Germany passes "Re-publishing" Bill

Story first appeared on Ars Technica -

Google can post "short excerpts" freely—but what that means, nobody knows.

The lower house of the German parliament, known as the Bundestag, has approved a new bill that would require search engines to pay a license fee for re-publishing content longer than "individual words or short excerpts." The bill passed by a vote of 293 to 243, with three abstentions.

However, the law does not define exactly what such a “snippet” would entail. For the law to take effect, it would need to be ratified by the upper house of the German parliament, the Bundesrat. By all accounts, this bill is a watered-down version of what had originally been lobbied for by the German publishing and media industry.

Not surprisingly, Google has opposed this law and proposals like it in neighboring France.

“As a result of today’s vote, ancillary copyright in its most damaging form has been stopped,” Google said in a statement. “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.”

Still, the publishing industry seems to be fairly satisfied that they managed to get something passed through the Bundestag.

“With the right legal conditions and the technical tools provided by the Linked Content Coalition, it will be easy to access and use content legally,” the European Publishers Council said in a statement (PDF) on Friday. “This will mean that publishers will have the incentive to continue to populate the internet with high-quality, authoritative, diverse content and to support new, innovative business models for online content.”