Spain’s ‘Google Tax’ to go into effect
The Spanish Cabinet has approved a so-called ‘Google Tax’ on copyrighted property on the internet that is used by search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo in their search results.
The ‘Google Tax’ will protect website owners from having their original information reproduced in Google or in other search engine search results without ‘equitable compensation’. What that compensation will be, however, is yet to be decided and it could take up to eight months before it is.
According to Spain’s education, culture and sport minister, Jose Ignacio Wert, the new ‘Google Tax’ in Spain will mean while Google and other search engines can still use ‘non-significant fragments of information’ pulled from websites in news and search engine results without asking website owners for prior permission, the people that created the content will be due ‘equitable compensation’ for the use of their written work.
As for photographs currently taken without permission by Google from websites all over the world, Google and other search engines will now be required to get prior permission from the copyright owner of the photographs or they will not be allowed in search engine results in Spain.
All I can say is good for Spain. Website owners all over Spain and around the world are sick to death of Google taking our content, without our permission, and using it to bolster their own profits at the expense of the original creator of the content.
Sadly, however, it seems to be only Europe that is trying to stop the Google behemoth as, although Spain and Germany also have similar laws, the United States has yet to do anything at all to stop Google’s trampling of intellectual property rights.
Guess US politicians are being given too large a ‘donation’ by Google to dare to rock the boat.
Pathetic really.