The NLA web clipping debate continues with interviews carried in recent CIPR publications. The NLA is introducing a licensing for businesses that use newspaper content sourced from the web. 230 people have signed the PRCA Twitter petition calling on the NLA to abandon its plans.
The NLA isn’t backing down and the PR industry is universally pissed off. It’s almost inevitable that the new charges will be introduced in January 2010 when basic NLA print licenses will be upgraded to include web content. It’s equally inevitable that they’ll be passed on to clients.
The NLA will seek to levy the charge on “businesses that use newspaper content sourced from the web.” There will be three tiers of charging: web clipping agencies will be charged, PR agencies will be charged, clients will be charged, but Google and other web aggregators won’t.
The NLA says that Google is exempt because it doesn’t charge its users. Yet Google operates one of the largest commercial aggregation networks on the internet. That its business model is funded by ads rather than a combination of ads and subscribers makes it no less of a commercial proposition.
CIPR president Kevin Taylor makes this point in an exchange with NLA managing director David Pugh in Communicate Magazine.
Pugh is seeking to protect the revenues of newspaper publishers. It’s a laudable objective, but attempting to overlay a licensing model on an open network makes no sense whatsoever.
The web is a distribution channel for newspaper publishers. It is not a physical medium. The model of charging commercial recipients for receiving and sharing electronic content from newspapers, but not non-commercial users, is completely flawed.
But, it’s an irrelevant argument according to the NLA. Newspaper web sites specifically exclude the use of content for commercial purposes. It follows any business monitoring newspaper web sites is making a commercial use and the NLA will charge a levy.
The NLA is right. Here’s an extract from the Daily Telegraph’s Terms & Conditions for its web site.
We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in the Site the Content and the Trade Marks. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, temporary, revocable, and non-exclusive licence to access, browse and use the Site (including the Content and Trade Marks) for your personal and non commercial use only.
When social media enters the fray the issues gets really muddy as PR Bristol highlighted. Here it appears that it matters not whether your use of web links is commercial. The distribution of web links by bloggers and via social networks or bookmarking will not be charged under the new NLA scheme.
My personal view is that the NLA is seeking to sledge hammer a 1800’s copyright model onto an open network and in the medium term it simply won’t work because there are so many loop holes. The charges almost certainly won’t be sustainable. Technology moves much faster than legislation.
This issue could have been handled so differently. The NLA is investing £2 million in an eClips Web service that will take content directly from newspaper’s production systems. But, it will only make this available to cuttings agencies. The NLA should have offered this service directly to the market.
The NLA itself has taken a traditional approach to engaging with the PR industry. Pugh has spoken to the PR Week and now the CIPR and the PRCA. I think it’s time it made an effort to engage those individuals that have been most critical, namely PR bloggers.
I’d like to invite Puge to meet with a group of PR bloggers over breakfast in the next few weeks to explain his case. David, please accept this as an open invitation.
Spot on! We are now in a situation where I would suggest a large majority of agencies will try to circumvent the rules by using Twitter and other social media tools that sit outside of the rules – not us of course, no no no!
Also, the NLA explanations don’t stack up for me, especially about the local authority usage (half of our local rag is made up of valuable community info from the council) and the fact that, in my mind at least, PR’s drive extra traffic to newspaper sites that they would not normally get. This comes not only in the form of existing clients but because the majority of us use a size 5 trumpet to shout about our coverage successes in pitches and in e-dialogue with potential, new and existing clients.
Great post. I think this line nails it.
“Pugh is seeking to protect the revenues of newspaper publishers. It’s a laudable objective, but attempting to overlay a licensing model on an open network makes no sense whatsoever.”
I wonder if he’ll come to lunch?
Stephen,
Thanks for the offer of breakfast. The NLA would be happy to attend, as we have been happy to attend other meetings with stakeholders.
Here are a couple of factual points in response to your post:
1) We have been speaking to the PR industry through ‘traditional’ channels like PR Week and membership bodies; but we have also made a sincere effort to engage – online – with bloggers and have commented on many posts (for example, the PR Bristol blog you cite).
2) We don’t agree with your description of the paid-for monitoring market as ‘an open network’. Services like Meltwater or Moreover often charge thousands of pounds to monitor the news for their clients without – at the moment – paying any fair fee to the owners of this content. Clients subscribe to theses services because they deliver tailored and sifted web content – which is very different to logging on to a newspaper’s website and reading it yourself.
3) On eClips Web – this service is designed, with a great deal of industry input, to help media monitoring agencies, so is probably not that relevant to other users. In effect, it is an XML feed coming direct from newspapers’ content management systems, metadata included. It is intended as a superior alternative to web-scraping for media monitoring agencies to use – which will enable them to provide an improved service to their clients.
We’ve put up all this and lots of other information on our site: http://www.nla-web.com.
@Newspaper Licensing Agency – Thanks for your response. Could you please let me know who I should call to line up a meeting with David Puge. My email is stephen DOT waddington AT speedcommunications DOT com and my phone number is 020 7842 3200. Thanks, Stephen
Did the NLA not approach the PRCA (and I suspect the CIPR) about bringing eClips to the agencies/end users? if so, when did it abandon these plans?
Richard,
You are referring to our product Clipsearch, which is available to agencies and end users. No plans have been abandoned. You can find out more here: http://www.clipsearch.co.uk/
The PRCA tweeted that the NLA “wouldn’t indicate planned pricings”. We’d like to make clear that we have been transparent on price – price lists and a cost calculator are available on our site: http://www.nla-web.com.
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