UK Aggregator NewsNow Dumps Newspapers After They Demand Payment To Link To Stories

from the which-is-more-valuable? dept

Tue, Dec 15th 2009 9:01pm — Mike Masnick

Back in October, we wrote about how various newspapers, under the auspices of the "Newspaper Licensing Agency" were threatning NewsNow, a UK news aggregator that is (in my experience) one of the more comprehensive aggregators out there, but which only shows headlines and links to full stories. It's difficult to see how that would be a copyright violation in anyone's definition of the term or why that should require any kind of license. The NLA gave NewsNow until last week to "comply" and according to the folks over at the Nieman Lab, NewsNow has decided to bid adieu to those sources rather than pay up:

"Unfortunately, we have not been able to reach an agreement with the NLA. In spite of the NLA's claims to the contrary, we continue to maintain that what they are demanding of ourselves and our customers is unacceptable and of questionable legitimacy. Irrespective of the lack of a legal basis, the NLA's licence is not fit for purpose. This is not just about the charges they intend to impose on us, but the charges they would also impose on our customers for receiving and circulating links within their own organisations. In addition, it is a perhaps an under-reported fact that the terms dictated by the NLA scheme would oblige us to hand over customer details to the NLA, which seems to be developing a potential rival service itself. It is hard to imagine that this kind of behaviour would be tolerated in any other sector. The NLA has also offered no reasonable guarantees of limitations on the increase of costs over time. We strongly feel that to accept the NLA's terms would set a dangerous precedent restricting our customers' ability to conduct their business freely. We see this as a 'slippery slope' towards any free-to-access website demanding licence fees from any organisation for circulating or clicking on links."

It is interesting that part of the license would have required handing over customer info, and good of NewsNow to resist this. The aggregator says that it will still provide links to those sources in its free (extremely feature limited) online offerings, but will remove them from its subscription offerings. It's difficult to see how this benefits anyone. It makes life worse for newspapers, NewsNow itself and NewsNow customers.

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Filed Under: aggregators, copyright, links, newspapers
Companies: newsnow

24 Comments

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Podiatrist, 15 Dec 2009 @ 9:17pm

Another self inflicted GSW
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Leviathant (profile), 15 Dec 2009 @ 9:18pm

Astonishing
I keep thinking that no decisions made by newspaper companies or record labels will surprise me, and then a story comes up about how a newspaper is demanding that you pay to link to them.

Good riddance.
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Pjerky (profile), 15 Dec 2009 @ 10:51pm

So what your saying is...
So basically the news organization is going to chop off its hand to spite its finger, how nice. They have decided to get rid of a significant source of traffic, which will reduce opportunities for revenue. Thus, they will have to find a new way to replace that lost source that previously didn't cost them anything.

Isn't this a bit like charging people for recommending your company to others? The absurdity of it. And news organizations wonder why they are dying? This is just another sign of the oncoming epic failure and collapse of the mainstream media. But if they are really this stupid then I say let them fail. THEY are not too big to fail. Maybe we can get rid of most of these idiotic talking heads we see on TV and the plagiarism in the newspapers and get back to real reporting.
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zenith (profile), 16 Dec 2009 @ 1:13am

NewsNow
NewsNow is a fantastic site - as follower of sport, it's superb for tracking the news stories of my favourite team.

I'm glad that they've not bowed to pressure.
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- dataGuy (profile), 16 Dec 2009 @ 7:51am
  
  Re: NewsNow
  I agree - NewsNow UK is a very handy site. Check it out if you have never used it: http://www.newsnow.co.uk/
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  - Jaws4theRevenge, 16 Dec 2009 @ 8:48am
    
    Re: Re: NewsNow
    I just checked the site out and without NLA content, there's just nothing of interest. /sarcasm
    
    Seriously though, that's a very useful site that I have never heard of. Thanks for attracting my attention to it, NLA.
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  - Hephaestus (profile), 16 Dec 2009 @ 1:39pm
    
    Re: Re: NewsNow
    Thanks that just went into my google links :)
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Griff (profile), 16 Dec 2009 @ 2:49am

I note from the Guardian that

"Most British news monitoring agencies have already signed the terms, including Digital Media Services, Durrants, MediaGen, Precise Media, Press Data, PressIndex and the WPP-owned TNS Media Intelligence."

So if you subscribe to any of these, they have handed your details over to the NLA, presumably ?
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- Griff's ugly Gecko, 16 Dec 2009 @ 6:32am
  
  Re:
  Why would you hand over your personal information? What basis do you think that is happening under?
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2009 @ 4:45am

NLA does have one thing right: Without their news, newsnow (which creates none of it's own content) is an empty shell.
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- Dont Need No Stinkin Name, 16 Dec 2009 @ 5:27am
  
  Re:
  Way to miss the point, as they did also. Must be some common affliction.
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- The Groove Tiger (profile), 16 Dec 2009 @ 8:05am
  
  Re:
  Good point. Now that NLA is no longer aggregated in NewsNow, the users will get their news from the tens of thousands of other sources that NewsNow has, and NLA will lose the free advertising, which will go to their competitors.
  
  Good thing there's a ton of other goodies filling that "empty shell" other than NLA.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2009 @ 1:05pm
    
    Re: Re:
    You make the (false) assumption that they wanted advertising to start with. You make the (false) assumption that they are willing to trade part of the stories in return for it.
    
    Most important, you have the horrible assumption that NewsNow has the right to make that choice for them. They do not.
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    - Hephaestus (profile), 16 Dec 2009 @ 1:40pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Rupert M is that you?
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    - Hephaestus (profile), 16 Dec 2009 @ 1:42pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Oh I forgot .... robots.txt .... google it
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      - The Groove Tiger (profile), 16 Dec 2009 @ 1:46pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        You make the horrible assumption that Google has the right to decide whether some page is indexed in their search engine!
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Yeebok (profile), 16 Dec 2009 @ 5:06am

It is rather odd ..
That the terms include personal details, very odd indeed. If the whole thing is so bad it's strange to have several companies already signing up, but of course there's the potential for some bias there for all I know. Is the Guardian owned by one of those agencies ?
They're all relevant questions I guess, but really, the way things were going, a line was bound to get drawn in the sand some time and some where soon. This may even tip Murdoch's hand or make him reconsider .. who knows ? Not I.
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David Gerard (profile), 16 Dec 2009 @ 10:39am

They tried it on Wikipedia
They emailed a price list to the Wikimedia UK press email claiming they should get a fee for links on the encyclopedia! Price list and all!

Maurice Jarre was unavailable for comment ...

(I told 'em that WMUK is just a local chapter and the servers are run by Wikimedia Foundation in the US, and to try their luck there. *cough*)
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Edd, 16 Dec 2009 @ 1:08pm

Never pay for News. Out west the most western part of the USA here. News Papers are killing themselves. The print is too small only News being reported is bad things happening. The glossy picture ad’s do not work well for toilet paper or fire starting .99% of the news is copy past reprints. The modern times of electronic News, TV, Computer age. Myself I enjoy Techdirt.com articles where the truth is told. Was a day when every household and outhouse had newspapers with changing times it is very difficult to find quality paper? News Papers should be paying Techdirt.com for placing links for them in the advertising industry people pay for advertisement space. Don’t open that door NEVER PAY to help anyone. The privacy part of my information not a problem I use a very good spam blocker Office Outlook and out West is a different set of rules. One day the Newspaper will be rule damaging to the public worldwide people abuse their children and pets with the news papers. You never hear of anyone swatting others with a computer?
cc.
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vastrightwing, 16 Dec 2009 @ 2:14pm

News has no monetary value
Sorry about that. It’s true. No one pays for news. People pay for tangible value like paper, books, devices, labor. News has no monetary value because it’s not tangible and it’s ubiquitous. Air has no monetary value either, that is until it’s packaged inside a compressed container and has a regulator on it. Again, no one is paying for the air. They’re paying for the convenience of being able to breathe underwater using a device, which contains air. But no one will pay for the air. Again, news has zero monetary value. It has value, just not in currency. Take the news and package it in a tangible form that makes people want to pay for the tangible form, then yes, people will pay. Just don’t expect people to pay money to download news or information that is ubiquitous. HELLO!!!!!! Is this concept that hard to understand?
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njoy, 16 Dec 2009 @ 9:45pm

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GrokSurf (profile), 17 Dec 2009 @ 3:01am

Disappointing decision
If they're only making the headline a link, it's nothing more than a citation, plain and simple. The licensing agency is clueless and would have the same standing if they went after a book author who cited their stories. NewsNow sets a bad precedent by caving to them.
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Andrew Hughes, 23 Dec 2009 @ 1:20am

Check your facts and sources team;- this is the NLA talking. NLA is telling NewsNow and others who sell our content for cash (and NewsNow are sitting on £1.4m cash made from this business see http://www.newsnow.co.uk/services/) that they have to share that cash with the content creators. NewsNow's free site is unaffected and still serves free links. This is about commercial exploitation by businesses (the right to get stinking rich), not the right to link. And NewsNows traffic from paid services is trivial
See www.nla-web.com
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- Mike Masnick (profile), 23 Dec 2009 @ 3:58am
  
  Re:
  NLA is telling NewsNow and others who sell our content for cash (and NewsNow are sitting on £1.4m cash made from this business see http://www.newsnow.co.uk/services/) that they have to share that cash with the content creators.
  
  Andrew, NewsNow isn't selling "your content" for cash. They're linking to your content. What they're selling is a service, providing people "directions" to your content. Do store owners also demand money from map makers for helping people find them?
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