Aggregators could sue Newspaper Licensing Agency

Posted by Paul McNally on 26 June 2009 at 15:48
Tags: Journalism

The Newspaper Licensing Agency is facing a backlash from paid-for online media monitoring services over plans to bring newspapers’ online content within the NLA’s licensing remit.

Press Gazette reported last week that the NLA was looking to extend its licences in September to cover “web aggregator services (such as Meltwater) that forward links to newspaper websites and for press cuttings agencies undertaking this type of activity”. Free sites such as Google News are not affected.

Now PaidContent claims that Moreover is considering legal action and “more commercial aggregators” might follow.

NLA digital managing director Andrew Hughes told the site: “It’s about large, commercial operations which are scraping the entire content of tens of thousands of websites and creating paid-for services from them.”

Tags: Journalism