Both of the main News International titles have been executing Rupert Murdoch’s newfound bullishness toward those who aggregate his material. Now both Sun Online and Times Online block the NewsNow monitor and Meltwater; they’re also pulling out of the Nexis database.

In January, the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) - which is owned by eight leading UK national news publishers and, for years, had charged clippings agencies to photocopy their pages - introduced two new licenses requiring (1) that agencies pay between £5,000 and £10,000 per year to crawl online papers and (2) that agencies’ clients pay £58 a year to receive that intelligence.

Most such companies complied but Meltwater - formerly called Magenta News - is the only non-compliant agency. It has kicked off a hearing through the UK’s Copyright Tribunal. News International, despite being an NLA member, is not executing the new NLA licenses but is instead taking similar actions by itself.

As unlikely as it may seem, Sun Online is expected to join Times Online in going behind a paywall. Though, while Times plans are firm for a June relaunch, no such firm plans are out there for The Sun.

Update: Meltwater sent us a statement re: its NLA case…

“We have not refused to pay the NLA for crawling their members’ sites. The fee of £10,000 that the NLA has asked for in this regard is actually relatively small, so it’s not the amount of money which is the point of contention.

“While we disagree in principal that such fee is needed, what we have actually referred to the Copyright Tribunal is the fee NLA wants to enforce on our clients. By asking our clients to accept the NLA’s request for them to have a licence to receive the links we send them, our clients – as you have pointed out – will face increased costs.

The £58 annual fee you mention above is the absolute minimum. It actually ranges from £58 to £22,316 per client, and the cumulative annual fees facing Meltwater clients is more than £1 million.”