A proposed EU ruling would give more power to publishers dealing with internet giants, Facebook and Google. After the European Commission has come under pressure to level the internet's playing field, the proposal would give news publishers exclusive rights online to reproduce content. This means that on services such as Google News and Facebook, parent companies such as Alphabet, would have to pay publishers for the right to use sections of copy from articles to appear in search results. According to a draft proposal seen by the Guardian newspaper, the new “neighbouring rights” are designed to increase the rights of those producing original content. However, previous attempts to do the same thing in Spain and Germany saw Google shut down the local versions of Google News, essentially forcing publishers stop charging it due to the inevitable drop in traffic.
