Introduced in 2015 in Spain, it is also part of the new European legislation on copyright. Here's what the link tax is and how it could change the web
One of the key terms around which the discussion on the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (better known as European copyright law) revolves is "Link tax". Conceived to describe the reform of the Spanish copyright law approved in 2015, this term is destined to see its fame grow also in our latitudes. According to several analysts, in fact, article 11 of the copyright reform approved by the European Parliament on March 26, 2019 is nothing but a link tax on the same lines of the Iberian example.
To understand why this term has become so central in the European legislative debate and why, according to many, it risks to change the web as we have known it so far, it is necessary to find out what is a link tax, what is its genesis and what could be its impact. In short, if you want to understand what will change for users and websites - if anything will change - and find out the consequences of the European copyright law, it is necessary to start from these two little words.
What is the Link tax
Literally link tax, the term Link tax is introduced in 2015 when the Spanish Congress of Deputies Commission amends some articles of the copyright law. In questa occasione viene inserito il cosiddetto Canon AEDE, una norma che obbliga i gestori di aggregatori di notizie e motori di ricerca ad acquisire una licenza d’uso (un canon, per l’appunto) da editori e giornalisti per pubblicare i loro lavori, anche se in forma di snippet (ossia, dei brevi estratti che descrivono il contenuto di un link). Lo scopo della norma era di limitare il potere di Google ed evitare che il gigante di Mountain View continuasse ad arricchirsi alle spalle dei giornalisti. Punto di vista ovviamente non condiviso da Big G, che per tutta risposta decise di chiudere Google News.
Per come è stata concepita in Spagna e poi adottata anche in altri Paesi europei e non, la link tax è una tassa che gestori di aggregatori di notizie e motori di ricerca devono pagare per poter pubblicare link e citazioni che rimandano ad articoli presenti su portali di informazione.
European link tax, what it is and what it changes
Although the word link has been eliminated in the final version of the text of article 11 of the European copyright law and it is formally wrong to talk about link tax in the continental context, there are many analysts and experts in the field who use this term to refer to article 11 of the copyright reform. The regulation, entitled "Protection of journalistic publications in the case of digital use", takes its inspiration from the Spanish link tax and provides for very similar basic mechanisms.
In fact, Article 11 of the European copyright law stipulates that whoever operates a news aggregator - such as Google News, Feedly or Flipboard - or a search engine must first acquire a license to publish snippets from news portals. Exceptions are foreseen only in the case in which the link is published without title or description or with very short extracts (in the rule, however, it is not specified what is meant by very short). In short, it won't be a link tax but it looks very close.
Although it is difficult to predict the consequences of the copyright reform of the European Union (also because it will take two years for it to be ratified by all member states), Google wanted to give us a taste of what the web could be like in some time. In the excited months of the discussion and approval of the Directive, in fact, the search engine has changed for about a week the aspect of its SERPs (the pages with the search results, to be clear). The results coming from information portals have been replaced by links, while for the other sites it has continued to show the complete snippet, with title and description. According to data released by Google at the end of the experiment, organic visits to newspaper and magazine sites dropped by 30%.