The latest response to the Newspaper Licensing Agency’s (NLA) proposals to regulate hyperlinks to newspaper content for commercial agencies and aggregators – this time from president of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), Kevin Taylor.
“I want newspapers to be successful and profitable. I want good standards of journalism and I’m prepared to do my bit: buy a quality daily newspaper and not rely on the free sheets. I hope advertising and online revenues pick up and our best newspapers survive and thrive,” writes Taylor.
“But these latest proposed NLA charges are not the way to fund the newspaper industry. They are nonsensical. The Government needs to be strong enough to stand up to the newspaper owners and impose some regulation on the NLA.
“They are simply a commercial organisation trying to make a living – but they can’t invent a parallel universe in order to justify their charges.”
The NLA appears to be living in the dark ages. This is the organisaton that spends some of its income on reams of NLA stickers which is sends to agencies – do they think their audience is made up of 8 year olds? I’m sure most of the NLA’s ‘clients’ (their amusing word for their relationship with the people who have to pay them) would prefer less stickers from the NLA and lower ‘prices’ as well as a clear pricing structure…
…on that note, an agency if you provide a cuttings service for a charity you work for pro-bono, the NLA still charges you full rate. They only charge the charity a reduced rate – good to see them do their (tiny) bit for charity.
On the point about charging for links, it’s just laughable. Someone over at the NLA should read Chris Anderson’s latest book Free and then attempt to justify what they are doing. It really seems like they have bitten off more than they can chew this time – and perhaps its time for this dinosaur of an organisation to become extinct.