Bloomberg now reports that the Bundestag has agreed a bill which provides that:
- News aggregators may display "single words or very small
text excerpts" from to publishers' websites free of charge, however it does
not define what constitutes a small excerpt.
- Publishers will be given one year during which they have the
sole rights to commercially use their journalistic content. Presumably the above
exception applies during this year - perhaps a German-speaking reader could
clarify this?
- Mere linking cannot be prohibited.
The bill, which was passed with 293 votes in favor, 243 against
and three abstentions, still needs to be ratified by the upper house of the
German parliament, the Bundesrat.
If it is passed it will be a much weaker version of what German publishers had
originally lobbied for, however the European Publishers' Council ignored that
in its statement
of 1 March, saying that it:
"welcomes today’s decision by the German Bundestag to approve
an ancillary copyright for news publishers in law that means that search
engines and other aggregators who commercialise publishers' content will no
longer be able to do so without permission. The "Leistungsschutzrecht,"
as it is known in German, will pave the way for commercial negotiations between
the parties on the price for the commercial use of publishers' content."
Google has said:
"As a result of today's vote, ancillary copyright in its most
damaging form has been stopped. However, the best outcome for Germany would be
no new legislation because it threatens innovation, particularly for start-ups.
It’s also not necessary because publishers and Internet companies can innovate
together, just as Google has done in many other countries."
Predictably neither side appears thrilled with
the bill, and this is undoubtedly not the last we will hear of it.
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