Monday, September 05, 2016
France Passes Copyright Law Demanding Royalties For Every Image Search Engines Index Online
Techdirt: The Disruptive Competition Project is detailing yet another bad copyright law change in Europe -- France, in particular, this time. Called the Freedom of Creation Act, it actually passed a few months ago, but people are just beginning to understand and comprehend the full horror of what's happening. Basically, it will now require any site that indexes images on the internet (i.e., any image search engine) to pay royalties for each image to a collection society.
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Yet another case of an absolutely ridiculous law centered around a fundamental misunderstanding of technology and blatant greed. I mean seriously there is literally no way that this could possibly be actually beneficial to 99% of rights holders. All of this money is just going to be skimmed right off google and given to either a few fortunate French corporations or simply funneled off into other tunnels of corruption. If you want to tax google, tax google then, don’t try to single out industries to exploit for your own financial gain. It’s seriously disappointing to see governments time and again work only for the benefit of the government and its benefactors rather than simply not trying to blast us back a few years in an obvious money grab. At least this time it’s France doing the stupid thing rather than our government so I guess that’s better than nothing but if anything it proves this is a global issue.
All I could think through this article is “Greed”. Everyone wants to have a piece of the pie, and through whatever creative and underhanded means. Now it seems that it’s through a law that is ridiculous, ineffective and a burden for its people. It truly says something about a government and the people who run it, not all of course, but just enough people that allow for this to happen. It says that money is the topic, and how much money could you get. One might think, they are trying to go after google, why does it matter to others. Google is something that most everyone uses and thus effects everyone, even those who don’t use it because 9/10 they are associated with someone who does. It is just a cheap shot, especially for a government.
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