07 January 2010 | Author: Andrew Girdwood Head of Strategy

NLA suspends link charges

The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) has met with opposition to its 2010 charging model from news aggregators such as NewsNow and the Norwegian Meltwater monitoring firm.

The NLA is co-owned by eight UK publishers and covers only content from those papers. It charges UK companies who link to newspaper websites as part of their paid-for services.

The agency targets clippings firms and news aggregators, but PR firms are also subject to the rules.

The NLA has paused its plans to begin charging for commercial use of links while a copyright tribunal discusses the case.

In a press release, managing director of the NLA David Pugh stated: "We are confident that the copyright tribunal will recognise our web licensing scheme is measured and reasonable. But we do not want any licensed users of newspaper web monitoring to be disadvantaged by Meltwater's action. Clients of all monitoring agencies should be on a level playing field. We have therefore decided not to invoice clients for their web licence until the copyright tribunal process is complete."

NewsNow responded to the NLA's action by dropping NLA sanctioned newspapers from its aggregator, while continuing to drive traffic and awareness to other trusted news sources.

In a statement issued last year, Struan Bartlett, MD of NewsNow, said: "Unfortunately, we have not been able to reach an agreement with the NLA. In spite of the NLA's claims to the contrary, we continue to maintain that what they are demanding of ourselves and our customers is unacceptable and of questionable legitimacy."

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