Leistungsschutzrecht

I was lecturing on accessibility yesterday and we were speaking about link name design and alternate texts. I mentioned that the current version of the Leistungsschutzrecht being rushed through the parliamentary process in Germany might have legal restrictions on what you can do here. At least the current proposal (Discussions of the problems: W. Michal - J. Moenikes - T. Kreuzer - Dossier at iRights.info; Position of the publishers: BDZV). The main idea is that the publishers are angry that Google is earning money with its content by publishing the links and some snippets from the target. This is the proper, accessible, way to do it. The publishers want to forbid a "commercial" use of "their" content. The discussion is raging in the German Blogosphere.

My students looked at me wide-eyed. Leistungsschutzrecht? Never heard of it. Like they never heard of inductive proofs or Collections. Here we have the legislative trying to set up laws so that the publishers who have completely slept through the Internet age can continue to make money the old way and this will be affecting how they work in the future, and they don't even inform themselves of what is happening? Wake up, people! Use your brains and voices and get on this topic!