PR Industry Attacks News Biz Over New Scraping Regs
The Chartered Institute of Public Relations is using “nonsensical” to describe Newspaper Licensing Agency plans to raise a levy on online news monitoring services. Its president Kevin Taylor, writing in PR Week, says NLA plans to charge commercial B2B aggregators that scrape web stories and links are “absolute nonsense”.
The agency, which charges news monitoring and PR companies to reproduce printed articles from 1,400 member newspapers, will in September extend its own remit to cover online services. Though it was reported at the time as effectively taxing those who hyperlink to newspaper stories, the agency later confirmed to us that isn’t targeting bloggers, consumer services or the likes of Google (NSDQ: GOOG), but the “industrial-scale copying of articles from newspaper sites, for private commercial purposes”.
It named Meltwater, which offers clients a searchable database of 90,000 online news sources in more than 110 countries, and Moreover as offenders in the
It would be interesting to know what the NLA believes is the justification in law for this change. Fair enough with actual content – which is subject to copyright laws.
However, hyperlinks aren't content. And what happens if someone sticks a URL through SnipURL (other hyperlink shortening services are available)? Who might own the copyright then? The original site? The shortener? The individual who performed the cut & paste?
This proposal smacks of shifting the goal posts in a very opportunistic and cynical manner to achieve nothing but a stream of income.
It's a miserable example of an organisation failing to come to terms with the changing media landscape.
As you imply, the quote from Kevin Taylor above misleading – these changes are not about private or occasional forwarding of links. They will affect only those who, as part of their business, and against the website use terms, forward links (and often story summaries) created from local copies of website material on a regular basis to clients. See http://www.nla-web.com for details.
Despite the NLA popping up here to post a comment, it would still be interesting to know what the NLA believes is the justification in law for this change – something you seem to be ducking.
Of course, terms of use ought to be adhered to but the law of the land prevails.
I'm also not sure about the opening of your response. Who is implying what exactly? I haven't implied that Kevin Taylor is being misleading. Please clarify your position on that point – I'm not up for being libelled. :-)
You appear to be at odds with the PR industry, from whence comes your income. That's a bold stance to be taking.
Sean – it was as *I* implied. Whilst we thought the NLA's new license looked wonky when it was first reported, it later clarified that it doesn't pertain to consumer uses of stories.
But NLA, if you're still there – I would like some further clarification on how/whether it affects *links*. Can you send a copy of the license?
Thanks.
Sean, Robert
The legal summary is here. http://www.nla-web.com/downloads/Legal FAQ.pdf
You will note our licence covers copying content to create an index from which services are derived, and also covers using website content in ways that website terms preclude (see http://www.independent.co.uk/service/legal-terms-amp-policies-759573.html). We arenât licensing links;- we are licensing commercial copying.
The 19 page web database (scraper) licence is available on request (mpocock@nla.co.uk) , and the user licence will be posted on our site in a day or two.