Paywall rights and wrongs
Jinfo Blog

22nd August 2010

By Tim Buckley Owen

Item

Media monitoring services provider BurrellesLuce has just agreed a new licence with the Financial Times. From 1 October it's authorised to deliver links to FT.com content through its portal, which allows clients to monitor and measure their media coverage in both free and subscription sources. The actual deal is pretty routine; the FT has similar arrangements with 19 other media monitoring agencies. But interestingly, it also took the opportunity of the BurrellesLuce announcement to specifically point out that the Copyright Clearance Center (which procures agreements with rightsholders to provide collective copyright licensing services) does not have any mandate for FT digital output, only photocopying of FT newspaper articles (http://digbig.com/5bcfds). Up to last February the Newspaper Licensing Agency could license the use of FT digital images. But the FT is progressively withdrawing this right as licences fall due, as part of its strategy of building direct relationships with customers rather than operating through third parties (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e27877). The FT’s long term licensing policy is an object lesson in how you can charge effectively for news. Rather like News Corporation now with the Times and Sunday Times (see Penny Crossland’s coverage at http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29756), the FT raised some eyebrows when it first started limiting free access to FT.com (see for example VIP 51, February 2008 – purchase details at http://web.freepint.com/go/shop/magazine/528). But the FT didn’t stop aggregators featuring its content; it simply licensed them to do so – unlike News Corporation which so far has barred Nexis, Meltwater and NewsNow (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e28433). Also, the FT’s content is platform-independent – again in contrast with News Corporation, which seems to make a distinction between different platforms and their potential (Penny Crossland again at http://www.vivavip.com/go/e30216). So platform-independent is the FT, in fact, that it has just launched a new combined print and digital paid-for circulation measure (http://digbig.com/5bcfdt). Supported by an Independent Assurance Statement from auditor Deloitte, the total circulation figure is made up of average daily newspaper sales as well as active FT.com digital and e-reader subscriptions – and the FT has also recently launched an Average Daily Global Audience measurement tool, further doing away with the silo-based approach to content supply (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29101). Amid continuing tough times, the Financial Times Group saw 9% headline sales growth in the first half of 2010, with half year adjusted operating profit up from £14 million last year to £30 million now. Digital subscriptions were up 27% in the period, registered users up 77% and there were almost 250,000 downloads of the FT’s new iPad app (link to results from http://digbig.com/5bcfdw). You can put a lot of this down to its unique niche offer of course. But is it also partly the FT getting right everything that News Corporation seems to be getting wrong?

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