[flavius29663]

> Charging a fee just for linking to something is a bad idea.

If you're profiting from it, it's not a bad idea.

[estebarb]

In that case Google should pay everyone they link to, not just the ones with politician friends that can lobby for themselves.

If they don't want a Google to index them they can use robots.txt to prevent it.

[jtriangle]

Exactly. If google showing your site in search results is a problem, it's trivial to remove yourself from said search results, and to prevent your site from ever being crawled in the first place.

What's actually happening here is that news media orgs were in a huge bubble because of the advent of the internet, and they've failed to monetize effectively. So they're looking for a revenue source to shore up their failed model, and they know they'd lose revenue if they removed themselves from search results.

[Zak]

Why? What moral or legal principle entitles someone to compensation for linking to their website whether or not you're profiting from that?

It's a different question when there's an excerpt or machine-generated summary. In that case, copyright applies, and in most jurisdictions it may or may not be fair use depending on what is copied and how it is presented.

[bko]

Aren’t you providing marketing to the newspaper? Isn’t that what these news agencies pay google billions for? There’s a whole industry (seo) designed around getting your site linked.

This looks like a money grab to me. What am I missing?

[bloppe]

It's actually still a bad idea, because nobody will link to you

[CalRobert]

If I run a newsletter that links to interesting properties for sale, should I be charged a fee for this?

[timothyduong]

Maybe if your newsletter gets billions of subscribers and you’re making stacks from it, according to news outlets, yes

[Manuel_D]

Well, yeah it is a bad idea. Because if you tax links to your content Google will just stop linking to your content. Which is exactly what they're poised to do, as per TFA.

[willsmith72]

Or is this is all just bargaining and leverage before they make a deal, as they have elsewhere in the world

[datavirtue]

If you want less of something, tax it.