Music Times may opt to block its content from Spanish web services following a controversial piece of legislation that allows the government to levy fines against web services that use bits of media, such as audio and video, without paying for. The process, known as aggregation, has taken journalism by storm as ownership prefer to spend less on creating their own original content, preferring rather to borrow information from outer media outlets and reword it appropriately (linking back to the original material of course for legal reasons), according to Billboard.
Now Spain has passed a law nicknamed the "Google Tax," which could put sites like the Huffington Post in a tight spot.
Although we generally think of sites such as Huffington as the main "culprits" in the aggregation field, the tax takes its name from the fact that search engines will also be liable for linking to sites that feature "borrowed" content.
"We are disappointed with the new law because we believe that services like Google News help publishers bring traffic to their sites," wrote the web giant in a statement. "As far as the future is concerned, we will continue working with the Spanish publishers to help increase their revenues while we evaluate our options within the framework of the new legislation."
It's tough to blame the government for taking drastic action however. Spain suffers one of the highest rates of digital piracy in Europe, with nearly 84 percent of digital downloads coming via illegal means.
That doesn't mean the legislature will ultimately stick around. Germany passed a similar law, which had a crippling effect on internet media. Google removed all offending content as charged, resulting in a huge drop off in readership when users couldn't find the sites online.
