Exempting charities from media licensing
We want to remove the burden of the media licensing regime from charities by exempting them from copyright licensing fees. 
Media monitoring is an important activity for charities, but the current media licensing system requires them to pay for a copyright licence to circulate copies of the coverage they receive to colleagues. The fees are collected by the Newspaper Licensing Agency (the NLA), which is owned by the UK’s eight major newspaper groups. Each year the NLA raises over £26 million in copyright fees, of which about £1.3 million comes from charities – around 5%. The NLA’s running costs account for about a quarter of all that is raised, and the rest is distributed between 1,400 newspapers.
Take action
We’d love to hear from charities that they support our campaign: the more we have backing us, the stronger our voice will be. To express your charity’s support for the campaign to exempt charities from media licensing fees, please fill in your details here: www.charitycomms.org.uk/support_our_media_licensing_campaign
We have received press coverage of our campaign from The Guardian, PRWeek and Third Sector, so please share your views and experiences in the comments section of these publications. You can also share on Twitter using #copyrightfees and on our Facebook page.
Have your say to the NLA
The NLA has invited CharityComms to its offices on 23 February to discuss our media licensing campaign and see its operation in detail. We want this meeting to reflect the concerns we have as a sector, so please leave a question or comment we can take to them here: www.charitycomms.org.uk/have_your_say_to_the_NLA
CharityComms' Research
CharityComms’ own research reveals widespread feeling that the current system is not working for charities for a variety of reasons:
- Charities are paying to get their own coverage back
- Charities’ coverage is mainly local, but the NLA forces them to pay for national licenses
- Media licensing is not cheap, and it takes effort, time and resource to negotiate the labyrinthine complexities of the current system
- Charities are being forced to pay to circulate coverage that individuals can circulate freely
CharityComms has published a report on charities’experiences of the media licensing regime:
Click here and fill in your details to download a copy of our Media Licensing and Charities report. By giving us your email address you're just opting in to receive updates and news of this campaign.
A Beginner’s Guide to Media Licensing in the Charity Sector
We have produced
A Beginner’s Guide to Media Licensing in the Charity Sector to answer some of the questions comms professionals ask when working out where their charity stands regarding media licensing and their media monitoring work. We have brought together different charities’ knowledge and experience of the NLA and CLA to help charities negotiate this often confusing system. The guide functions as both a FAQ resource and a ‘how-to’ guide to help charities understand the system, and get the best deal for themselves out of it.
Click here and fill in your details to download a copy of the guide. By giving us your email address you're just opting in to receive updates and news of this campaign.
Related News
On 14th February, the Copyright Tribunal finally ruled on the long legal battle between the NLA and Meltwater/PRCA, with both sides claiming a victory. The case was raised by Meltwater/PRCA to contest the NLA's extension of licences to cover the following of hyperlinks to news articles.
The Tribunal's judgement supports the NLA's claim that this is a potential breach of copyright, though it massively reduced the proposed additional licence fee (by 90%), which it said was 'not reasonable and required amendment'.
Meltwater will appeal to the Supreme Court on the rulings that went against them. The NLA has now suggested it will use this judgement to go after commercial customers of other hyperlink news services, including Google News.
While this judgement will affect charity clients of Meltwater and other similar services, it does not have a direct bearing on the CharityComms media licensing campaign, the next step of which is a meeting with the NLA on 23rd February.
More information on the Copyright Tribunal ruling.