Germany is leading a growing European movement to let newspaper publishers charge internet search engines for displaying links to their articles – a move market-leader Google warns could cause an internet news blackout.
The so-called ancillary copyright bill – to be debated by the Bundestag for the first time at the end of November – will give newspaper and magazine publishers the right to stop search engines and news aggregators from linking to their web pages if Google and its rivals refuse to pay royalties for their use.
