unicornnews: Media monitors take NLA to court

A leading online media monitoring company will test the legality of those previously reported attempts by the UK newspaper industry to earn a licence fee from companies who commercially provide links to specific stories on newspaper websites.

As previously reported, the move to charge licence fees to the growing link provider industry is being led by the Newspaper Licensing Agency. They currently licence companies, including PR agencies and traditional media monitors, who regularly make photocopies of specific stories from newspapers, normally stories relating or of interest to their clients. Under UK copyright law, said companies are obligated to pay a licence fee for making commercial copies of newspaper articles.

However, an increasing number of companies in the media relations industry now provide clients or senior executives with lists of links to relevant articles on newspaper websites, instead of actual photocopies of articles from print editions. Aware that this will have a negative impact on their income, as more and more agencies decide to go without a traditional press cuttings licence, earlier this year the NLA announced it would require the PR industry to pay a new licence fee for commercial link provision, which it sees as simply a digital version of the provision of press cuttings.

However, most people in the PR and media monitoring industries disagree. They say that because no copying is done when mere links are provided to a client, there are no obligations under copyright law to pay a royalty. Now the Meltwater Group is planning to put that argument to the test by taking the NLA to the Copyright Tribunal, the British court that adjudicates on copyright disputes.

Meltwater CEO Jorn Lyseggen told esPResso: “Media monitoring services create value for internet users similar to search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. We use sophisticated search algorithms to help our clients find content they otherwise would have difficulties locating. The NLA‘s attempt to license our clients is essentially a tax on receiving these internet links. This fee is not only unjust and unreasonable, it is contrary to the very spirit of the internet”.

Francis Ingham of the Public Relations Consultants Association, who are also opposed to the NLA‘s proposals, added: “This is an absurd tax which we believe has no legal justification. We are delighted Meltwater is taking a stand against the NLA and will examine whether we can intervene to strengthen their case in the interest of our members. It is ludicrous for organisations to need a licence to receive links to coverage that is freely available to view online”.

The NLA‘s proposals are backed by many, though not all, of the UK newspaper publishers. How the Agency’s new licence claims will stand up in court remains to be seen. Presumably the fact a number of British newspapers plan to start putting a lot of their content behind ‘virtual walls’ in 2010, charging a subscription fee for access, will make the NLA‘s claim even harder to justify, given the link providers’ clients will have to pay to access the content they are directed to anyway, paying via a subscription to each newspaper’s website rather than an NLA licencing system.

Posted Thursday December 17 2009 by Chris Cooke

Related categories: Legal news PRCA Print Media