed would only make Google stronger like you said - so it'd be interesting to know why they'd do that.

Shareholders. The traffic to their websites dropped so massively they would have killed their own business. Took less than a month. So the same guy (CEO I think) who bashed against Google at any occasion had to get it settled or risk his own job.

Fair enough! You'd think they might check how much traffic Google news was sending them before ranting and lobbying for that law.

Google News drives sufficient traffic to make it worth it. Springer tried to not give google the license and some numbers were mentioned in that context, but I'm to lazy to ddg them. The losses were substantial.

What do you do if the news organizations seem to have less integrity left than Google. It's a shameful display of German "journalism". Everyone in that lobby should just quit. Go to Pluto, go suck somewhere else at your "job".

I am angry and ashamed at the newspapers of my country.

You should know that an Spanish "journalist" that defends that Google must pay and that they can't close Google News on Spain, say on public television that there is alternative like "Linux".

We live in a joke of country (I'm spanish)...

I think you missed the point of the news:

First AEDE, the Spanish News Publishers’ Association lobbied for the law that created fees for web linking (pretty insane and ultimately unfeasible).

After the law was passed, Google said they would then close Google News Spain since they make no money with it.

Now AEDE seems to have changed its mind and is actually asking the opposite, for the government to prevent Google News closure.

Also, regarding your points: 1. You should not make arbitrary laws. 2 and 3 are good.

Yeah, I understand that AEDE (representing Spanish news companies) lobbied for the law, and now changed its mind to lobby against it. Regarding solution 1, yeah that's another good point. It's not a good idea to make one corporation an exception to a law.

Curious about this. I agree, Google gives more exposure, but Google does make money off of them.

I'm not as worried about this in news snippets (as it gives people something to read to decide to click which benefits the news content creators), but what about in situations where that's not the case?

There's a lot of searches that straight up scrape wikipedia and show the first paragraph as the result from google - thereby disincentivizing people to click on that result (and hurting the content creator).

Google's been creeping into the 'content" space over the past few years, both serving as a portal & serving up direct answers. I'm curious to if it will come back to haunt them in the future (or what content creators can do in response to this).

If you feel that Google, or any other search engine, is ripping you off, you can use robots.txt to deny them access. They voluntarily agreed to follow rules laid there. You don't need to bother with a copyright argument.

If you represent a whole industry, like AEDE here, you can even roll out your own news aggregator. Since member outlets can shut Google out, it would be relatively easy to make this new site a popular, maybe even default, destination for news consumers. Then share profits however you believe is fair.

I'm guessing they're way better at lawyering than coding

This is why the behavior of AEDE here disgusts me, while I am a fan of attempts to break up Microsofts business and desktop monopolies.

Google is in a symbiotic relationship with news agencies here. They may not like it, but Google is not ripping anyone off operating a news aggregator, and their willingness to just up and leave proves it. Spanish media just wanted a piece of the Google pie and now it is biting them in their own ass and now they are trying to use the state to force Google to give them money. Its like they want their mafia dues for owning the state enough to pass bullshit like the original law.

Maybe they could circumvent the law by signing a contact where google pays the news organisations, but they in term pay google back for the "exposure". That way both parties would comply with the law and they would still maintain the status quo.

Except as Google is demonstrating by just outright closing Google News Spain, they don't have to put up with that bullshit. They are so big in so many countries dropping one won't do anything for their bottom line (especially when Google News itself makes them no money directly) and the news lobby in Spain gets to rip itself a new one destroying itself out of greed.

> they don't have to put up with that bullshit

Exactly. For Google's long term credibility and success, they must close Google News Spain (at least temporarily).

Spain is both small enough and large enough to serve as a convenient demonstration of Google's power. Going forward, fear will keep the local publishers in line. Fear of the wrath of Google.

Wrath? If you charge me a fee for driving a bus to your address, I will stop driving there. Do you fear me?

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