Spanish lawmakers did something dumb this week. They passed a new law that forces Google to pay news publishers a fee for sending valuable, monetizable content from Google News to their sites.

Lobbied by the Spanish Newspaper Publishers’ Association (AEDE), the government determined that the summaries and thumbnail photos that accompany links in Google News constitute an infringement of copyright. Therefore, they argued, Google should pay the copyright holders for it.

Because Google doesn’t place advertising on Google News sites, the so-called “Google Tax” would require Google to lose money for the privilege of sending valuable traffic to news sites.

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