Going back to the backlink licensing case: NLA’s full statement

This goes back to last week, but it seems worth putting up here anyway. Last Thursday Matt Wardman covered this story for Press Gazette: about the Newspaper Licensing Agency regulating hyperlinks for commercial agencies and aggregators.

“The NLA will be introducing a new form of licence from 1 September to regulate ‘web aggregator’ services (such as Meltwater) that forward links to newspaper websites and for press cuttings agencies undertaking this type of activity.”

Craig McGill also picked up on it and asked a series of provocative questions. He got a lengthy response from the NLA, including this:

“This is not about bloggers adding links to newspaper sites. Our focus is on professional media monitoring organisations (news aggregators, press cuttings agencies) and their client business who make extensive use of the newspaper content.”

More questions are raised in the comments beneath McGill’s piece, including this one about copyright law.

Last Friday Journalism.co.uk spoke to the NLA who said it was part of their new e-Clips service – ‘a feed of newspapers’ online content direct to cuttings aggregators and press cuttings agencies.’

Here’s the NLA statement in full:

“The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) today [dated June 2009] announced a new business-to- business clippings database for newspaper websites to launch in January 2010. It also has said it will extend its licensing remit to cover newspaper websites from January 2010.

“The new service, called eClips web, will offer a complete feed of newspapers’ online content direct  to cuttings aggregators and press cuttings agencies. Powered directly from newspapers’ own content-management systems, eClips web will make web-based media monitoring faster and richer and provide a permanent record for PR and communications professionals.

“The NLA will also extend its licensing remit to cover local and national newspapers’ web content. David Pugh, managing director of the NLA, said: “We have two aims: to contribute to the growth of web monitoring; and to protect the rights of publishers. Research shows that 23 per cent of newspapers’ online content never appears in print and that the internet is growing in influence as a resource for news. So it is vital to have comprehensive monitoring coverage of newspapers’ websites – and vital that the publishers are properly rewarded for their work.”

“From September 2009, web aggregators that charge clients for their services will require a NLA licence and be charged from January 2010, The press cuttings agencies that either ‘scrape’ content themselves or buy in services from aggregators will also be licensed and charged. Client companies that receive and forward links from these commercial aggregators within their organisation will also require a licence.

“David Pugh added: “We have consulted extensively across the industry – the incremental charges for web cuttings will be low and manageable. I stress this is not about individuals sharing links – we think that’s great for newspapers and promotes their websites and their readership.  What we are doing is making sure that newspapers are rewarded fairly for professional use of their web content by businesses.”"

Further notes:

“The NLA is owned by the 8 national newspaper publishing houses and generates B2B revenues for
1,300 national and regional publishers through licensing use of their content by press cuttings
agencies (PCAs) and their client companies.

“The new licences will cover all local and national titles with the exception of the Financial Times and
the News International titles. These will all, however, be included in the eClips web database.”

Similar posts:

• Craig McGill: NLA charging for backlinks – a response
• NLA suspends payment of new link charges for aggregators
• NewsNow re-enters newspaper linking fight with campaign; Meltwater takes NLA to copyright tribunal
• Update: Newspaper Licensing Agency hits back at claim it is ‘taxing the internet’
• News International steps up blocking of aggregators

Craig McGill: NLA charging for backlinks – a response

As reported by Craig McGill last week, the UK’s Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) is considering charging organisations for links to newspaper articles.

On Thursday, McGill asked whether the agency would backdate charges and have they considered the impact on traffic this might have for newspaper websites.

The agency has now responded in full to McGill’s questions – including the information that it will not backdate charges and that the change is aimed at organisations and not individuals.

“This is not about bloggers adding links to newspaper sites. Our focus is on professional media monitoring organisations (news aggregators, press cuttings agencies) and their client business who make extensive use of the newspaper content,” it says.

“The monitoring industry is highly responsible and wants to work with us – because they want a healthy newspaper industry too. The NLA has been in dialogue with the media monitoring companies for over a year on this subject.”

Full post at this link…

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• PR Week: CIPR president on the NLA’s backlink charging plans
• NewsNow re-enters newspaper linking fight with campaign; Meltwater takes NLA to copyright tribunal
• Aggregator NewsNow says publishers seeking court injunction to stop linking

Star News Online: Why news organisations should link to the competition

It’s fair to say that Journalism.co.uk likes a link and linking to good content from other news sites on our patch is all part of the process.

For many newsrooms it’s a cultural (and sometimes technological/CMS) shift – those introducing a linking out policy could do worse than read StarNews’ executive editor Robyn Tomlin’s thoughts on why her title links to other regional print and broadcast websites:

“I firmly believe that we are much better served by linking out to other voices, sources and even competing news organizations than we are ignoring them and hoping they’ll go away. In the end, we all share a goal of informing and educating our community,” she writes.

“While the web has opened up so many valuable sources of information for our journalists, it’s a shame if we ignore our competitors when we are curating the information that we think is relevant and valuable to people in our community.”

Full post at this link…

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Malcolm Coles: ‘The eight stages of linking-out denial’

Malcolm Coles has created a ‘linking-out denial’ scale – so, where do you site? At number two, ‘Add URLs but don’t make them hyperlinks’, or have you reached the enlightenment of number 8, ‘Making linking part & parcel of what I do’.

Full post at this link…

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MalcolmColes: UK newspapers and their ‘authorised’ linking policies

Also reproduced at the OnlineJournalismBlog, Malcolm Coles’ post looks at how some UK newspapers have gone so far with their site terms and conditions that ‘you’re not allowed to link to – or even read – their website.’

Full post at this link…

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Online Journalism Scandinavia: Resolutions for 2009 – Yes, we link

Danish journalists pen link manifesto, which should be an inspiration for journalists everywhere in 2009.

The last quarter of 2008 did not only open our eyes to how flawed the fiscal economy is, in Scandinavia more and more journalists also realised how awkwardly media organisations operate in the link economy.

In Norway, the union chapel at DN.no, the news site of the country’s biggest financial daily, suggested introducing a common link policy for all the country’s news sites to make it profitable to produce good original articles rather than just to copy-paste.

In Denmark, a survey by eJour found just two links to external sites when monitoring seven Danish news sites over a period of two weeks. Blogging journalists in Denmark were also up in arms over a renewed effort by Danish newspaper publishers to stop websites like Google News from linking to individual articles rather than a newspaper’s homepage.

Against this backdrop, Kim Elmose, the blog editor of Politiken.dk, and Lars K. Jensen, a project manager at Ekstrabladet.dk, launched a link manifesto and encouraged news rooms everywhere to write their own link commandments and use their manifesto freely.

Let’s hope this can inspire more and better linking on many a news site in 2009:

First law: We link to the sources for the data we use in our journalistic products. If we have read, seen or heard important new information on an external site – for instance about companies, people or surveys – we will link to it.

Second law: We link directly and precisely to the information we use from external sites. In this way we provide proper service to our readers rather than just linking to the front page of the external site.

Third law: We are precise in our information about where a link leads to; about who has produced the information we link to and when. The readers should know where it takes them when they follow a link.

Fourth law: We recognise that an article consisting of precise links to information that represents different angles on an issue is a journalistic product.

Fifth law: We are open to inbound links to our own news sites because we want to be an integrated part of the web’s ecosystem

Sixth law: We aspire to making it easier to link directly to our articles.

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Washington Post using Apture for article links

The Washington Post has teamed up with Apture to add embedded links into its news articles. Washington Post articles, video content and Google maps will be linked to using the technology, which, according to a press release, requires only a single line of code to make the links appear.

Information from WaPo’s Congressional Votes Database will be linked to congress and senate members’ names when they appear in articles, as part of the new design.

WaPo content will now be available to other media and political sites that sign up to Apture. Articles already allow readers to view who’s linking to that content in the blogosphere.

Apture’s technology has previously been used by BBC News as part of its inline links trial and its use by WaPo follows the launch of the New York Times’ link aggregation service TimesExtra last week.

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Publishing 2.0: Newsrooms can grow Twitter followings with links

Newsrooms should use Twitter accounts to link out to interesting online content and not just back to their own sites, says Scott Karp on the Publishing 2.0 blog.

“This is a perfect example of how mainstream news orgs got so far behind on the web — they see the web as just another distribution channel for their own content. Open the chute and shovel the content in.”

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MSNBC on hyperlocal plans for interactive coverage of US election voting results

Msnbc.com has plans for interactive coverage of voting results on a hyperlocal level, Charlie Tillinghast, president and publisher told Beet TV in this interview.

• Visitors to the site’s map will be able to click on states and counties to find results on national and local races.

• Msnbc.com will stream live events, on air coverage by the network and NBC affiliates.

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Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Three rules for online linking

Linking: Online Journalism Review’s Robert Niles has three rules for when links should be used in an article: for attributing sources, providing context and to explain the inexplicable. Here’s a link to Niles’ full article on linking in articles. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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