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THE ORGANISATION WHICH collects money from websites which it says breaks copyright by linking to Irish newspapers has issued a statement on its position following much discussion online.
In a 64-word statement posted on its website, Newspaper Licensing Ireland set out its stance on charging for links, saying:
For personal use: NLI never requires or requests a licence for personal use of newspaper content.
For commercial use: NLI does not require a licence from any organisation which only displays or transmits links to newspaper content. A licence is required when there is other reproduction of the newspaper content, such as display of PDFs or text extracts.
The statement appears to contradict information which was sent to charity Women’s Aid in 2012 by NLI. Solicitor Simon McGarr published extracts from correspondence sent to the charity which stated that:
A licence is required to link directly to an online article even without uploading any of the content directly onto your own website.
The NLI is a subsidiary of National Newspapers of Ireland, which represents 16 national newspapers and 25 local and regional newspapers across Ireland.
Today’s NLI statement echoes comments made by the NNI on Friday, when the newspaper body said that “copying activity” which would require payment included reproducing an extract from an article or the full text of the article along with the link.
The NNI also asserts that a hyperlink from one website to another can constitute copyright infringement.
The majority of Irish newspapers have not commented on the ongoing situation. However the Irish Times has said that it is in favour of people linking to its site.
In an opinion piece today, the newspaper’s Chief Innovation Officer Johnny Ryan said the issue for the Irish Times is one of reproduction of content rather than linking:
A clear separation of the benign issue of “linking to” content from the more fraught issue of “reproduction of” content is required to allow the copyright debate to proceed on the correct footing.
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Translated NLI statement:
The Journal must be raging. If the NLI had their way they would kill off the web presence of every paper in this country.
Well done Simon McGarr , when he first reported on this back in May no one batted an eyelid,
but with that well timed statement in the dead week at the start of the year he got enough furor about it.
So they print an article on me or my company and then I can’t use the information without paying for it?
No problem, I will charge the newspaper for using my name and information related to me – problem sorted.
Clowns
So why are they (still) suing Women’s Aid for linking (nothing more) to an Examiner article?
I do wonder what would happen if the various online websites that the newspapers regularly poach content from were to sue those same papers for breach of copyright…
They never actually sued anybody. A threat of legal action is just that a threat. If had ever gotten to court it would likely be thrown out.
What is amazing is their blatant rewriting their stance each time they “clarify”. They can’t even stay true to old media let alone new media.
Delighted. They tried to pull a fast one, and were called on it. Well done to Simon McGarr for highlighting the issue, and well done to thejournal for being the only Irish new organisation to bring it to our collective attention!
Are you going to be charged for quoting the statement ?
I hope not! I’m really broke after Christmas :-/
The invoice is on its way
Damn. This really escalated quickly.
I killed a guy with a trident
Where can I send you my invoice for reproducing the words I type in here?
back-peddling?????
Back pedaling, more like it. They’re in a hurry.
So, what about non-commercial places like boards.ie and politics.ie? Are posters there allowed to link to articles? Are they allowed to quote any text from a linked article? Or are they restricted to “fair use”? Or are they prohibited from quoting and linking at all?
I’d have thought that the NNI would be interested in encouraging its members content to be spread far and wide amongst the country’s busiest internet forums, but perhaps they want to cede that honor to theJournal and suffer the inevitable backlash that will follow.
Who knows? I certainly don’t after this pointless “clarification”.
That’s where the hilarity is I reckon.. if legacy print media don’t grasp the concept that more page hits = more advertising revenue then the world will move on without them . Ironically they should be paying people /orgs to link to their sites if they were savy enough..
“Fair use”?
I was under the impression that Irish Law recognised no such beastie?
Aren’t both boards.ie and politics.ie commercial publications?
The online editor of IrishTimes.com said on Twitter this evening that Boards.ie will not be charged for links to the Irish Times. That’s the first clarification I’ve seen about whether forums could potentially be charged for links – and it still doesn’t clarify what the position of other newspapers is on this – because this has yet to be clarified by the NNI or the NLI.
Did they really think they were going to shut down the internet as we know it?!? Idiots.
While in the pub last week, I picked up a National Newspaper from the counter and read some of it. When my friend joined me later, I referred to an article I had scanned in the paper earlier. Is there now some tax for doing this ???
I’d like to know who sent the first e-mail to Women’s Aid in the first place. Charging to links is really too ridiculous to be real. Clearly they’re technologically illiterate either way, maybe it’s just a stupid mistake.
I wonder if they are going to sue The Journal for quoting their statement now.
have your say