News publishers across Europe can seek compensation from search engines, if a proposal by the European Commission is approved.
The proposal, which is to be presented in September, will entitle media companies to demand payment from search engines such as Google and Bing.
The European Commission’s draft proposals would give news organisations stronger rights to demand payment.
If the proposal is approved Google will have to pay for the use of article snippets in its Google News service.
EC spokesman Christian Wigand explained that the aim was to give news aggregators “a stronger position when negotiating with other market players”.
The Wall Street Journal, which viewed the internal European Union document, noted that the “possible EU move to pave the way for potentially lucrative agreements between publishers and web giants could be a boon to news publishers”.
“But the draft rules could be a blow to internet companies like Google who may now have to negotiate individual deals with publishers if they want part of the newspaper articles to appear in their news search service,” WSJ.com reports.
The proposal is part of European Commission’s efforts to modernize copyright rules.