The Copyright Directive has finally reached Spain, implemented through a Royal Decree Law and without any possibility of debate. The new directive, or new Intellectual Property law, is responsible for collecting everything set out in the European directive. Thus, in Spain, articles 15 and 17 of said European directive will be implemented, which automatically opens the door to the return of Google News.
Unfortunately, this new law is also postulated as a content censoring system using algorithms, since they will be in charge of deciding what is censored and what is not without any need for human intervention, or judicial control. Google itself has indicated that it has to analyze in detail this new law to make “decisions about our next steps.”
The new Intellectual Property Law opens the door to the return of News
On December 16, 2014, Google News closed in Spain. It was about the movement of the multinational to the landing of the one known as Canon AEDE that sneaked into the previous Intellectual Property Law established in our country. This law established that Google, as an aggregator, had to pay the media from which you extract a “meaningful snippet” of content to display on your service.
It was then that Google, in a decision that had already been anticipated in the previous weeks, announced that Google News was not a source of income for the company and that it proceeded to close it in our country. Google then claimed that it saw no alternative other than closure, so it pulled down the blind. As I had already done in other countries, by the way.
Now, almost 7 years after that decision, Google considers the return of News to our country by, as we said, the arrival of the new Intellectual Property Law. “The right conditions seem to exist for a potential launch of Google News in Spain“a Google spokesperson told Europa Press.
“However, we need time to analyze the new law in detail. We will make decisions about our next steps shortly,” said the spokesperson below. Thus, the arrival of the new Law opens the door to the return of Google News and the company itself is considering it although we will have to be patient until we know Google’s final decision in this regard. We will see what finally happens.
Via | Europa Press