Search giant Google has kickstarted a public campaign against a German copyright legislation that would allow publishers to charge search engines for linking their news articles, which, according to the firm, if implemented could cripple basic Internet operations in the country.
The campaign, named as ‘Defend Your Net’, calls all Google users in Germany to sign an appeal against the legislation and to contact their official representatives in the Bundestag to convey their concerns.
The legislation would allow the newspaper and other print publishers avoid Google and its rivals from displaying headlines and clips of text from articles in search results except the Internet firms agree to pay royalties.
Google said in a post that it provided all whatever is being searched by German people since ten years.
"A planned law would change that," the firm said.
The search engine firm also said that the proposal would hit the smooth flow of information on the Internet in Germany, possibly even forcing it to show vacant links to German references.
Conversely, Senior German politicians, newspaper and magazine publishers criticised Google in a statement alleging ‘scaremongering’ and ‘nasty propaganda’ adding that the content would still be available with no trouble.
German Newspaper Publishers Association spokeswoman Anja Pasquay said it’s obvious that businesses that work with other people’s content should pay for it.
"Yes, Google brings a lot of traffic to newspaper pages – but they also make money from it," Pasquay said.
Earlier, Italian and French firms also demanded some advertising income from user searches for news on their media websites and considered to make a legislation that would mandate Google to pay for linked content.
