German Bill Would Charge for Aggregation

By: Alison Langley | Columbia Journalism Review

News aggregators and search engines in Germany will be required to pay publishers a fee for using their content—even snippets, those brief extracts that pop up in a search—if a bill before the Bundestag, the country’s legislative body, passes this Spring.

The bill would create a new type of copyright called Leistungsschutzrecht to protect news articles.