Google versus the European media

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150725/14510131761/study-spains-google-tax-news-shows-how-much-damage-it-has-done.shtml

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110718/16394915157/belgian-newspapers-give-permission-to-google-to-return-them-to-search-results.shtml

From the July 2015 story:

As you may recall, governments across Europe, generally at the behest of traditional newspaper publishers, have been pushing for what they call an "ancillary copyright," but which is much better referred to as a "snippet tax" or a "link tax." Or, if people are being honest: a Google News tax. The idea is that any aggregator site that is linking out to other sources with little snippets telling people what's at the link, has to pay the original publication to link to them. If you think this goes against the entire concept of the internet, you're not wrong. Belgium was the first country to try it, and Google responded by removing complaining publications from Google News. In response, the publications then complained that Google News was being mean to them, even though they were the ones complaining. In Germany, a similar thing happened, whereby Google left the complaining publications in Google News, but without snippets since that was a key aspect of the law. Again, the publishers screamed "unfair" even though they were the ones who had pushed for the law in the first place.