Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has stated that it will not pay for news articles in France once the new EU copyright directive becomes effective from next month.
Google says it won’t pay for licenses for news
This is the first sign of how the company plans to implement the new directive. Instead of paying press publishers to display their content, they will change how the articles appear in the search results. The company said that it would show only the headlines in news results as required under the copyright law. They will only show a preview of the text and thumbnail images if the publication gives the company permission to do so for free.
Google’s VP of news, Richard Gingras said that they don’t pay for the links to be part of the search results. He said that doing so will skew the results they offer as well as undermine the confidence users have in Google.
France to be the first country implementing the new copyright directive
The new copyright comes into effect next month, and France will be the first country in the EU to adopt the directive. The directive aims at streamlining copyright rules. The EU directive has some controversial parts which require search engines to pay for news articles. The use of more than a word or brief extracts of a news article will require search engines to pay.
The EU directs aims at giving publishers more protection for their content and incomes. The reform is an initiative of News companies that wanted to maintain quality of journalism amid waning revenue for traditional media companies. However, digital rights campaigners and tech companies have been critical on the reform indicating that it would result in censorship.
Google has strongly opposed the directive claiming that doing away with previews will result in decreased traffic to the sites of publishers. The announcement by Google shows that it will try to navigate a middle ground in response to the new directive. The company which lobbied strongly against the copyright law had threatened to close Google news.
