Things may not be promising for Google in Germany after the appearance of chances that the government may play along with few politicians and force Google to remove publisher content from its search results. And to tackle this and educate users against its happening, Google has launched a new campaign called as ‘Defend Your Net’.
The Defend Your Net portal contains important information meant to educate the users about how Google protects the information it collects. Later this month, a proposed new section to the German Copyright Act is due to be discussed in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. If approved, the German Bundestag may not just forcefully remove publisher content but also ask Google to pay up for the snippets in search results.
Terming this change in law as a ‘threat to information diversity’, Google plans to mobilize users against its approval and subsequent implementation through the ‘Defend Your Net’ campaign:
Out-law.com explains more about the new proposed section:
“The new section, if introduced, would provide the “producer of news materials” the general “exclusive right to make said materials publicly available, in whole or in part, for commercial purposes.”
Others would be permitted to provide “public access” to the publishers’ material unless those providing that access are “commercial operators of search engines or commercial providers of services that aggregate this content in a respective fashion”. News publishers’ right to control the commercial exploitation of their work in this regard would extend for a year after publication. Authors of the work would be entitled to be “provided with a reasonable share of the remunerations issuing from the author’s work”.
At the Defend Your Net portal, Google asks users to fill out a web form informing the company about their views on the proposed change. It also hosts a page where users can track down a local member of parliament and register a protest against the same.
Good luck, Google!
