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Germans will not copy French Google deal

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Germans will not copy French Google deal
Photo: DPA

German newspapers have rejected the idea of copying the agreement made last week between their French counterparts and the internet giant Google over royalties.

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The German association of newspaper publishers (BDZV) said the French agreement did have some positive points. The major of these was that it was established and accepted "that the aggregation of content from third parties as a business model costs them money," said Anja Pasquay, BDZV spokeswoman on Sunday.

But she said a drawback was that the French solution only referred to Google. "The publishers there have no legal recourse against other aggregators who operate in the same fashion - or those who will do so in the future," she said.

"The threat of a legal solution is thus missing - the publishers can in the future only hope for success via negotiation," Pasquay said.

Google agreed last week to set up a €60 million fund in France which will pay for innovation projects for digital publishing, while also kicking off partnerships with publishers to increase their online revenue.

"There's been a global event ... the conclusion of a deal between Google and a news media grouping that was able to unite to negotiate," France's President Francois Hollande said on Friday as French press representatives signed the deal with Google chairman Eric Schmidt at the presidential palace.

"France is proud to have reached this agreement with Google, the first of its kind in the world," he added.

The deal follows two months of mediation with French news publishers unhappy their websites were getting none of the advertising revenue Google earned from sending search clients to their news content.

The German government wants to set up a law so that news aggregators which publish content created by publishers have to pay for what they use - something which Google has steadfastly opposed.

DAPD/The Local/hc

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