The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) has written to end users of paid-for newspaper web monitoring services today in a bid to qualify the status of its newspaper web licensing scheme. The move follows Meltwater’s challenge of the scheme via the UK Copyright Tribunal – a process which could take up to 12 months.
In a statement (PDF) the NLA says that licensing scheme is effective from 1 January 2010 but that it is suspending invoicing until the Copyright Tribunal has ruled on the Meltwater claim. The NLA says that the vast majority of press cuttings agencies and aggregating services have agreed to the new licensing structure and are now licensed and that Meltwater is the exception.
“We are [suspending invoicing] out of respect for the Tribunal process and to ensure that the clients of media monitoring agencies that have signed licences are not disadvantaged in the period between now and when the Copyright Tribunal delivers its verdict,” said the NLA’s managing director, David Pugh.
The NLA is advising end-users of paid-for newspaper web monitoring services to accrue for web licensing costs ahead of the Copyright Tribunal returning its verdict.
Does anyone know on what basis Meltwater are using copyright law to challenge the scheme?
Meltwater are challenging the NLA’s right to licence hyperlinking which they believe is “against the spirit of the internet”. They tried something similar in Scandinavia and failed.
The NLA have suspended charging pending the outcome of this case to preserve a level playing field and ensure nobody, including the majority of media monitors and aggregators who have signed up to the publisher licence, are disadvantaged in the interim.
The PRCA is delighted that the NLA has backed down on this.
We are unable to find any legal evidence in support of the NLA’s claim that URLs are copyrightable. We have repeatedly challenged them to provide such proof, and they have repeatedly declined to do so. We have long suspected that their refusal to prove the truth of their claims was because there is no such evidence. Their decision to suspend billing only reaffirms that belief.
The PRCA is now examining what our next steps should be in support of the PR industry. In their greed to tax freely-available internet material, the NLA are throwing into question their entire existence. And they have only themselves to blame.
In case anyone isn’t aware – The Right2Link campaign is worth a look:
http://www.right2link.org/
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