The British newspaper industry is fighting tooth and nail to stop commercial services from aggregating links to newspaper content for free. In January 2010, The National Licensing Agency (NLA), which is owned by eight newspaper publishers in the UK, started charging sites that link to newspaper’s online articles as part of their paid-for services.
Today the High Court in the UK ruled in favour of the National Licensing Agency in the case against Meltwater. The Court concluded that aggregated web links taken from newspaper websites are protected by copyright law.
Separate Copyright Tribunal proceedings on the matter are expected to take place in February 2011.
Full story on the Press Gazette.
This is interesting. I wonder how many sites there are out there that contains nothing but aggregated material. Local news portals that use Pipes! to present news from national newspapers that is relevant in a specific geografic area (for example…).