OT: Internet tax (mandatory in Spain)

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Spain isn't a huge market, nor all that well off. Google could afford to ta ke the nuclear option in Spain. If the EU takes over the idea - which is un likely, since it has been debated for year - Google wouldn't have that opti on.

John Larkin understands what the Murdoch media want him to understand.

The EU does have a bureaucracy, and some of things they want don't find fav our with right-wing newspaper owners. Silivio Berlusconi is an even more ra bid example than Rupert Murdoch, but doesn't have as much influence on what John Larkin reads (and believes).

From an investment newsletter:

We can sympathize with folks who are tired of dealing with the EU's unelected bureaucrats and their burdensome (and often idiotic) regulations.

For example, EU officials now want to impose a tax for sharing links on the Internet. No, we're not kidding. As tech-news website Techdirt reported yesterday?

We've written plenty of times about ridiculous European plans to create a so-called "snippet tax" which is more officially referred to as "ancillary rights" (and is really just about creating a tax on Google).

The basic concept is that some old school newspapers are so lazy and have so failed to adapt to the internet ? and so want to blame Google for their own failures ? that they want to tax any aggregator (e.g., Google) that links to their works with a snippet, that doesn't pay for the privilege of sending those publishers traffic.

As you may remember, Germany has been pushing for such a thing for many, many years, and Austria has been exploring it as well. But perhaps the most attention grabbing move was the one in Spain, which not only included a snippet tax, but made it mandatory. That is, even if you wanted Google News to link to you for free, you couldn't get that. In response, Google took the nuclear option and shut down Google News in Spain. A study showed that this law has actually done much to harm Spanish publishers, but the EU pushes on, ridiculously.

That's been happening for at least a decade: Newspapers complains about google linking to stories, sue google for infringing copyright with snippets of article text. Google says "oh, sorry!" and de-lists the newspapers from the search results. A few days later the papers notice that their websites are no longer getting any views, and come begging to google to please accept a free licence to show snippets and links to their articles again, pretty please! please!!!

If google is told to pay per link, and turns off the links again, even for all of Europe, google will survive just fine, but some of the newspapers may not, unless they choose to grant google a licence to link to their papers for free, and somehow convince google to do so.

I'm sure the newspapers will find a way to effectively give google a free licence, e.g. let Google pay the "snippet tax" and then the newspaper will hand it right back to google with interest, under the table. Either that, or go out of business.

Newspapers will mostly go out of business. Most papers don't create content, they just select and pay for stuff and print it on dead trees. And it seems like they mostly select the worst stuff they can find: terrorism, corruption, disease, home fires, car crashes, global warming, death and sadness in general.

I finally cancelled our New York Times subscription. It has become ranting nonsense, all Trump all the time, absurdly coarse and illogical editorial content, and ads for $4000 ugly handbags and $15,000 ugly watches and $30,000,000 ugly condos on Central Park South.

Eventually there will be a small number of content creators, with a few real reporters, who sell news wholesale to multiple internet sites. The total dollar flow will be a fraction of the classic newspaper business. And there will be a lot of journalism grads looking for work.

The surviving papers will be small weekly operations doing local news.

Probably.

Yes...NEGATIVE interest rates, where one PAYS money to have a "savings" account.

• Yes; there must be VALUE for the prospective reader/buyer.

Worse, it's where banks are forced by the government to keep reserves that they have to pay money to the government to keep.

Possibly worse even yet - the banks may be *paid* for reserves they're required to keep.

Well, that's the "too big to fail" way. You're right, though. That is worse.