You’re a thriving young business with a brilliant idea that the press have caught onto. You have generated interest and received some excellent articles in the national and regional press which you want to share with your customers, prospects, fans and followers. So you fire up the computer, innocently upload the coverage to your company website and social networks and it’s creating extra buzz for the products.
Fantastic – away you go!
Well, maybe not so fantastic as entrepreneur Sally Guyer, creator of the innovative Cambridge Raincoat Company discovered to her dismay. None of us has the right to copy and display press coverage – even on our own business – without the permission of the publisher and many of the national and regional newspapers are protected by the controversial NLA (Newspaper Licensing Association). Controversial because there have been battles to challenge the copying fees the NLA seeks to enforce on businesses.
Note also that the CLA (Copyright Licensing Association) has a similar role in protecting the copyright of publishers of trade magazines and periodicals.
Be aware that neither publications nor journalists doing a piece on your innovation are under any obligation to tell you about the licence before they commence or publish the interview – and to be fair, that’s not their job.
Public relations and communications professionals are (or certainly should be) well aware of the rules around copying and displaying media articles and will advise clients, but are the huge number of start-ups and fledgling SMEs that do not have a PR advisor aware? Is enough being done to promote the requirement for a licence to SMEs before they fall into the trap of infringing copyright rules? Clearly not based on Sally Guyer’s worrying experience. SMEs could face months or years of back licence fees if copyright agencies stumble across publicly displayed coverage that is not covered by a licence.
When you consider that SMEs play a major part in the UK’s economic growth and that Start Up Britain’s tracker shows that 216,428 SMEs have been formed so far this year (2,403 started today), that’s a lot of companies that could unwittingly copy articles and promote them online, and be faced with an unexpected bill later down the line.
Most new business owners look for the lowest cost route to promote their business in order to protect cashflow, so it’s important to avoid the copyright trap. The UK is well-served by organisations and events for start-ups, yet none of them mention the copyright licensing associations, although the use of free publicity via social media is being advocated left, right and centre.
The internet, business media and networking seminars are awash with advice to help SMEs “do their own thing” in sales, marketing and PR, but thus far I have not seen the issue of media copyright featured. Perhaps it’s time for the licensing agencies to proactively engage with the SME sector to ensure they are helped and not hindered in their march towards success and wealth creation for the country.
*Sally Guyer has given permission to be included in the blog
Tags: copyright, press coverage
