German proposal to control links to news stories: headlines, 3s of video, 128 pixel thumbnails

One of the two very controversial proposals in last year's EU Copyright Directive fight was the "link tax," which would require licenses for links to news-sites that contained even a few consecutive words from the article or headline -- links and excerpts that would otherwise be considered fair dealing under EU law.

The rule squeaked into law last March by five votes (and later, ten MEPs said they'd been confused and had pressed the wrong buttons). Now, the EU member-states have to turn the rule into domestic law, and thus far, it's a shitshow.

The latest installment comes from Germany, which was also where the proposal for a ban on linking without permission originated, courtesy of Germany's aristocratic newspaper families, who wield enormous political influence.

The proposed German implementation would limit links to news sites to quoting the headline alone, accompanied by a maximum of 3 seconds of video and/or a 128px x 128px thumbnail. This would apply to memes, mashups, and summaries of the article in directories such as Google News or websites like this one.

This is likely to be enforced by mandatory upload filters, which are required under Article 17 of the Directive, and the German rules are likely to end up being EU-wide, given the complexity of setting up country-by-country filter rules.

You can send comments on this proposal to [email protected] (the deadline is Jan 31).

The proposal states that the new ancillary copyright does not apply to hyperlinks, or to "private or non-commercial use" of press publishers' materials by a single user.