Angela Merkel versus Google, round two
A few weeks after her Frankfurt bookfair speech where she spoke out against Google’s plans to scan millions of books her government is going one step further. The coalition wants to create a new form of Copyright online that “levels the playing field” between internet companies and traditional publishers.
In the meantime the Techdirt website asks some questions about the motivation behind these comments and proposals. They point out that Merkel has supported a competing European company that was planning to scan books as well. “Germany was heavily involved in Quearo, a European project that was originally designed to compete with Google’s book scanning project.”
It also puts some questionmarks behing the motivation to support traditional publishing and says: “A more cynical person might suggest that this proposal is really designed to gain the current ruling party a bit of support from the mainstream press in Germany… ”
“The new governing coalition, led by Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats and including the Free Democratic Party, has pledged to create a new kind of copyright to protect online journalism. The goal is to level the playing field with Internet companies like Google, which German publishers accuse of exploiting their content to build lucrative businesses without sharing the rewards.”
“The Internet cannot be a copyright-free zone,” the coalition says in a document setting out its policies.
via Germany Looks at Ways to Protect Online Journalism – NYTimes.com.
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