ANKARA
Spanish news publishers want the government to negotiate with Google after the giant tech company decided to close its Spanish news service following a new copyright law that requires Google to pay for using publishers’ content.
Spanish news organizations are calling on the government to reach an understanding with Google because the company is too "dominant" in the market to simply leave and doing so will "undoubtedly have a negative impact" on the businesses as well as the public.
The Spanish Newspaper Publishers’ Association said that Google is "free to close their business" should the government fail to respond, but that would undoubtedly mean the downfall of several Spanish news organizations as well.
According to The Spain Report, Spanish Newspaper Publishers’ Association issued a statement last night stating that the action was damaging, given that in Spain Google controls almost all of the searches in the market and is an authentic gateway to the Internet.
"Given the dominant position of Google, AEDE requires the intervention of Spanish and community authorities, and competition authorities, to effectively protect the rights of citizens and companies," the association said, refering to itself by its initials.
Last week Google announced that it would shut down its news service in Spain on Dec.16 after the country's government approved a new intellectual property law that will come into effect on Jan. 1, 2015.
The new copyright law is also known as the "Google tax," which requires services that post links to, and excerpts of, news articles to pay a fee to the Association of Editors of Spanish Dailies.
The tech giant argued that Google News itself makes no money, and that "publishers can choose whether or not they want their articles to appear in Google News -- and the vast majority choose to be included for very good reasons," Richard Gingras, Head of Google News said.
Germany passed a similar law and Google removed newspapers from Google News but publishers later reached an agreement with the company after traffic to its sites plunged.
www.aa.com.tr/en
