After Spanish and German newspapers unsuccessfully tried to get Google to pay for publishing snippets of text from articles when linking to them–the EU might be picking up the idea.
In Spain and Germany Google simply stopped linking, resulting in the newspapers quickly withdrawing their claims. But in Spain there has since been a discussion about forcing Google to link–and to pay for doing so.
Now European newspaper publishers seems to have hooked the European Commission on the same idea.
The concept is plain stupid. It fails to understand the dynamic of linking on the net. It would distress the very nerve system of the Web.
And it would stop inovation and new entrepreneurs dead in the tracks.
Google might be able to pay newspaper publishers, if forced. At the same time that would give Google a de facto monopoly on linking to newspaper articles. No new or small companies would have the economic muscles to do the same.
This is yet another issue that we need to watch, closely.
/ HAX
Update, here we go…
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