European Copyright Law Could Soon Get Worse
There was a previous discussion based on a similar article from Creative Commons a couple days ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810999" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810999</a><p>c3o (Christopher Clay), who works in the EU Parliament according to his profile, posted several informative comments including one explaining the backstory behind the proposed legislation:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812099" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812099</a><p>> <i>The back story of the law may shed some light.</i><p>> <i>First, it's no secret that the intent is to prop up the business model of struggling publishers by getting internet platforms to pay them for spreading (links to/tiny snippets of) their content.</i><p>> <i>After a "link tax" law was introduced in Germany, some publishers decided to waive it. Google reacted by removing snippets from those who didn't in Google News, making their links less likely to be clicked on. Afraid of losing traffic, these publishers then granted Google a free license.</i><p>> <i>The government of Spain looked at this result and decided to implement the idea as an inalienable right, to make sure some publishers couldn't opt out, and Google would have to pay up. In response, Google shut down Google News altogether in Spain.</i><p>> <i>This is the version that the Parliament's chief negotiator now wants the EU to implement. He believes that Google (and Facebook and Twitter, which have been added as targets) wouldn't dare shut down a service across all of Europe.</i>