Spain approves content tax for search engines
February 17, 2014
From David Del Valle in Madrid
In line with other European countries such as France and Germany, Spain has launched a Google tax whereby local news media companies will be able to charge Google and other search engines for the publication of copyrighted content.
The cabinet meeting has approved an intellectual property law reform that will allow news editors to be compensated by sites such as Google News for the right to quote or use their content, excluding photos.
The reform, subject to the approval by the Parliament, aims to fight Internet piracy which is widespread in Spain with an estimated 87 per cent of Spanish Internet users filing-share unauthorised content or downloading from illegal sites.
“The law will recognise the rights of publishers and authors to economic compensation for the exploitation of their content under certain circumstances”, said Soroya Saenz de Santamaría, Vice President of the government.
In addition, the Administration has also announced fines of €30,000 -€300,000 for operators of linking sites directing users to infringing content.