MADRID, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- Google News announced Thursday it will shut down its operations in Spain next week in response to a new copyright law.
The new law, which goes into effect in January, requires local news sources in Spain to charge news aggregators that link to their content.
The Spanish legislation, dubbed the "Google tax," doesn't yet outline how much aggregators would have to pay Spanish news sources, but those who fail to pay face a $750,000 fine.
Google News head Richard Gingras said those fees would make Google News financially unfeasible in Spain.
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"As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable," he wrote in a blog post. "So it's with real sadness that on 16 December (before the new law comes into effect in January) we'll remove Spanish publishers from Google News, and close Google News in Spain."
Elsa Gonzalez, president of Spain's Federation of Journalist Associations, told The Local that the compulsory fees would reduce traffic for digital publications.
"The government's policy is going to hurt a lot of smaller, journalist-run publications in particular," she said, adding that journalists hadn't been consulted when the government drafted the new law. "All the negotiations took place between the government and larger publishers but a lot of journalists are going to suffer because of the current legislation," she added.
The Spanish culture ministry said the shuttering of Google News is "a matter for the company" and wouldn't prevent the government from moving forward with the law.
"Despite the suspension of Google News, access to news on the internet will still be guaranteed as it can be found via the news organizations' own websites or web searches," it said in a statement. "The intellectual property reform does not obstruct freedom of information."
