The idea of having to pay to share links to online content published by the mainstream media is one that has stimulated much debate in the UK in recent months. Not only that, it’s generated strong opposition in the PR community, and has been to court. It’s also been the subject of an awareness-raising campaign with members of Parliament. It’s a big topic, one that has attracted opinion and commentary from many voices, and was a central feature in a debate in London last month about the future of content. Things came to a head in London on July 27 in a ruling by the Court of Appeal in favour of the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) and its right to […]
NLA
NLA wins latest move in ‘pay for clicks’ battle
Yesterday, the Court of Appeal in London ruled in favour of the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) in a long-running legal battle over licensing of links to content published in the mainstream media. The latest ruling upheld an earlier court decision that anyone copying and supplying UK newspaper web content, or links to that content, to others for a fee (including monitoring or press clippings agencies and PR agencies, and from those agencies to their clients) must acquire a license from the NLA, a body that’s owned by the mainstream media. Championing resistance to what some see as a tax or as an unreasonable method of revenue-generation by an ailing print-media industry is SaaS company Meltwater and the Public Relations Consultants […]
Everyone is trying to figure out the future of content
I was looking again at some of the video recordings of last week’s debate at the British Library in London that I went to, organized by B2B SaaS company Meltwater, and which addressed the topic of “The Future of Content.” The debate and subsequent Q&A session lasted two hours – you can watch the complete-event video as if you were there – and was a worthwhile experience listening to the keynote address from Richard Sambrook, Edelman’s Chief Content Officer (and a former Director of Global News at the BBC) and the panel members’ commentaries ably facilitated by panel chair Matthew Gwyther, the editor of Management Today magazine. And a stellar panel it was comprising Jorn Lyseggen, founder and CEO of […]