Spain passed a new Intellectual Property Law yesterday, which includes a provision to levy fees on search engines that show snippets of other webpages. It's at least the third instance of a European government seeking to impose a fee on search techniques to support their traditional publishing industry. Such efforts are often labeled a "Google tax."

"We are disappointed with the new law because we believe that services like Google News help publishers bring traffic to their sites," Google told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement. "As far as the future is concerned, we will continue working with the Spanish publishers to help increase their revenues while we evaluate our options within the framework of the new legislation."

The Spanish law allows for sanctions of up to $758,000 for those who violate the law. The penalty applies to anyone who "links to pirated content," according to THR, and in the Spanish view, that apparently includes Google News snippets.

The Spanish effort to impose its own "Google tax" comes just days after a German attempt fell apart. In June, several German publishers took legal action seeking an 11 percent cut of gross revenue from Google News. Earlier this month, amid the ongoing legal action, Google moved to stop showing snippets of the newspapers that were challenging it. And... the papers complained, calling it "blackmail" when Google stopped showing the short excerpts. Last week, the publishers finally gave up, with the VG Media group saying they would go ahead and grant Google a "free license."

In 2007, a Belgian press group sought a similar payout; it gave up in 2011.