Britain's Newspaper Licensing Agency to Charge PR Companies for Sharing, Reproducing URLs

By: E&P Staff A plan by Britain's Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) to charge public-relations companies for sharing and reproducing URLs is drawing criticism from the PR industry.

The NLA, which was founded in 1996 by eight of Britain's largest newspaper publishers and represents 1,400 British newspapers, announced in June that beginning in September it would charge PR agencies a fee for sharing links to newspaper Web sites with their clients. The changes would take effect in September.

The Agency's main function is to collect fees from licensed companies that make print and digital copies of newspaper articles. According to The Guardian newspaper, the main target of the Agency's new plan was not bloggers, or sites like Google, but rather the "industrial-scale copying of articles from newspaper sites, for private commercial purposes."

"It is absolute nonsense," Kevin Taylor, president of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, wrote on prweek.com. "If I call someone and tell them a Web address -- no charge (at least not one proposed yet). But if I send them the Web address by e-mail -- that requires an NLA licence [sic]... If instead of sending the link, I send a link to the Google news search that includes the link -- no charge."

"NLA may be justified in continuing to charge for reproducing copyrighted printed content," wrote Robert Andrews at paidcontent.co.uk. "[B]ut a URL isn?t content, it?s a resource locator."

Currently, the NLA claims 150,000 customers who pay licensing fees for using articles. The NLA's prices, which are partially dependent on number of stories reproduced, range from 15-150 British pounds (around $25-$250).

For more on reaction to the plan, go here.