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European Legislation Could Limit Users’ Google Search Experience

Published onFeb 21, 2013
European Legislation Could Limit Users’ Google Search Experience

Over the last few months, Google News service, which provides links to the websites of news publishers, has been feeling pressure from European lawmakers to pay for the right to continue linking to those news sites. Those links are provided alongside snippets, i.e., parts of the news article that are republished by Google. Those snippets allow Google to increase its advertising profits, profits that are not passed on to the original publishers.

After Google chairman Eric Schmidt met in Paris with French president Francois Hollande on February 1, 2013, Google announced that it had reached a deal to avoid a law that would have required it to pay in order to link to news content sites. In return, Google will establish an $81.3 million fund to aid French newspapers in developing a web presence. Initially, Google had rebuffed demands for payment from French publishers, threatening to omit any references to French media altogether.

Google formed a similarly-structured deal with Belgium on December 12, 2012. That deal provides that Google will pay $6.5 million for advertising. Or, as some commenters derisively referred to it, a $6 million copyright fee. That deal concluded a six-year legal fight that resulted in Google omitting Belgian newspapers from its search output rather than paying the court ordered fixed sum per link.

What do these agreements portend for other European countries? Will these deals impact companies other than Google? Germany has come forward with a similar legislative proposal that would hold Google accountable for its “copyright infringement” in the form of its news snippets. However, German publishers are disinclined to reach any settlement with Google, which makes an agreement similar to the one achieved in Paris less likely. In response to the French agreement, groups representing German newspapers and magazines disabused observers of the idea that Germany might follow France’s lead: “The agreement is not a model for Germany,” the groups stated.

The Reichstag Building in Berlin, seat of the German legislature, the Bundestag.

Google fired back, enumerating the reasons why it views the German proposal as problematic: “An ancillary copyright endangers one of the fundamental principles of the web, the possibility to share and search for information through links. The law would let users not always find what they are searching for. It would be detrimental for jobs and growth in Germany as almost half of the German economy already depends on the Internet. We hope that the German parliament will oppose to the draft law.” An ancillary copyright (Leistungsschutzrecht, if you prefer) allows publishers to have exclusive control over the republication of their content, even including snippets. News aggregators like Google would have to pay licensing fees in order to make use of those snippets. Google has also launched a campaign called “Defend Your Net” in the hopes of defeating the German ancillary copyright legislation by informing the German public of its viewpoint, emphasizing that German news publishers are benefiting from Google directing traffic to their sites. Therefore, Google argues, the news publishers cannot complain that they are providing content to Google and getting nothing in return. Moreover, the campaign stresses that there is, and always has been, the option of opting out of turning up in a Google search, thereby disallowing use of content. Publishers simply need to modify their code in order to opt out. With Google and the German publishers’ groups ready to battle, it remains difficult to tell which course of action the German legislature will select.

* Lena Mualla is a third-year law student at Wake Forest University School of Law. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government and International Politics from George Mason University. Ms. Mualla was awarded a Fulbright ETA award to teach in Indonesia following undergrad. She is interested in the areas of banking law and IP law.

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