Yesterday, the Austrian Ministry of Justice has published its draft amendment to the Austrian copyright law with a suspiciously short period for statements of only 10 days. Surprisingly, the draft contains an ancillary copyright for press publishers!

The Austrian proposal is very similar to the German law. Producers of "newspapers and magazines" shall be granted an exclusive right only against commercial providers of search engines and news aggregators. As in Germany, this right is also supposed to only last for one year. But there remains one big difference: The draft does not include an exception for "single words and shortest text-snippets" which expands the scope of the right tremendously!

It looks like the Austrian government has not learnt anything from what happened to the German ancillary copyright for press publishers. I cannot imagine Google paying a single Cent to Austrian publishers as the company refuses to pay German publishers any fee. It is more likely that Google News Austria will be shut down like Google News Spain. The right to link and therefore the freedom of information face another big threat.

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