{"id":644668,"date":"2013-03-01T06:33:54","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T11:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=615691"},"modified":"2013-03-01T06:33:54","modified_gmt":"2013-03-01T11:33:54","slug":"german-parliament-passes-google-tax-law-forcing-royalty-payments-for-news-snippets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/644668","title":{"rendered":"German parliament passes \u2018Google tax\u2019 law, forcing royalty payments for news snippets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The German parliament has passed a controversial law that will force search engines and news aggregators to pay publishers<\/a> royalties for providing short snippets of their articles in results.<\/p>\n

The Bundestag passed the Leistungsschutzrecht f\u00fcr Presseverleger<\/i> (LSR), or “ancillary copyright for press publishers” law, on Friday by 293 votes to 243. The coalition government was the driver behind the law, and the main opposition, the SPD, now says<\/a> it will try to defeat the law in the country’s second legislative chamber, the Bundesrat.<\/p>\n

The text that got passed in the Bundestag apparently exempts “small text snippets”, although it does not state how short a text snippet has to be to be royalty-free \u2013 if it is less than headline-short, this will probably mean the wholesale removal of all German news publications from Google’s search results.<\/p>\n

Google has been a vocal opponent of the law, for obvious reasons. In France and Belgium<\/a> the company has settled related disputes with publishers in deals that many have seen as tantamount to a payoff. However, it looks like the German situation is now beyond settlement.<\/p>\n

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