Google News is now history. With almost 400,000 unique users a month, Google has decided to shut down the service, making Spain the only country in the world without this news aggregator, which displayed the headline, a line or two of text and a link to a newspaper or blog.
To understand the reasons for the shutdown and how it will affect blogs and social media, let’s start by explaining the AEDE levy (known as the “Google tax”), which caused Google News to close and may affect other portals linking to Spanish blogs and media.
What is the AEDE levy?
The levy, named after the Spanish Newspaper Publishers’ Association (AEDE), is part of the reform of the Intellectual Property Law, which comes into force on January 1, 2015. Amid unclear articles and varying interpretations of how it applies, the new law includes Article 32.2, known as the “Google tax”. This tax seeks to charge every time digital content aggregators or blogs link to a Spanish media outlet.
Publishers, together with Minister Wert, justified this levy by claiming that news aggregators (such as Menéame and the like) and Google News were profiting from linking other people’s content on their portals, even though the service was entirely voluntary and was another way to drive traffic to digital content, from newspapers and blogs alike, which in turn means more advertising revenue.
Goodbye, Google News
As announced, since this Tuesday Google no longer offers the Google News Spain service.
While other countries such as Germany and France reached agreements (involving millions) between publishers and the search engine, in Spain the conflict has ended with the service being withdrawn, cutting off access to the digital content that flows through our networks.
This may be the start of a conflict similar to Belgium’s, where the media asked to return to Google News after losing traffic because they no longer appeared there or could make their content go viral.
As of today, this is the new Google News:
Besides Google News, other news portals are currently waiting to see how this law plays out, given its many interpretations and the lack of clarity about links in blogs and social media. Both also link to and quote third-party content, but the regulation seems more subjective.
What about my blog?
If you have a corporate blog or a blog built into your online store, you need to understand what this new tax says. According to the legal text, periodicals (newspapers, digital magazines, blogs) with an informative purpose (news, public opinion or entertainment content) may demand compensation from news or content aggregators and portals that share a snippet. In other words, the charge isn’t for linking, but for QUOTING A SNIPPET of that content.
So if you create new, original content and link to a Spanish media outlet without quoting or selecting any snippet, you won’t have to pay the levy. You’ll pay when you quote or extract content from a Spanish media source (newspapers, magazines, blogs…).
The other crux of the matter is that the tax is collected by AEDE or CEDRO (Spanish Reprographic Rights Center), which will distribute the levy, but beware! Not to the authors, but to certain entities belonging to these publishers’ associations.
Rereading the text: can any blogger collect this levy? Unless the texts are purely commercial, it seems that most blogs will have an inalienable right to collect it. But remember: as authors or companies producing content, you cannot waive the levy, and it’s unclear whether you’ll ever see a cent.
Some interpretations suggest social networks would be exempt from paying this levy, because it’s users who decide to share headlines, with no profit, traffic or revenue in return. But, once again, the legal text doesn’t clarify the use of these networks by companies and organizations that use them for customer service but also to raise awareness and, why not, sell their products.
What is clear is that, given this change, your online marketing and social media strategy must now more than ever focus on creating unique, original content on your blog, avoiding quotes from other Spanish media or bloggers so you don’t have to pay this levy, whose impact remains unknown.
