Paywalls and Media Monitoring

Following yesterday’s announcements that The Telegraph and the Sun are adopting paid models NLA is watching the UK newspaper movement towards paywall models with great interest. As providers of paid access to news content to professional monitoring agencies, we have a natural bias to support these changes. Anything that makes the value of content clearer tends to get our vote.

The NLA is also feeling good about the decision we made three years ago to develop eClips web. This takes data directly from newspapers’ production systems, allowing faster and more accurate coverage of what was printed. It also allows subscribing media monitoring companies and their professional users seamless access to pay-walled material.  The service is also used by many publishers to feed content to licensed third parties like Factiva and Lexis-Nexis. The return on the investment comes from ensuring the professional information users who expect a premium service get the data they need, and that publishers get properly paid. 

In the USA ‘soft’ or metered pay-walls have become common place, with over 400 dailies now operating this model . NLA is ready to make the connections needed between publishers, monitoring agencies and users if and when – as seems increasingly likely – the UK follows that lead.

Andrew Hughes

Commercial Director, NLA

Follow the NLA on Twitter - @NLA_ltd

Copyright Hub gets government support

Good news: Lord Younger, the Intellectual Property Minister has just announced government funding for the Copyright Hub project led by Richard Hooper.

The £150,000 promised by the government matches funding already provided by publishers and licensing agencies - including the NLA - that has supported the development of the project in its first year. It is hoped that the first stage of the project will be operational in 2014; simplifying copyright licensing for business users.

David Pugh
Managing Director, NLA

Follow the NLA on Twitter - @NLA_ltd

Judge rules for AP in copyright dispute with Meltwater

Over in the United States global news network Associated Press is celebrating a win in its court case against Meltwater News. 

The case began after AP sued Meltwater last year, alleging that AP content was copied and sold by Meltwater for profit to its customers without any fees being paid to AP.  The judge agreed, and on Wednesday ruled in their favour.  A full decision is to be released soon.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of the NLA’s own dispute with Meltwater in the UK courts and at the Copyright Tribunal.  Other than a narrow technical point around temporary copying, the dispute was resolved in the NLA’s favour.  The appeal on temporary copying had a two day hearing in February 2013 and we are awaiting a final decision.

The NLA has always believed that paid for services using newspaper copyright material need a licence. The UK experience is that users accept licence fees should be paid.  Now it seems the US has reaffirmed the need fairly to remunerate its newspaper industry for use of its intellectual property too.

Andrew Hughes

Commercial Director, NLA

Follow the NLA on Twitter - @NLA_ltd

First Journalism Diversity Fund Intern Begins Placement at Newsquest

Last month we announced our support for the Journalism Diversity Fund's internship schemes which provide recipients with 1-3 month work experience placements at a regional newspaper. The grant covers both travel and living costs.

We are pleased to announce that the first recipient, 23 year old Khaleda Rahman will begin her three month placement at Newsquest today, providing her with real hands-on experience to help launch her promising career in journalism.

We wish her luck for the months to come!

Click here for the full press release.

David Pugh
Managing Director, NLA

Follow the NLA on Twitter - @NLA_ltd

Charity licensing discount to be extended

We have talked before on this blog about our work with the RNIB and Talking Newspapers, and our donations of over £800,000 to the Journalism Diversity fund. A list of charities supported by NLA publishers can be found here. Another big contribution the NLA makes to the Charity sector is giving discounted or free licenses to over a thousand charities.

Since 2003, following dialogue with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the Newspaper Licensing Agency has granted ALL UK charities a financial discount on their copyright licence, worth in excess of £1.5m since inception. To mark the tenth anniversary of the charity discount (and to reflect the NLA's introduction of licences for web-published content) we are pleased to announce an extension to the scheme to incorporate:-
• copying of content from newspaper websites
• republishing of copyright content for publicity purposes on charity websites.

The result is an increase in the financial discount available to charities of all sizes, from the current £150.00 to a maximum of £390.00.

In summary, the extended discount will be:
• financially beneficial to over 1200 licensed UK charities
• smaller charities will see the greatest relative discount
• and over 200 charities (with 5 or less staff) will continue to enjoy a FREE licence.

The NLA licence fees are a small fraction of the value charities get from their coverage and they are distributed in the form of royalties to publishers. NLA fees contribute the equivalent of 800 jobs in the newspaper industry, some in hard pressed regional and local titles. These journalists create the content which provides the publicity the sector thrives on.

We feel this move strikes a good balance; increasing our support for those charities most in need whilst ensuring newspaper publishers reliant upon NLA fees are fairly remunerated by larger charities benefiting from PR exposure in their titles. 

Taz Ahmed (Tahmed@nla.co.uk) and Rhea Borland (rborland@nla.co.uk) – NLA Customer Services