Spain to Now Tax Google News
Spain Just Passed An Insane Law Taxing Google For Linking To News. Not copying News, not plagiarizing news, no just linking to news.
This is one of the most crazy laws ever passed. Every single news aggregation site, such as Reddit, Digg, Google News, SlashDot, Sqlspace … heck even Facebook is now subjected to this Spanish Tax.
How this will be enforced is unknown, how this will be implemented is unknown. Spain however is in dire need of revenue. The Country has been battling unemployment levels that are on or near what the United States encountered during the Great Depression.
Many experts are wondering if such drastic measures will stifle innovation and create job loss in a country that has already been hit hard. Many media outlets depend on news linking sites to generate traffic to their sites. If websites stop linking to Spanish News outlets, those outlets will not receive anywhere near the ad revenue and traffic they did prior to the tax.
Honestly Spain, you are barking up the wrong tree.