Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
The Disruptive Competition Project(DisCo) has discovered a provision in a French law which requires search engines to pay royalties for the images they index. Although the Freedom of Creation Act was passed in late June, this particular provision in the law hasn't received much attention until now.
Under the provisions of the law, whenever a visual work is published online, the reproduction rights are automatically transferred to a collection agency authorized by the French government. Search engines must get a license from the collection agency in order to index the work and will pay a royalty in return. It will then be up to the collection agency to distribute the royalties to the creator of the work.
Source: http://techraptor.net/content/french-law-requires-search-engines-pay
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 29 2016, @07:09PM
Given the candidates for the upcoming presidential election, I wouldn't be surprised if discouraging image search was considered a positive side-effect.