On October 30, 2014, the reform of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law was definitively approved in Congress.
From January 1, 2015 on, the new Law will punish websites that provides copyright content with fines up to 600.000 euros. The payment of compensation for private copying that was regulated in the prior law withstands, although it is a transitional measure until the European Union legislates on the matter.
However, the most significant and controversial issue in the modification of the Spanish Intellectual property Law is the addition of the “AEDE (Spanish Publishers’ Association) canon”, more commonly known as the “Google fee”. It is an irrevocable fee to compensate the newspaper publishers for the link to their content through internet search engines. A prime example of this is Google News, thus the name of the fee, even though it will affect websites with less visibility.
Aside from Google, many editors, Medias, aggregators, internet groups and authors’ associations have spoken against the approval of this measure. As soon as the Law was approved, Google has ensured their disappointment and has even threatened with withdrawing the Google news service in Spain.
See the whole text here (Draft Bill amending the consolidated text on Intellectual property Act, approved by Legislative Royal Decree 1/1996, of 12 April and Law 1/2000 of 7 January on Civil Procedure):
Written by: Athena Poysky
Source: http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/2281539/0/congreso-aprueba/ley-lassalle/propiedad-intelectual/
Image: Jumanji Solar. Under creative commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
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