PR Bristol reported today that the NLA is introducing a set of charges for the distribution of newspaper website content for business-to-business. PR Week carried the story at the end of last month.

According to PR Bristol from January 2010 if you circulate a web page to a client both your agency and the client will need to pay the new NLA eClip charge. Clipping agencies will become liable for the cost from September 2009 and are likely to pass on the cost.

In the growing number of comments on the PR Bristol site an unnamed individual from the NLA defends its position.

“Licensing charges will only affect those client businesses who receive and use digital newspaper cuttings as part of their business. If a PR agency systematically monitors newspapers on behalf of a client, this is commercial use of copyrighted material and you need an NLA licence.”

“The NLA estimates that over 95% of PR agencies – if they copy digital content to clients – should see an increase in client copying fees for the inclusion of newspaper web content of less than £100 per year; while the agencies’ own license costs could increase by around 10%, entirely depending on what they do.”

I’ve long criticised the PRCA for its limp approach. But director general Francis Ingram has led the defence of the industry. And he’s having none of it. On his new blog he criticises the NLA for creating confusion and introducing additional cost at a time when the industry is under numerous pressures.

“[…] they’re talking about charging agencies and their clients for URLs. They’re talking about charging PRCA members for directing their clients to the newspapers’ own sites. And then charging clients too. That is simply outrageous. If the newspapers want to make their content available for free, and then live off the advertising revenue, then good luck to them. If they want to charge for web content, then – again-that’s their choice. But charging for links to publicly available, free material is utterly ridiculous.”

I’m all for protecting intellectual property but by any measure this move by the NLA is ill thought out.

At Speed we are increasingly sharing a digital monitoring dashboard with our clients. It’s an open source platform built on Netvibes that sucks in content from across the web – including national newspapers. Will this attract an NLA levy?

When I share the results of Google News search or a RSS aggregator that has pulled in content from national media with colleagues and clients will they need to pay per click?

And what of the future of the Guardian Open Platform? Will its commercial partners now need to pay to republish content?

I think the NLA needs to host a proper debate on this issue.