This is the statement from the creator of Meneame [2], he is considering either closing the site or moving abroad.
The law doesn't only affect linking to newspapers, it also applies to linking to blogs or other sources. You are supposed to pay the tax even when linking to blogs that are not affiliated with the program and that will never receive any money from it.
Under a strict interepretation of this law, HN is illegal in Spain.
[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtPH52DCMAA3Ppk.png
[2] The article and the widget are still there: http://www.elmundo.es/opinion/2014/02/14/52fe8160ca4741d2018...
[4] (Google Translated from Spanish) https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev...
Google removed all links to their site.
After a few days of receiving no search traffic whatsoever, the company who instigated this surrendered unconditionally and asked Google to put things back how they were originally.
The moral of this story is that Google provides a free service that is of immense value to the people at the other end of the link, and demanding that Google pay you for providing this service is both unreasonable and unwise.
"Pay us for indexing our sites!"
"We don't want to engage in that transaction on those terms; if you wish, we will stop indexing your sites"
Then the French gov't steps in and effectively legislates that Google is legally obligated to engage in a transaction on the terms of the other party (and pulling out of the transaction is not an option). As I recall, the end result of this extortion was Google paying ~$70 million in what was effectively a protection racket (where the nominal purpose was to set up a fund to help French newspapers enter the digital age).
If the newspapers that lobbied for this tax are delisted and unable to be linked to, their traffic will plummet and they'll be unable monetize their online presences via ad revenue.
Anyway, the way I read your post is that you think international corporations should essentially be above the law. That if you're a nice little local startup that you're subject, but if you're a monster corporation you're not. How does that benefit anyone?
I don't think coldcode was saying that international corporations should be above the law but just that it's impractical to expect an online company to be able to operate in different standards under every different possible jurisdiction.
The real complaint with this recent spate of European laws around the Internet is how incredibly stupid they've been.
Heck they could potentially even have a subsidiary corporation whose sole purpose is to squat Google.es and redirect to Google.com/es/
