Spain’s parliament has approved new intellectual property laws that allow news publishers to charge aggregators each time they display news content in search results. This is a reform to the Intellectual Property Law and will come in effect on 1 January 2015.
Under the “Google Tax,” the levy would allow news publishers to charge “electronic news aggregation systems,” such as the Google News service, every time “a link and a meaningful description” of one of their articles is posted. A tax would be placed on those revenues.
Google’s Spanish division said that it was disappointed with the outcome and will work with Spanish news publishers to help them increase income. Looking forward, Google will continue to work with Spanish publishers to help them increase their income while Google consider their options in light of this new regulation.
