PRCA members to learn of savings following Copyright Tribunal decision

London, 22nd May - Members of the PRCA will this week be informed how much money they have saved thanks to the industry body’s campaign for a fairer fees for media monitoring on the internet.

Individuals will be written to by PRCA Chief Executive, Francis Ingham, to inform members of their potential saving following the body’s representation of the industry in its legal dispute with the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA). This dispute has centred around the NLA’s plans to introduce a license for end-users of online monitoring services.

Last week, the Copyright Tribunal officially ruled on the fee structure for copyright licences but they have considerably reduced the costs originally proposed.

The PRCA estimates that the decision means that, as calculated by the Meltwater Group and PRCA, its campaign will have saved the industry as a whole around £100 million in fees over the next three years.

The exact amount  of money saved depends on how many members of staff are employed, how many of them use monitoring services, and whether the company already possess another NLA licence.

Mr Ingham said: “This is a well deserved result which demonstrates to our members, and indeed to the wider industry that we will not shy away from out commitment to members and our desire to protect their interests.”

 

ENDS

Notes to Editors

The NLA first introduced web licences on 1st January 2010, giving media monitoring organisations (MMOs), such as Meltwater News, and their clients the right to make commercial use of content published on newspaper websites. Licensing affects those businesses who supply and receive headlines, text extracts and links to newspaper websites as a part of a paid for media monitoring service.

This decision by the Copyright Tribunal means that licensing can now begin, on terms accepted by all parties. The NLA will commence invoicing for these fees from next month, backdated to 1st January 2010.

 

Following the Copyright Tribunal ruling on 14 February 2012 the PRCA and Meltwater Group issued a statement that changes to the web end user licence fee proposed by the Copyright Tribunal will save UK businesses and public sector organisations an estimated £100million over the next three years. The NLA Ltd has asked how Meltwater calculated this figure. The PRCA and Meltwater are delighted to share the calculations.

Meltwater calculated savings for its clients over the next 3 years – the methodology is below.

  • Meltwater randomly selected 10% of their Meltwater News UK client base (210 clients) of which half already had an NLA license (i.e. for photocopying news articles) and half did not have any prior agreement with the NLA.
  • They calculated the costs of the licences for each of these clients in 2012, 2013 and 2014, as per the NLA’s originally proposed fee structure using the fixed licence fee, which is the relevant one for their UK clients, with the ad hoc search fee on top (as all their clients require it).
  • The resulting number was then used as an average for Meltwater’s full UK client base (2,100) – a saving of about £24 million owing to the Copryright Tribunal’s drastic reductions in the price increases that the NLA planned to impose after 2011.

Savings for the industry as a whole over the next 3 years – how Meltwater worked it out

  • Meltwater understand that their share of the total UK online media monitoring market is approximately 25%
  • Extrapolated this therefore means savings of around £100 million for UK businesses

 

For more information please call Katharine Barney or Tom Hawkins on 020 7233 6026

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