Subscription service blocked by newspapers

Agregator site NewsNow has been blocked by a series of newspapers including The Daily Mirror from trawling their websites. NewsNow Chairman Struan Bartlett said that the move by the newspapers is “an unacceptable restraint of freedom of expression”.

NewsNow runs a subscription service popular with PR agencies and companies who keep track of mentions of their brands in the media, but have declined to pay for a licence with the Newspaper Licence Agency (NLA) even though it is paid to collate and distribute lists by its clients.

This has made the subscription unpopular in some newspaper circles, though Andrew Hughes of the NLA says they that have “no dispute” with NewsNow. The Commercial Director expressed disappointment that the service refused to pay for a licence saying that NewsNow were within their rights to operate without a licence, but stated that it is “important to respect the creators of content and share the value that comes out of content creation.”

The Daily Mirror uses a file which limits how much search engines can list, claiming that it has no objection to other aggregators like Google News who do not make money from their feeds. The Sun and Times Online have also recently blocked the service.

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