CharityComms has launched a campaign this week to exempt charities from paying a fee for sharing online news articles. I am wholeheartedly behind this campaign which seems grossly unfair and an unnecessary burden on charities at a time when many are closing down due to funding cuts. Im also very disappointed to see The Guardian in with other newspapers behind bringing in this charge which goes against their usually positive approach to the sector including its Guardian Voluntary Sector Network website.
The Newspaper Licensing Association is the body that raises £26m a year in copyright fees of which about £1.3m comes from charities. The NLA is owned by the UK’s eight major newspaper groups (Associated Newspapers, Financial Times, Guardian Media Group, Independent News and Media, Northern and Shell, News International, Daily Telegraph and Trinity Mirror). The NLA’s running costs account for about a quarter of all that is raised, and the rest is distributed between 1,400 newspapers. Charities already pay a licensing fee to the NLA for sharing printed news content i.e. photocopies or printouts of newspaper articles.
They have a counter-argument to CharityComms attack which is presented in the Guardian saying a free licence for charities is “unrealistic and unfair”. I don’t agree with their assertion that they are providing a useful service with monitoring tools, as this is a service they charge for. I have some sympathy for wanting to raise some revenue for newspapers as many are struggling in this new digital age.
However I don’t agree with charging charities for sharing digital content with their supporters, for the same reasons that Vicky Browning, Director of CharityComms has given:
- Charities are paying to get their own coverage back.
- Charities’ coverage is mainly local, but the NLA forces them to pay for national licences.
- Media licensing is not cheap. CharityComms research shows that it typically costs £1 for every article copied, and the largest charities are paying over £10,000 for media licensing. There is a charity discount, but this fixed at £158 no matter how big the fee.
- Why should charities pay when individuals can circulate articles freely?
I have an additional reason though. In 2009 I was contacted by a VONNE member who was pursued for payment by the NLA with daily emails and phonecalls demanding payment for photocopying newspaper articles and threatened with prosecution. We shared this cautionary tale with other members, some who shared this experience and had thought it was a hoax agency such was their approach.
If you agree with CharityComms on the unfairness of this fee you can add your support in the following ways:
“email vicky@charitycomms.org.uk, and share your views and experiences in the comments section of The Guardian article, below this post and on our Facebook page. We’ve also had coverage in PR Week and Third Sector, so feel free to comment on those stories too. You can also share on Twitter using #copyrightfees.”
4 comments
Thanks so much for this blog, Carrie, and for your support of our campaign. The Guardian has now put up a poll asking if the media licensing fee is unfair on charities, so do vote ‘yes’ and show the sector’s strength of feeling: http://www.guardian.co.uk/voluntary-sector-network/poll/2012/jan/18/media-licensing-fees-charities
Great post – and it doesn’t just stop at charities of course. David Pugh says the NLA “provides a useful revenue stream to British newspapers”. Well I’m sure it does (!) but that doesn’t mean it will always be there to do so.
As Clay Shirky describes – in terms of SOBA in the US – in his TED talk yesterday; all of these rules of engagement between the producers of media and us, its “consumers” (now also producers of course), were drawn up in the 20th Century. These old models don’t like us sharing content – and desperately want to pull down the fortress walls in terms of their output / our consumption. If we’re sharing content so liberally now, copyright is being breached beyond any bounds – all the time, everyday.
The NLA are lucky that at the moment they are still able to call-in these fees from companies and charities on their sharing and redistribution of news content. But – seriously – is this sustainable in terms of where we are now (think of Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, etc, and so on)?
Oops – typo – I meant SOPA
Hi
You may like to look at the outcome of the copyright/NLA case Meltwater has been fighting on behalf of its clients. http://prca.org.uk/NLALicenseFAQs