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I'm not sure how this totally nonsensical and erroneous reading of the post and subsequent comments have hijacked this thread, so at the risk of being patronizi
by throwawaytiger 12y ago
I'm not sure how this totally nonsensical and erroneous reading of the post and subsequent comments have hijacked this thread, so at the risk of being patronizing allow me to explain this as simply as I can:
Spain passed a law that "forces" news publishers to collect a levy from online news aggregators.
Online news aggregators will be fined if they aren't paying the copyright levy (yeah it's that ridiculous).
Nor publishers or aggregators can optout of this arrangement.
Google is stopping the Google News aggregation in Spain. They are NOT GEO-BLOCKING IT.
- vorg 12y agoDo you have any info on why Spain passed that law, such as white papers proposing the law or debates given in their version of parliament? Was it specifically to force companies like Google to shut down, or was that an unintended side effect? It's common for businesses in a supply chain to each pay a proportion of sales tax (e.g. GST in Australia, and in NZ), so it doesn't seem all that ridiculous for a country to do the same with a "copyright levy" in the media/search industry.
- throwawaytiger 12y agoBest overview I could find: https://medium.com/@JulioAlonso/the-story-of-spains-google-tax-5434d746df48 https://medium.com/@JulioAlonso/the-story-of-spains-google-t...
- fpgeek 12y ago> They are NOT GEO-BLOCKING IT. FOR NOW. As we all know, Google's reaction isn't the result the people pushing for the law intended. Do you think they will just give up? They've already gone through several rounds in several countries on this issue, so I don't. Considering that past experience, I'd say there's a substantial chance the law will be amended to be stricter and more far-reaching and/or it will be interpreted that way by the courts.
- rancur 12y agoso, what about hacker news, reddit, etc?