The Spain government announced this week a new law requiring Google and other news aggregation sites to pay its content providers each time their content appears.

The Spanish Association of Daily Newspaper Publishers (AEDE) won approval for the copyright law that requires content providers be paid for news story text or images used by online news services like Google News. The law takes effect in January. Violators can be fined 600,000 euros, or roughly $743,000, according to the Washington Post.

Google responded by announcing its decision to block content on Google News from the country's largest newspapers, including La Vanguardia and El Pais. Internet users in Spain will no longer have access to Google News, and users in the U.S. and remaining parts of the globe will not have access or real-time updates from Spanish publications.

Google News is a public service -- not a product -- since ads do not display on the site, according to Google, and no ads means no revenue from which to pay Spanish publishers.

The AEDE issued a statement last night saying that it recognized Google's decision "will undoubtedly have a negative impact on citizens and Spanish businesses" given its dominance in the Internet market.

The technology and search company explained its position:

"This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not. As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable. So it's with real sadness that on Dec. 16 (before the new law comes into effect in January) we'll remove Spanish publishers from Google News, and close Google News in Spain."

TechCrunch reports that the Spanish newspapers will likely want Google News back as they cannot survive without the traffic sent to their websites from search engines like Google. Everything from "best wireless speakers" to "is Charlie Sheen married" returns information from news sources. The newspapers rely on Google search results for their reach and visitor count.

Spanish publishers, who have argued they do not need to participate in Google News, will have to analyze Web traffic and revenue data starting in January when the law goes into effect to see if this is true.

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