That Link You Just Posted Could Cost You 300 Euros

Nate the greatest writes "Do you like to tweet or share links to interesting news articles? According to a coalition of Irish newspapers, that makes you a pirate. The National Newspapers of Ireland has adopted a new policy. Any website which links to one of the 15 NNI member newspapers will have to pay a minimum of 300 Euros, with the license fee going up if you post more links. Note that this is not a fee to post an excerpt or some punitive measure for the copying of an entire article. No, the NNI wants to charge for links alone. It's almost as if this organization has no idea how the web works. Or maybe they have found an elaborate way to commit suicide."

Comments

Re:Link please

[Anonymous Coward]

Irish Independent
Irish Examiner
The Irish Times
Irish Daily Star
Evening Herald
The Sunday Independent
Sunday World
The Sunday Business Post
Irish Mail on Sunday
Irish Farmers Journal
Irish Daily Mail
Irish Daily Mirror
Irish Sun
Irish Sunday Mirror
The Sunday Times
Irish Sun Sunday

Re:Those who forget the past...

[Synerg1y]

1. Bigger entities have tried going after google only to fail, google can just exclude the links, or if worse comes to worse blacklist Ireland (not likely they have tax entities there I think)

2. The only point of this article I really care about is that they're lobbying for this, which doesn't mean shit usually no idea how this made the news.

3. By doing this they'd encourage people to copy paste their articles, strip out the sources, possibly change some wording and republish, at least with links they get web traffic for ads.

NNI's submission to Copyright Review

[qwe4rty]

I was skeptical when I first read this submission so I did some digging around and found the National Newspapers of Ireland's submission to the Copyright Review Committee here. I'm dumbfounded

The Consultation Paper, at page 48, briefly discusses the issue of linking and goes on to provide for a proposed amendment to existing copyright legislation to provide that the offering of a link on a page on the internet is not an infringement of copyright law. The underlying rationale set out by the Consultation Paper in this section is misconceived and we do not accept as being based on fact.

Section 6.3 of the Consultation Paper provides that Courts, (although it does not specify which Courts) are increasingly concluding that a link, by itself, should never be seen as a publication, reproduction or communication of the content to which it refers, even where that content is an infringement of copyright. The NNI takes serious exception to the statement included in the Consultation Paper that “the fact that links make access to that content straightforward does not change the reality that a link, by itself, is content neutral.” "

It is the view of NNI that a link to copyright material does constitute infringement of copyright, and would be so found by the Courts.

Just when you thought people couldn't get any stupider...

Re:Here's a link for all of them

[Pieroxy]

We'll show them the light ! Here they are, all of them in all their glory:

http://www.independent.ie/
http://www.irishexaminer.com/
http://www.irishtimes.com/
http://www.thestar.ie/
http://www.herald.ie/
http://www.independent.ie/
http://www.sundayworld.com/
http://www.businesspost.ie/
http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/fr/viewer.aspx (they don't even have a website, how funny)
http://www.farmersjournal.ie/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/
http://www.thesun.ie/
http://www.mirror.co.uk/
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/
http://www.thesun.co.uk/

Most of them don't even have an irish dedicated website. They are pathetic. It's like passing a decree that makes people owing me $300 if they ever whisper my name in their car. There. Be warned.