It was during the past week when the Government of Spain decided to approve the new Intellectual PropertyAlthough at first glance it may seem that the regulations only affect copyright issues, the truth is that their scope is much broader. In fact, they also relate to your studies, with your activity as content creators And with your use of digital platforms, so we recommend you be careful. Throughout this article, we'll explain in detail which aspects you should think twice about before acting and how all of this connects to the so-called Google rate or Tax on Certain Digital Services.
What is the Google tax and how does it fit with Intellectual Property?
Internet users have already dubbed one of the sections the Google rateAnd with good reason. The company itself has expressed opposition to this approval, which is generating numerous complaints online. To explain what it entails, we'll tell you that when a link to another author's content is published, according to this type of regulation, many sites will be forced to pay a certain amount of money to rights management entities, and in some cases that money will not even go directly to that specific owner, but to a broader distribution system.
At the same time, the Google tax, in its fiscal version, is a indirect tax that taxes certain digital services provided by large multinational technology companies. It targets companies with very high global revenues (above several hundred million) and significant turnover in Spain. This tax is applied, approximately, to a 3% from the income obtained from services such as:
- Online advertising segmented, based on user data and profiles.
- Online brokerage services, such as large platforms that connect buyers and sellers or users with each other.
- Sale of data or metadata generated from the information that users provide during their digital activity.
Although legally the tax falls on large technology companies, numerous economic reports indicate that part of that cost can be passed on to SMEs, advertisers, educational centers, content creators and even to end consumers, through a price increase in digital services (advertising, cloud tools, video platforms, etc.).
Legal impact for students and content creators
There are many students (including ourselves) who publish their own work online, often for free, such as personal blogs, academic portfoliosRepositories of notes or research projects shared with the class. The logical question is: are they also affected by these rules? If they publish any links or cite other sources, the answer is that they can be indirectly affected, even though they are not the entities obligated to pay the digital tax.
In the field of Intellectual PropertyIf you use fragments of other people's work (texts, images, videos, graphics, audios) in your work and share them publicly online, then copyright law applies. Copyright and collecting societies. Even if the original materials are licensed. Creative CommonsIt is essential to respect the terms of each license: attribution, non-commercial use, share alike, etc. In many cases, the law considers that certain short quotations, for teaching or research purposes, may be protected by limitations on copyright, but when that reasonable use is exceeded, obligations may arise. payment of fees to management entities, especially if the work is disseminated beyond strictly private use.
During the drafting of the regulation, there was also concern among students and creators that, in practice, certain possibilities of claiming or requesting compensation could be limited even when citing or linking to material with a Creative Commons license; this concern was one of the reasons for the numerous public criticisms of the reform.
To put it another way, if you do any kind of work that includes mentions of other authorsReproduction of text fragments, use of copyrighted images, or insertion of protected content into a blog or open platform may, in the institutional environment (centers, universities, libraries, educational platforms), be claimed by the management entities themselves and not by you individually; however, the risk of content being removed, blocked, or reported is real, and this blocking directly affects students and creators who need these materials to learn or make themselves known.
Relationship between the Google fee and the services used by students
The Google tax is not applied directly to students or individuals, but its economic effects These effects are noticeable in the tools you use daily. Studies conducted by specialized consulting firms indicate that the digital services tax could lead to:
- Increased cost of digital advertisingThis affects student blogs, video channels, or small projects that rely on affordable ads for promotion.
- Rate increase in online intermediation services, sales platforms or applications that many young people use to finance studies, sell second-hand materials or disseminate their creative work.
- Reduction of margin of SMEs, academies, training centers and local businesses that offer courses, scholarships or internships, and that make intensive use of internet advertising.
- A possible slowdown of digitization small businesses and educational organizations, as investing in technological tools and online campaigns is more expensive.
Several economic reports emphasize that, although the stated objective of the tax is for large platforms to pay taxes where they generate their business, the real impact can be felt throughout the entire chain: from the large technology company to the final user who pays a little more for a digital product or service. In the case of students, this can translate into more expensive subscriptions, less free access to certain online resources or a more limited offering of digital educational services.
Special care should be taken with links, citations, and licenses.
Returning to the core of the law of Intellectual PropertyOne of the keys lies in how you treat the links and Dating in your academic work or creative content. Although linking may seem harmless, certain systematic uses of links to news articles or other resources, accompanied by text snippets, are interpreted as a way of exploiting copyrighted content to generate your own traffic. That's why mechanisms exist that require certain intermediaries to compensate rights holders through collecting societies.
Furthermore, when we mention texts that have a license Creative CommonsWe must know how to distinguish between the different types of licenses. Some allow the Commercial useSome prohibit it; some require that the derivative work be shared under the same license, and almost all require a clear attribution from the original author. If these conditions are not met, the fact that something is "free" does not prevent claims from being made or requests for the removal of content from the network.
Therefore, if you produce any work that includes references to other authors and will be published online, you should follow some basic guidelines: cite sources correctly, do not copy large blocks of text without permission, always check the license for images, videos, or audio, and if in doubt, opt for materials from [unspecified source]. public domain or with licenses expressly adapted for educational use.
And the number of problems that can arise from improper use can be quite significant, both financially for the platforms hosting the content and academically for students, so we recommend that you exercise great caution in this regard. The regulation, in its version approved by the Spanish Government, was scheduled to come into effect on January 1, 2015Unless the European Union introduces modifications or clarifications, its practical application will generally continue to be conditioned by international decisions on digital taxation adopted by bodies such as the OECD and the G20.
In this changing context, the most prudent course of action for students and content creators is to stay informed, review the usage policies of the digital platforms they use daily, and adopt responsible habits regarding Copyright, use of sources and data protection, thus minimizing their exposure to legal risks and the indirect economic impact of the Google tax.