Picture theft and a shameful licensing shakedown: the hideous double standards of UK newspapers
Last month we were contacted by the Newspaper Licensing Agency, which is owned by the UK’s national newspapers. It wanted to sell us a ‘newspaper copyright licence’. The licence would ensure that we become “copyright protected”.
Apparently we need a licence if we share press cuttings internally. It also applies to links shared that include “text extracts to explain what the link is”.
A licence is also required for photocopying newspaper content, scanning and email cuttings, printing from a newspaper’s website, cutting and emailing text from a newspaper website, and putting any cuttings on our website.
Much of this doesn’t apply to our organisation, but we want to make sure that we’re operating in an ethical manner and are keen to abide by the rules.
The issue is that the rules are:
a) flaky
b) self-defeating, and...
c) being set by people who aren’t really in any position to set them.
Let me explain.
Q&A: David Pugh of the Newspaper Licensing Agency
Earlier today, we posted a Q&A with Meltwater and PRCA, giving their reactions to the Court of Appeal's ruling in the dispute with the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA).
Now, in the interests of balance, it's the NLA's turn to put its side of the case. I've been asking MD David Pugh about his reaction to the ruling, and whether the ruling does indeed criminalise normal web users.
NLA v Meltwater: are millions of web users now copyright offenders?
Anyone who clicks on a link and reads an article on a public news website in a commercial setting will infringe copyright unless licensed by the publisher, according to a UK Court of Appeal ruling in the NLA v Meltwater and PRCA case.
On a more positive note, the court ruled that it will be very rare that headlines are copyrightable, modifying the earlier verdict of the High Court.
I've been speaking with Francis Ingham, Chief Executive of the PRCA and Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater about what seems to be a very strange verdict...
News aggregator NewsNow to stop linking to big media
Well it had to happen sooner or later. One of the UK’s top news aggregators has decided to remove links to most of the national news sites following a spat with the Newspaper Licensing Authority.
NewsNow will now stop linking to newspapers including The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Mirror, among others.
The NLA explains why it is going after the news aggregators
The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) licenses companies to copy from national and regional newspapers and collects fees on their behalf.
I've been talking to the NLA's commercial director Andrew Hughes about the fees newspapers are asking web monitoring services such as NewsNow to pay in order to index and link to their content...
