As one of the Irish diaspora and a member of the UK’s NLA team involved in the Meltwater case, I have read the furore in Ireland with respect to commercial use of newspaper URLs, with some personal interest and professional enthusiasm.
For clarity, the current position in the UK amongst the majority of publishers is that the posting of links (excluding headlines & text extracts) on company websites is acceptable and does not incur a NLA licence charge.
On the other hand, if your company wants to take advantage of positive press and many do, the NLA now has a Corporate Website Republishing licence, which gives companies permission to post full articles, headlines and text extracts on their corporate websites and social media sites.
If your company has subscribed to an online media monitoring service and is receiving links to NLA newspaper content via this service, then a licence is necessary. This area was the focus of the NLA legal cases over the course of the last few years.
It’s worth repeating that the core issue for newspapers is the unlicensed reproduction of content for commercial gain, not personal use or the mere use of URLs.
Susan Dowley
Director of Sales and Marketing, NLA