December 2009
Newspaper Licensing Agency taken to the Copyright Tribunal over its ‘hyperlink tax’
Meltwater Group a leading software company has taken the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) to a UK Copyright Tribunal arguing that its new online licensing scheme is not supported by English Copyright law but rather charges an unjustified ‘hyperlink tax’.
The NLA was formed in 1996 to license and collect revenue from the copying and clipping of print media. Its new scheme which is due to launch on 1st January 2010 seeks to enforce licensing agreements on the sending and receiving of links to online newspaper articles.
It is aimed at online news aggregators, search engines and other businesses which provide online media monitoring services and their subscribers.
NewsNow a well known news aggregator which has been involved with ongoing disputes with the NLA over its scheme has been forced to remove some links before 1st January 2009 in order to avoid having to pay any fees under it.
In response it has launched the Right2Link campaign attacking the scheme and its supporters. Their press release for the campaign states:
“Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing as well as other new economy businesses that act as portals and link aggregators, occupy a key role in identifying links that are of interest, to be read and passed on [and] are a key part of the world wide web’s system of circulating information”
Meltwater Group’s argument that the NLA’s scheme is not supported by UK copyright law is based on their view that copyright owners of online news articles do not have any legal rights under such copyright protection to control the hyperlinks which link to their articles.
In contrast Andrew J Hughes the commercial director of the NLA believes the rights of their members are currently under threat by such online services and is confident that the Copyright Tribunal will find their response “measured and reasonable”.
BRIFFA Comment
Newspaper headlines as with book titles and company slogans etc do not generally attract UK copyright protection and so it would seem that use of a newspaper headline as a hyperlink to the article it relates to does not prima facie infringe the copyright in the news article itself.
However, as such hyperlink is not in substance just a newspaper headline but a portal to the article itself there may be arguments that copyright law should in fact give copyright owners some control over their use by third parties in relation to their works.
In any case as NLA are in addition to protection of their members copyright basing their scheme on enforcement of the terms and conditions of their members businesses’ the scheme will in such circumstances be supported by contractual law irrespective of its position under copyright law.
For more information on copyright protection and enforcement online and the development of effective terms and conditions for your business please do not hesitate to get into contact with one of our lawyers via info@briffa.com.