*Breaking* UK news aggregator NewsNow is pulling links to many of the UK's biggest national newspapers after failure to reach agreement with The Newspaper Licensing Agency Limited (the NLA).
The NLA had threatened NewsNow with legal action if it did not change the way it does business or cease from linking altogether.
The aggregator's managing director Struan Bartlett said: "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.”
Newspaper titles that NewsNow is to pull from its subscription service include The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and the Daily Mirror. NLA member publications will remain available via NewsNow’s free website.
For the background to this story see:
Good. Less dominance for the big outlets and more prominence for smaller blogs & websites (which can be listed on NewsNow, provided they meet editorial standards).
Posted by: Martin (riverScrap) | Dec 26, 2009 at 18:45