The NLA’s managing director David Pugh called me last week after I invited him via a blog post to discuss its new web clipping licence, set to be introduced in January 2010.

To be candid I had expected the NLA’s response to stop at a comment in response to my blog post and I appreciate Pugh taking the time to call. During a 20 minute conversation we discussed the rationale behind the new licence model.

I’ve already said that the objective of the new licence is laudable. The NLA to seeking the claw back a contribution from the after market for web clippings from its members’ intellectual property.

No one could argue that the newspaper industry is in very real trouble. Ad revenues have collapsed and circulation figures are down. We’ve all got friends on regional and national papers that have been laid off.

The NLA as custodian of its members’ intellectual property has watched over the last five years or so as clipping agencies such as Cision and Durrants and scrappers such as Meltwater have generated income by providing businesses with content from newspaper web sites.

PR agencies store and manipulate coverage from web sites on behalf of their clients and clients themselves record and store copies of web coverage.

The new web license is a bid to redress the balance and recover a contribution for its members in recognition of the benefit that commercial organisations gain from its members’ intellectual property. If you generate income from the reuse of newspaper content the NLA believes that you should make a contribution to the original producer. Fair enough.

This issue is not about licensing URLs; the PR industry has jumped on this headline because the NLA has failed to properly explain the issues that its members face and the rationale of the new licence.

The legal argument of commercial versus non commercial use of web content is sound and the licence stacks up in the context of the social web. If you are scrapping or recording content from a web site and not providing links back you should expect different terms from social web users.

But I maintain that retrofitting a licensing model on an open network is flawed and fraught with loopholes.

The NLA isn’t pursuing Google because it claims Google News is not a genuine substitute for a professional media monitoring service yet in my experience it is the PR industry’s frontline web clipping service.

Self-certification combined with ad hoc audits is the only way that the NLA will be able enforce the new licensing fee. The web licence will go ahead but technology will ultimately dictate the conclusion of this debate.

I applaud the direct approach by Pugh. He’s upped the ante and invited me to an open briefing session at The Guardian at 9am on 10 September. Why don’t you register via email and join us?

Related posts:

NLA furore continues (and an invitation to breakfast) – 18 August, 2009
NLA goes on the defensive over eClips charges as PRCA leads industry fight back – 9 July, 2009