Inevitably, the approval of the new Intellectual Property Law (LPI) and specifically the AEDE levy in Spain, constitute the primary reason for the upcoming closure of the information portal Google News España, scheduled for December 16, 2014. Various media outlets are reporting this news, and I cannot fail to express my concern and disappointment over what has occurred, both as a citizen and as a researcher.
As a citizen, I believe that the disappearance of a syndicated information portal such as Google News represents a tremendous loss for society, which will be deprived of an excellent tool for verifying information published across multiple media outlets. The ability to discern such differences in order to form a critical and independent judgment will be severely hindered by the loss of this service, which enabled information filtering, news alerts, content customization to users’ needs, pluralism, and ultimately, information for its own sake—serving the internet user. It is unreasonable to consider that a headline, a link, and a brief one-line excerpt from a news article can be subject to a levy, as these are fundamental elements necessary to disseminate factual information to which every citizen has a right.
It must be considered that the information obtained by Google News comes from public and freely accessible syndication channels. If the content published in these channels were to be blocked or made private, media outlets could employ restricted access mechanisms such as login requirements, subscriptions, or simply refrain from publishing their syndication feeds, thereby blocking access to their content. Therefore, rather than understanding the technical rationale behind the measures the Government will adopt with the new law, one can only infer the intent to secure economic benefits for traditional publishing media, which have failed to adapt their business models to the technological and informational reality.
As a researcher specialized in information redistribution, I wish to recall that content syndication is a technique dating back to 1994 (Winer, D. Scripting News) and that became popular among major digital media outlets (New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post) as a fast, simple, and effective method for sharing published information and content. This enables any user to conveniently receive information from the sources to which they subscribe, also known as «syndication channels» or in English, «feeds». This technique benefits media organizations, publishers, and news authors by allowing widespread dissemination of information to millions of users, who can consult the full content at any time on the original website. Thus, syndication channels act as «referrers» or amplifiers of information, not as plagiarists.
It is highly relevant to emphasize that the new law negatively impacts many research projects that have been developed around content syndication technology. For instance, the SYNC2news project provided a system for retrieving news from syndication feeds of all print, radio, and television media outlets in Spain and other countries (+150,000 sources). This enables the study of user informational behavior, media publication metrics, qualitative analysis, frequency of publication, the echo of certain news or events, among other aspects. The SYNC2med project has also been affected, as it provided specialized users with information from syndication feeds of medical journals and publishers (+20,000 sources). This latter model thrives perfectly in countries such as the United Kingdom, which has an analogous application called MedWorm, an indispensable tool for physicians working in healthcare centers within the British health system, saving professionals considerable time and public funds. There are numerous scientific and technical reasons to reconsider the implementation of a law that restricts the use of a free and open technology.
- Moreno, M. Google News will announce tomorrow its closure in Spain. Trece Bits. http://www.trecebits.com/2014/12/10/google-news-anunciara-manana-el-cierre-en-espana/
- Zahumenszky, C. The closure of Google News in Spain could be imminent. Gizmodo. http://es.gizmodo.com/el-cierre-de-google-noticias-en-espana-podria-ser-inmin-1669584601
- Garrido, R. Genbeta. It is definitive: Google will shut down Google News in Spain on December 16. http://www.genbeta.com/actualidad/es-definitivo-google-cerrara-google-news-en-espana-el-proximo-16-de-diciembre