The Government has approved a new copyright law that imposes fees for online content aggregators such as Google News in an attempt to protect the print media industry, and imposes fines for the use of pirated content.

The new intellectual property law, popularly known as Google Tax, requires services which post links and excerpts of news articles to pay a fee to AEDE, the Association of Editors of Spanish Dailies. The new legislation also aims clampdown piracy and imposes fines for the online consumption of pirated content with fines of up to €600,000.

The law, to come into force from January 1, meets the demands of the publishers who had accused the search firm of using their copyrighted material to build up a news service without doing any reporting of its own.

Google has expressed it is “disappointed” with the Spain’s new law. “We believe that services like Google News help publishers bring traffic to their sites. 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.”

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