A battle has been raging between the owners of national newspapers (the traditional ones, not the Caledonian Mercury) and the Public Relations industry over whether PR firms (and indeed anyone else) can share links to online articles without infringing copyright law. It’s gone all the way to the UK Supreme Court which has now ruled in favour of the arguments made by the PRCA (Public Relations Consultants’ Association) against the NLA (Newspaper Licensing Authority). The matter has not been completely resolved as the case will now be referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) so that this point can be clarified across the entire EU.
Francis Ingham
Chief Execuive, PRCA
Francis Ingham, PRCA Chief Executive said that the PRCA was “very proud to have stood up on behalf of the whole PR industry for the last few years. We are delighted that the highest court in the country accepted our argument outright.”
The news has come as a relief to many small PR firms. Penny Haywood Calder, founder of the Edinburgh-based PHPR claimed that it “beggars belief that the NLA thought it could charge for looking at a web page online if it included newspaper articles and passing on a link to an article, something millions of people probably do all over the world every day. It is particularly galling as the NLA is extracting cash from the PR industry and their clients, despite us alerting journalists to many potential stories and often bending over backwards to give them access to senior executives for quotes and comment. To charge us for checking to see what a publication had done with that input is, in my opinion, ridiculous.”
The problem for the firms like PHPR is a concern that the current ruling has restricted its use of such material for fear of infringing rights and incurring large fees. It, for example, has moved towards B2B clients targeting trade press rather than newspapers.
Haywood Calder saw the NLA license as unfair. She explained that its introductory rate for a small agency was limited to a firm of up to 5 people serving just three clients. But small PR firms like hers have to run more than 3 clients a year per consultant to break even.
Penny Haywood Calder
MD, PHPR Ltd
“It places us in an impossible situation,” she said, “if we get a spate of one-off launches and other ad hoc work. We are too small to risk falling foul of the rules, so we just suggest to clients that they make their own arrangements to see results. It is galling when our client knowledge gives us the ability to go into each and every online news search in more granular detail than would be possible with a general monitoring brief involving a third party.”
According to the PRCA, the Supreme Court said that the NLA’s position would be “an unacceptable result, which would make infringers of many millions of ordinary users of the internet across the EU who use browsers and search engines for private as well as commercial purposes.”
Jorn Lyssegen, CEO of Meltwater, the news monitoring agency which has led the claim on behalf of the industry, said that he was “very pleased that the Supreme Court overruled the previous rulings of the Court of Appeals and The High Court that the simple act of browsing the Internet could be copyright infringement. This ruling is an important step in modernizing the interpretation of UK copyright law and protects UK Internet users from overreaching copyright collectors.”