by Louise Bruce, The BFA

Think you can share a magazine or newspaper article about your business online? Think again.

At least once a month, our PR department drops a friendly note to one of our members to let them know they’ve broken the Copyright and Designs Patents Act 1988.

‘Sorry, but we noticed your latest social media post infringes copyright – you need to take it down.’

Cue confusion: ‘But we thought…’

‘I know, wouldn’t that be nice? But no – it’s the law.’
‘But what if I don’t…?’
‘You could face hefty fines – and they can (and do) check back through six years of your posts for violations. The bill could be thousands of pounds.’
Cue grumpy post removal.

We don’t like being the bearer of bad news, but we’re genuinely trying to save you money. #dontshootthemessenger

So, let’s put this issue to bed once and for all. In case you don’t read the rest of the article, the rules about sharing coverage without a license are:

• You cannot replicate – (photocopy, scan, screenshot) any kind of printed matter e.g. a magazine, newspaper, or a pdf of the page of a newspaper or magazine.
• You cannot share – the image of the page on social media or on your company website*, even if you put a link to the newspaper/magazine/article in the same post. Just, no.
• Any headlines or extracts copied from the article would also require cover by a license

The publication can grant you permission to use it however, this must come from the correct department and there will usually be a charge for this, which in a lot of cases can work out more expensive than the license, depending on the rights permitted.

Example

Say you sent a press release, with photo that you had taken, to the Daily Mail and it ended up on the front page. Happy days. Fabulous exposure for your brand and understandably, you want to share the coverage on all your social channels and website. But, without a license, can you?

Copyright FAQ’s

• Can you buy a hard copy of a magazine or newspaper, scan it and file it on your laptop/server or email it to colleagues or share it on social media? Er, no.
• Can you take a photo of the coverage (or a pic of a colleague reading it) and file it on your laptop/server or email it to colleagues or share it on social media? Yikes, absolutely not.
• Can you take a screen shot of the coverage from your computer/phone/laptop and file it on your laptop/server or email it to colleagues or share it on social media? Close, but no.

We understand how counterintuitive this feels, surely the magazine or newspaper would be happy that you’ve shared the story, so more people will read their publication? Well yes, they probably would be, but sadly, that’s not how it works.

So how DO you share coverage you’ve achieved in a magazine or newspaper?

Without licenses, there is only one way to legally share content from a newspaper or magazine and that’s through sharing links. Collect the URL from the online version of the publication and cut and paste it into your social media post. Don’t be tempted to do a screenshot of the page AND share the link, that’s still breaking copyright law. Only share the link.

The licenses

The world of copyright licensing is a murky and complicated one, our best advice is to check directly with the agency to see what you need.

Generally speaking, you only need a license if you receive coverage from a media monitoring agency or your PR agency.

However, licenses are also required for any internal copying and sharing of content eg: if someone in your office copied an extract from an article about baby pandas and saved it to their desktop or shared it with a colleague, they would need a license. Yes, any article, from any newspaper or magazine, about any subject. Not just about your company.

A glimmer of hope

The good news is, and yes, there is some, if you are just receiving coverage from your PR agency and deleting it after viewing with no further use of that content internally, you may not require a license. Hurrah!

Who sells the licenses?

There are two organisations that monitor and control the copyright of most printed matter in the UK, the CLA and the NLA. Aside from dishing out the fines for you breaking the law, they can also sell licences to allow you to move your coverage about and share it in certain places. Bear with us. It gets a bit complicated. At this point you should know that:

• The NLA covers newspapers, magazines, and news websites.
• The CLA covers books, journals, and magazines (but not newspapers).
• Both the NLA and the CLA cover magazines, but different titles that never overlap.

A license… to do what?

You can buy licenses to allow you to receive coverage from a media monitoring agency/PR agency, and to share that coverage internally with your colleagues and to download it to your system/laptop.

You can also buy a separate Corporate Website Republishing Licence (CWRL) to allow you to share coverage on your website or social media.

You can even buy a license that allows you to receive links, from a media monitoring service, to view your coverage online.

How much are licenses?

The cost is based on the size of you company, so a small start up franchise is going to pay the minimum compared to a behemoth like McDonalds. The costs start in the low hundreds, but rise up to the thousands depending on the size of the company. Your PR agency will also have to have a license to be able to receive coverage from a media monitoring agency and send it on to you. This cost is usually passed on to the client.

Our advice

Go back through your posts for the past six years, on all your channels, if you think you may have broken copyright laws, and delete them.

Educate all your staff on copyright law, so none of them break the law in the future.

Do your own research on the NLA and CLA websites, to see if you think you should have a license. If you do, give them a ring and they’ll talk you through the process.

If you regularly deal with published content, it may be worth you getting Media Liability Insurance. This will help with copyright infringement, defamation and libel, plagiarism, breach of confidentiality and misuse of intellectual property but it probably won’t cover regulatory fines as discussed above.

Your PR or marketing agency should have their own Professional Indemnity Insurance which, in case they accidently advise you incorrectly about copyright use, could cover legal costs arising from a negligence claim but still won’t cover regulatory fines.

Yes, it is a bit of mine field and one that 50% of the business world is totally unaware of, but now you know the rules and where to go to buy the correct licenses, you should be ok.

For more information visit www.nlamediaaccess.com and www.cla.co.uk

Safe posting!