There has been some interest around an extract from a note we have prepared about a proposal by French news publishers associations to require search engines to license all of the content that they help users to find across the web.

The web has led to an explosion of content creation, by both professional and citizen journalists. So it's not a secret that we think a law like the one proposed in France and Germany would be very damaging to the internet. We have said so publicly for three years.

In order to shed light on the reasons that lead us to believe that this law is detrimental to French users, innovation on the Internet and ultimately to the news publishers themselves, we decided to post the note in its entirety. We have always been and remain committed to collaborate with French Publishers associations as they experiment and develop sustainable economic models on the Internet.



Posted by Olivier Esper, Director, Public Policy, France