NLA | Wadds' PR Blog

January 22nd, 2010 by Wadds

NLA vs Meltwater: “come and have a go [...] but make sure you have the requisite authority to make your point in court”

Steve has posted an update on the NLA vs Meltwater tribunal after the NLA issued a statement yesterday and he caught up with its commercial director Andrew Hughes.

“The NLA says Meltwater’s approach to the digital licence issue is unfair. Meltwater is saying bollocks, we’ll challenge the legality and appropriateness of this. The NLA is now saying come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough, but please make sure you have the requisite authority to make your point in court.”

“It’s not going to make EastEnders scriptwriters weak at the knees, but it’s a fair debate and one that needs to be had. And one I look forward to hearing it.”

Posted in Media, PR
Tags: "web licensing", Meltwater, NLA
1 Comment »

January 11th, 2010 by Wadds

Meltwater’s Copyright Tribunal claim vs the NLA considered

The PR industry is celebrating the NLA’s “climb down” last week over its web licensing scheme. The move followed Meltwater’s challenge of the scheme via the UK Copyright Tribunal.

The NLA said last week that it was suspending invoicing until the Copyright Tribunal reports its findings. In its submission Meltwater has asked the Tribunal to refund any fees if its claim proved successful.

“We’re delighted that the NLA has decided to suspend invoicing for its ill-considered new web licence pending the outcome of a Copyright Tribunal brought about by Meltwater,” said Kevin Taylor, Past President, CIPR in a statement.

But celebrations could be premature as the PRCA’s director general Francis Ingham recognises.

“[…] The NLA say they’ll retrospectively bill users if the Tribunal happens to rule in their favour. I think they’ll lose the case, but even if they were to win, I am extremely doubtful they would find it easy to back-date bills – I know they’d like to be a wing of the Revenue, but they’re not.”

Steve Earl has waded through Meltwater’s 30-page submission to the Copyright Tribunal. He studied media law and has considered the arguments in a post on his blog. It’s well worth a read.

He believes that the Meltwater claim rests on three points:

the information that Meltwater provides to its customers is “a necessary step in the act of receiving a literary work”
Meltwater “signposts” news that breaks online. Any copyright obligations are between the publisher and the end-user
URLs are not intellectual property and cannot be considered part of a copyrighted literary work

Meltwater has asked the Copyright Tribunal to rule that end-users who receive its aggregated lists of breaking online news stories are not breaking copyright law in any way.

In a comment on this blog last week Durrant’s managing director Jeremy Thompson said:

“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 Copyright Tribunal could take up to 12 months to adjudicate on the case. In the meantime the PR industry is celebrating last week’s announcement by the NLA as an early victory.

Francis Ingham has the last word.

“The fundamental point is this though. If they were confident of their position, they wouldn’t have blinked. But they have. And in our view, it’s because their bluff’s been called,” he said.

Posted in Business, Media, PR
Tags: "web licensing", CIPR, Meltwater, NLA, PRCA
4 Comments »

January 7th, 2010 by Wadds

NLA suspends invoicing for web licensing costs; advises end users to make accruals

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.

Posted in Media, PR
Tags: "web licensing", Meltwater, NLA
11 Comments »

January 5th, 2010 by Wadds

Q&A with Meltwater and NewsNow on NLA web licensing scheme

Both Meltwater and NewsNow are standing firm in their opposition to the NLA web licensing scheme.

Meltwater has referred the issue to the UK Copyright Tribunal while NewsNow has reluctantly removed links to NLA member sites from its’ paid for products. Both have signed up to the Right2Link campaign.

In a statement on its web site the NLA says, “While we respect their right to take this action, we are confident that the Copyright Tribunal will recognise that the NLA’s approach has been measured and reasonable.”

The CIPR and PRCA both remain opposed to the scheme. The PRCA has publically applauded Meltwater and has said that it is giving “serious thought” as to how it should respond.

I caught up with Struan Bartlett, Chief Executive, NewsNow and Jorn Lyseggen, CEO, Meltwater at the end of last year to better understand their opposition to the NLA scheme.

Q. What’s the difference between charging for links and providing a service whereby links are aggregated and served to customer on a paid-for basis?

NewsNow: […] The Right2Link campaign is about protecting the right to link. That’s not the same thing as saying that you can never charge for access to a service that contains links to other sites – if you did that any news site with a paywall like FT.com or WSJ would soon be out of business. The right to link means not needing permission from or being charged by the linked-to website. NewsNow’s paid-for services are no different to FT.com’s or WSJ’s in the respect that they will all contain links to relevant third-party websites. NewsNow demands the same journalistic freedoms that news outlets demand for themselves.

Meltwater: If a source has a pay wall we only spider and index the source subject to an agreement with the source. It is usually an arrangement where we are allowed to index, and when a client clicks on a link to an article from this source he ends up at the subscription/log in page of the source. We basically market the content behind the pay wall, and our clients will not get access to the content unless they are a subscriber with the source.

Q. How will you adapt your service to respond to pay walls?

NewsNow: We already link to many websites that employ pay walls. We link to them exactly the same way as free-to-access web sites.

Meltwater: We have agreements in place with a substantial numbers of subscriber sources, including the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Q. Have you calculated the gross cost to your business of paying the NLA its proposed dues under the web licensing scheme?

Meltwater: The cost of the NLA license directly billed to Meltwater is £10,000. The cost the NLA wants us to enforce on our customers amounts to about £1,000,000.

NewsNow: We have and it’s not just the immediate costs of the license but the indirect costs on us of policing their scheme and the downstream uncertainty over costs and continued availability of publications in the scheme. The license purports to offer aggregators certainty but it doesn’t. In its current form it doesn’t offer any certainty whatsoever.

Q. Is the NLA eClips database a threat to your business?

Meltwater: The license terms of the alleged NLA license states that we are to disclose all client data to NLA. On the other hand NLA reserves the right to, at any time, to make the decision to directly compete with Meltwater selling their eClips Web feed directly to our clients. Meltwater welcomes all competition, also from the NLA, but then it has to be on a level playing field. We are not willing to disclose all our client data to a potential competitor.

NewsNow: The NLA hasn’t provided any guarantees that it won’t compete. There is a fundamental conflict of interest where a collective licensing body – that is insisting you give it your customer list – can’t guarantee it won’t be providing services in the market. Various clauses of the NLA licence already provide the NLA with advantages it could use to unfairly undermine industry members’ competitive positions, while providing the veneer of plausible deniability.

Posted in Business, Media, PR
Tags: "web licensing", Meltwater, NewsNow, NLA
5 Comments »

December 17th, 2009 by Wadds

Meltwater to challenge NLA web licensing via UK Copyright Tribunal

Meltwater customers received an email this morning in which Meltwater says that it is challenging the NLA web licensing scheme via the UK Copyright Tribunal. This is likely to take as long as 12 months during which Meltwater says that it will continue to serve links to its business-to-business customers.

The full text of the email follows below:

Dear Meltwater Customer,

You may or may not be aware that the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) recently decided to extend its hardcopy licensing regime to cover links to newspaper website content. The NLA believes that you (our customer) need a license from the NLA in order to click on the links you receive from the Meltwater News Service. Meltwater strongly disagrees with this and has announced today that we are taking the NLA to the UK Copyright Tribunal to challenge what we consider to be a “link tax” without legal basis.

The NLA, originally formed in 1996, was created to license and collect revenue from the copying and clipping of print media. Now the agency is attempting to enforce licensing agreements on Internet links. The NLA is targeting both companies providing media monitoring services and the customers subscribing to such services.

Meltwater is pursuing this legal action after the NLA threatened to sue any online media monitoring company who fails to sign up to its new content licensing agreement by January 1. 2010. We have been in good faith discussions with the NLA for several months now, but have been unable to come to an agreement. While Meltwater respects the copyright of the NLA’s members, the licensing scheme seeks to control the receipt of links to freely published online content, even though such rights are not granted to copyright owners under UK copyright law. Therefore, Meltwater has decided to take this matter to the UK Copyright Tribunal because we believe that the NLA’s licensing scheme has no basis in UK copyright law.

It may take 9 to 12 months for the Tribunal to come to its decision. In this period, Meltwater will continue to serve you with links to relevant news stories and we will continue to do our very best to meet your needs.

For more information regarding this issue, please refer to our press release and the FAQ in the attached PDF.

If you have any questions regarding Meltwater’s challenge to the NLA’s unreasonable licensing scheme, please feel free to contact me at jorunn.ekestad@meltwater.com.

Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

Kind Regards

Jorunn Ekestad

Director Client Relations UK

jorunn.ekestad@meltwater.com

Posted in Business, Media, PR
Tags: Meltwater, NLA
4 Comments »

December 8th, 2009 by Wadds

David Phillips: Will newspapers credit online communities?

David Phillips is an author, lecturer and agency PR man. If you haven’t read the book he co-wrote with Sunderland University’s Philip Young called Online Public Relations then shame on you.

Phillips has brought a fresh perspective to the NLA debate by challenging the ownership of original content. It’s a debate that Phillips has supported with a real time case study.

“I went to this page in The Times, analysed it to get the semantic concepts. Looked for those concepts in Bing.com and found that loads of other people and publication wrote this story in similar terms long before The Times.”

“When The Times vanishes behind its firewall will this mean that it will pay all the other sites for the news it plagiarises from them as well as suing all the sites that use the same story after they publish offline or behind the firewall?”

“Who, then is going to set up the counter organisation to the NLA to get their money back from newspapers who borrow/plagiarise content from the online community?” asks Phillips.

Its Flat Earth News revisited. Phillips works from the premise that very little is original. And so we very quickly get into a debate about how original content is created and how you credit the originator and the organisations that circulate a story.

Posted in Business, Media, PR
Tags: David Phillips, Newspaper Licensing Agency, NLA, Philip Young, PR, Sunderland University
2 Comments »

December 8th, 2009 by Wadds

CIPR and PRCA stand firm in opposition to NLA web licence

The PR industry trade associations are standing firm on the issue of business-to-business web licensing. Here’s reaction from the CIPR and PRCA on news that the NLA’s licensing scheme will go ahead in the New Year.

“I can think of no other organisation that would charge you for improving the lifeblood of their business. Member schemes usually involve a reward, not a fee. […] I find it hard to accept that my members should pay fees for increasing the readership of content that is available free of charge.”
Kevin Taylor, President, CIPR

“[Our] position hasn’t changed. For so long as content is freely available, I think this is an unfair and legally un-enforceable charge.”
Francis Ingham, Director General, PRCA

Posted in Business, Media, PR
Tags: Chartered Institute of Public Relations, CIPR, Newspaper Licensing Agency, NLA, PRCA
2 Comments »

December 3rd, 2009 by Wadds

NLA web clipping licence to go ahead; “small number of paid web aggregators” yet to sign up

I have followed the NLA’s plan to licence the use of paid-for business-to-business web content from newspaper web sites since the NLA announced its plans in June (search my blog for content tagged NLA for more information). Since then publishers have started to raise pay walls and take on Google in a bid to monitise content.

Six months is a long time on the Internet and especially so for newspaper publishers running loss making web operations.

The NLA said today that the web licensing scheme will go ahead from 1 January 2010. Press clipping agencies, web aggregators, PR agencies and client organisations that track web clippings on newspaper web sites will need a licence. Free consumer services will not be affected.

In September the NLA said that the move will generate an estimated £2 million and while this won’t make a significant dent in the £1 billion production budget of the UK newspaper industry, it will ensure that publishers recover a contribution from the after market for web clippings.

In a press release issued today the NLA said that it has reached agreement with almost all press cutting agencies but that it still needed to agree terms with “a small number of paid web aggregators”.

“Newspaper publishers, which own the NLA, have written to the remaining aggregators to express their full support for the NLA’s initiative. The letter makes clear that the publishers and NLA will pursue non-compliant aggregators with technical and/or legal measures as necessary.”

In agency-land any move to implement additional costs will be inevitably be challenged but the ongoing debate about monetising newspaper web content will help the NLA’s case.

The PR industry has responded badly to the NLA web licensing proposals because it has a mindset that content from newspapers web sites is free. And that’s true for now but its starting to change.

We have no way of knowing whether paywalls will work and how newspapers will manage their relationships with search engines. We’re only beginning to see some early indications.

In the meantime the NLA is proceeding with its model to recover revenue for its members.

Posted in Business, Media, PR
Tags: Aggregator, Newspaper, Newspaper Licensing Agency, NLA, Web content
5 Comments »

November 4th, 2009 by Wadds

Q&A with Durrants’ Jeremy Thompson on the Metrica deal, evaluation, aggregators and the NLA

JeremyThompson05 I caught up with Jeremy Thompson this morning, managing director of Durrants, to talk about media monitoring market, PR evaluation, aggregators and the NLA.

Durrants has been on the acquistion trail. It acquired Metrica last week and the UK print monitoring business of Cision UK in July.

The media monitoring sector is oft regarded as the commodity end of the PR industry and is almost certainly under reported – if Durrants was listed in the annual PR Week League tables it would make a top ten slot.

Under Thompson’s leadership Durrants is a £40 million business that is defining the emerging market segment that is media intelligence.

What is the strategic rational for Durrants’ acquisition of Metrica?
The thinking was to bring together the two leading players in the media monitoring and analysis space and deliver the best of both worlds through one integrated platform. The market is beginning to see the upside of integrated services – there are clear benefits of having access to planning data, content and media analysis, all in on place and seamlessly interlinked. And the demand for measurement is stronger than ever as the media world explodes and the need to demonstrate value grows.

How is the deal structured?
Can’t talk about specifics here but we have bought the business and have incentivised management to come with us for the long haul. We plan to run the two side-by-side for a period and integrate when we’ve planned and are ready to go. We’ll move to one platform, one business.

The deal speaks to the opportunity for formal planning and evaluation of PR. Are PR agencies getting smarter?
I’m sure they’re becoming smarter because they are definitely becoming more accountable. End users are all more interested in whether they have achieved a return on their investment and agencies are looking at smarter ways of doing that. And it is not just about column inches any more, it’s about whether they achieved their objectives, be that increased sales or enhanced reputation.

What is Durrants’ competitive response to aggregators?
Aggregators provide a low cost, low value service. They sit somewhere between Google News and media monitors. They can’t match us on service when it comes to complex searching across multiple channels; nor can they deliver in every format from multiple hard copy press packs to viewable BlackBerry clips. And they don’t monitor all channels from print, through TV and radio, to online and social media. We believe what we do adds real value, but we’ll keep listening to our market and adapt if we need to.

Why is the standard of service in the press clipping industry generally so poor? Many press clipping agencies haven’t modernised. Why is this?
What we do is complex. The briefs we work to are extensive and we always aim to find exactly what the customer wants, no more, no less. And everything we do is bespoke to each individual customer. We have invested more than most but occasionally even we get it wrong. I’d like to think that our customer service is first class, and that we go the extra mile to sort problems when they arise.

Do you think there will be further consolidation in the media monitoring and evaluation market?
I’m not sure how much more scope for consolidation there is right now. And if there is, we won’t be doing it; we have enough on our plate with Cision’s UK print monitoring business and Metrica.

The Newspaper Licensing Association: friend or foe?
We recognise publisher rights and we totally understand that we should pay for the commercial re-use of publisher content. To that end, it is useful to be able to deal with a third party rather than to have to go to each publisher direct (we monitor 5,000 print titles in the UK alone). The NLA had a poor reputation historically, but they have worked hard under their current MD, David Pugh, to rectify that. And I think they have made progress, even if they are still not the PR industry’s favorite organisation. They haven’t handled the PR around their online initiative particularly well, and we’re still frustrated by their unwillingness to challenge Google under the same terms that they treat us. But overall, friend right now.

Posted in PR
Tags: Durrants, evaluation, Metrica, Newspaper Licensing Agency, NLA, PR
1 Comment »

September 11th, 2009 by Wadds

NLA engages directly with critics

I was in the audience at The Guardian yesterday morning for a briefing with the NLA’s managing director David Pugh.

The NLA has received an onslaught of criticism since it announced that it would introduce a licence for web clippings from January 2010.

After yesterday’s briefing I firmly believe that the NLA has failed to communicate the rationale and remit of the new licence. Much of the negative comment results from misinformation and the NLA’s tradition approach to communications.

The NLA has briefed PR Week, the CIPR and the PRCA and responded directly to blog criticism. It frequently cites its eClips web site as the authoritative source of information on the topic and while it is exhaustive it isn’t the easiest site to navigate.

But after yesterday I believe that the NLA needs to work harder to take its message to its audience in a more accessible format. In social media parlance it needs to follow the conversations. And to be fair it has started to do this by arranging briefings such as yesterday’s session.

So what did we learn from the sesson? The web clipping licence is a bid by the NLA to recover a contribution from the after market for business-to-business web clippings. It isn’t a tax on web clippings or a bid to licence URLs.

The new web licences will cover digital content on national and local newspaper websites with the exception of the Financial Times and News International publications which have their separate licence requirements.

Clipping agencies such as Cision and Durrants, scrappers such as Meltwater, and PR agencies, all generate revenue from monitoring press coverage online. Clippings are a currency that drives the PR industry.

The NLA believes that newspaper publishers as the original producers of this content should receive a share of that income. The initiative is expected to raise up to £2 million per year for NLA members.

The PR industry has responded badly to the proposals in part because of poor communication on the part of the NLA, but also because it has a mindset that content from newspapers web sites is free.

In 18 months as newspaper publishers raise paywalls in front of their sites and content disappears from Google news searches this attitude will change.

Here lies the real issue of web copyright. The media industry’s approach to online is in turmoil. We have no way of knowing whether paywalls will work and how newspapers will manage their relationships with search engines.

In the meantime the NLA is making a bid to put a model in place to recover revenue for its members. As I have said previously ultimately the future health of the media and technology innovation will dictate the conclusion of this debate.

Neville Hobson interviewed David Pugh after yesterday’s session for a special edition of his For Immediate Release (FIR) podcast which he said he’ll likely post later today.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: clipping agency, David Pugh, Newspaper, NLA, pr agency
1 Comment »

September 4th, 2009 by Wadds

PR moment: Behind the story – Newspaper Licensing Authority’s new web licence proposals

PRmoment reports today on the PR professionals that are blogging, campaigning and petitioning to fight Newspaper Licensing Authority’s new web licence proposals

[…]

Stephen Waddington, managing director of PR agency Speed, has been stirring up the debate about the NLA’s proposals on Twitter, where there is also a Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) Twitter petition for the NLA to scrap these new charges. Waddington has also blogged extensively about the subject. He says that one of the problems is caused by the NLA not adequately making clear how the new license works, leading to the PR industry becoming fixated with the idea that URLs should not be licensed. He explains: “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 website and not providing links back, you should expect different terms from social web users.”

Waddington believes the problem is that the NLA is attempting to create a licence model too late, and attempting to fit it to a structure that is too large and complex. He says: “Retrofitting a licensing model on an open network is flawed and fraught with loopholes. For example, 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.”

Waddington states that self-certification combined with ad hoc audits is the only way that the NLA will be able to enforce the new licensing fee. He concludes: “The web licence will go ahead but technology will ultimately dictate the conclusion of this debate.”

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: clipping, Google News, NLA, PRmoment, Public relations, Social network, twitter
2 Comments »

August 27th, 2009 by Wadds

NLA responds directly to blog criticism

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?

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

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: David Pugh, Intellectual property, NLA
3 Comments »

July 9th, 2009 by Wadds

NLA goes on the defensive over eClips charges as PRCA leads industry fight back

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.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: Google News, Media, NLA, PRCA, Public relations
8 Comments »