Esta es la versión HTML de un fichero adjunto a una solicitud de acceso a la información 'Dokumente der Kommission bezüglich "Linktax"'.


Ref. Ares(2016)6796283 - 05/12/2016
Annex I – Gestdem 2016/5882 
Documents 
1. Dr  Richard  Danbury,  Is  an  EU  publishers'  right  a  good  idea?  -  Final  report  on  the
2
AHRC  project:  evaluating  potential  legal  responses  to  threats  to  the  production  of
news in a digital era, CIPIL, 15/06/2016, (Ref. Ares(2016)5575203)
2. Paper  from  EDiMA,  Impact  of  ancillary  rights  in  news,  25/11/2016
87
(Ref.Ares(2016)2874320)
3. EPC,  Draft  Position  Paper:  Presenting  the  Case  for  a  Publishers'  Exclusive  Right,
31/08/2015 ( Ref. Ares(2016)5575203)
95
Links to others documents 
4. Publishersright.eu, Publishers in the Digital Age, Frequently Asked, Questions,
04/05/2016 – See http://www.publishersright.eu/
5. Transcript of the Amsterdam Conference "Copyright, related rights and the news in
the EU: Assessing potential new laws", CIPIL, April 2016 - See:
http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/projectsappraising-potential-legal-responses-
threatsproduction- 
news-digital-environment-ahrc
1

Document 1
Dr Richard Danbury, Is an EU publishers' 
right a good idea? - Final report on the 
AHRC project: evaluating potential legal 
responses to threats to the production of 
news in a digital era, CIPIL, 15/06/2016, 
(Ref. Ares(2016)5575203)
2

Is an EU publishers’ right a good idea? 
Final report on the AHRC project: Evaluating potential legal responses to 
threats to the production of news in a digital era 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This work is an output of a two-year study funded by the AHRC (grant 
H/L004704/1), entitled Appraising Potential Legal Responses to Threats to the 
Production of News in a Digital Environment. The Principal Investigators were 
Professors Lionel Bently and Ian Hargreaves, and the Research Associate was Dr 
Richard Danbury. This final report was the work of Dr Danbury, and he gratefully 
acknowledges the enormous help and assistance he has received, while owning 
that any errors or omissions remain his responsibility. It does not necessarily 
reflect the views of Professors Bently or Hargreaves. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Dr Richard Danbury,  
Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law 
Faculty of Law 
University of Cambridge,  
UK 
xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx 
15 June 2016 
 
 
3

Executive Summary 
This is a discussion about commercial news production, and copyright-related laws in 
Europe. It is a response to the consultation opened by the European Commission in 
March 2016 about whether to create an EU-wide neighbouring right, in the copyright 
family of intellectual property rights, that will benefit publishers. It examines four 
arguments for a news publishers’ right. These are: 
 
•  it will provide a necessary incentive to the commercial production of news, an 
activity that is valuable to a democratic society; 
•  commercial news publishers are treated unequally by EU copyright law, and a 
publishers’ right will resolve this;   
•  online re-distributors of published news are free riding on the effort of 
commercial news publishers, and a publishers’ right can be expected to restrain 
this; 
•  commercial news publishers have a natural right to the news they publish, and 
such rights are being breached by online re-distributors of news: a publishers’ 
right can be expected to protect them. 
The incentive argument 
The incentive argument provides a cogent set of reasons to intervene to benefit the 
commercial news industry. This is because on balance, the commercial news industry can 
be seen as contributing to a healthy democracy in a valuable way, and there is insufficient 
reason to expect it to be replaced by something as useful if it fails. There are also cogent 
reasons to expect that the difficulties in which the commercial news industry finds itself 
are severe, and long-term. If many commercial news operators go bankrupt or withdraw 
from expensive but democratically important activities, this is likely to significantly 
impair communication valuable to our democratic states. This leads to the conclusion that 
an intervention would be useful and beneficial. 
 
However, the incentive argument contains some manifest weaknesses. There is a risk of 
benefitting those who do not need it, or do no longer need it, or for doing things we do 
not want to incentivise. The industry has had in the past remarkable levels of 
profitability, and it would be an error to intervene and replicate these. We must not 
confuse the need to protect the function of journalism with the need to protect its form, 
and we need to disregard any arguments from the commercial news industry or others 
that seek to collapse these together. But, on a balance of risk, it seems appropriate to 
intervene. 
 
What is less clear is that any incentive should be by a right related to copyright, and even 
less clear that any such right should be harmonized across the EU. There must remain 
concerns about whether a publisher’s right would be effective, particularly given the 
experience of the copyright-related laws that were adopted in Germany and Spain in an 
attempt to benefit commercial news producers. It may well provide a marginal benefit, 
which would be welcomed by the news industry, but there is also a very real risk that any 
benefit will become less significant in the future, given the changing patterns of news 
 

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distribution in an online world. And, given differences in the news businesses in Member 
States, intervention might be better if it were not at a European level. 
 
Also significant are the concerns that a publishers’ right may harm or damage others. The 
risk of this should be weighed in the balance against any benefits a publishers’ right 
might be expected to deliver to society. At present, this is difficult because we have no 
text to consider. 
The equality argument 
The equality argument seems simple, but this is deceptive. It may, perhaps, be true that 
news publishers are not afforded neighbouring rights, while other entrepreneurial content 
producers are, and that this appears inconsistent. But before this can amount to a reason 
to bring in a new neighbouring right for news publishers, a variety of complex judgments 
need to be made. What, in detail, will a new right entail; what were the reasons that the 
old rights were afforded; do those reasons pertain now; are they sufficient to support 
providing news publishers with rights?  
 
Moreover, other questions need to be answered, that are raised by the equality argument: 
what other inconsistencies might be created by establishing a news publishers’ right, and 
can these be defended, given the fact that we wish to pass a publishers’ right to avoid 
inconsistencies? And, finally, and importantly, the question arises of the costs that a 
publishers’ right may impose on others. What will these be, and how can they be 
justified? Any justificatory argument will have to look beyond the fact that publishers are 
currently treated in an unequal way. Hence, the equality argument is not, by itself, 
sufficient reason to establish a publishers’ right. 
The free riding argument 
The free riding argument for a publishers’ right is based on the assertion that online re-
distributors of news are deriving an illegitimate benefit from the actions of news 
producers: they are, to quote the nineteenth century English judge North J, reaping where 
they have not sown. Whether this is the case or not is an issue susceptible to empirical 
proof, but it appears that this has not yet been unequivocal.  
 
What should one do in the absence of an unequivocal answer? It is the disruptors, the 
online re-distributors of news, who bear the burden of proving their actions amount to 
promotion rather than substitution. If they are unable to do so, then a publishers’ right 
may be appropriate under the free riding argument. 
 
However, there are some caveats to this conclusion. One is that online redistribution of 
news may be a different market, and that would undermine the argument that a 
publishers’ right would be appropriate. Another is that what the evidence does show, is 
that there are differences between the interests of various publishers, and this may result 
in different answers in respect of different publishers. This means there is an inherent risk 
that a publishers’ right may skew the market in favour of larger players. This is a 
significant concern, particularly for those who value media plurality and diversity. 
 
 

5

It is not clear, therefore, that the free riding argument provides a compelling case for a 
publishers’ right, without further evidence. 
The natural rights argument 
The natural rights argument for a publishers’ right is persuasive, insofar as valid, as 
labour, skill, judgment and creative choices are involved in the production of an edition 
of published news. However, there are cogent reasons to be wary of a publishers’ right, 
nonetheless. A first arises because of the integral nature of published news to a 
democratic state. This connection exists because news is seen as a powerful force in a 
democracy, and that means that it is advisable for policy makers to think long and hard 
before increasing any protection afforded to news, including by means of a publishers’ 
right that might entail greater control over information.  
 
Moreover, the natural rights argument for a publishers’ right is undermined by the 
common practice of news publishers frequently not to respect any natural rights that 
might exist in news that are possessed by other publishers. And finally, even if the 
natural rights argument for a publishers’ right is viable, it should only lead to a limited 
and restricted right, as can be the case with other natural rights arguments.  
 
On balance, intervention to benefit the commercial news industry is merited, but a 
publishers’ right has not been demonstrated to be an appropriate way to intervene to do 
so.  
Other issues 
These concerns about the absence of a specific text lead to some final necessary 
observations, sketching out some further difficulties related to the wording of any 
publishers’ right that haven’t been canvassed so far. The first relates to definition, the 
second to duration, and the third to the wider doctrinal context into which any publishers’ 
right must fit. 
 
 

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Table of contents 
Executive Summary .......................................................................................................... 2 
The incentive argument .................................................................................................. 2 
The equality argument .................................................................................................... 3 
The free riding argument ................................................................................................ 3 
The natural rights argument ............................................................................................ 4 
Other issues ..................................................................................................................... 4 
1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 7 
What’s being considered? ............................................................................................... 7 
How will it be considered? ............................................................................................. 7 
Four arguments for a publishers’ right ........................................................................... 9 
2 The incentive argument – ‘exposing wrongdoing’ or publishing ‘ordures’? ......... 10 
The argument ................................................................................................................ 10 
News is a democratic as well as an economic good ................................................. 10 
The economic difficulties of commercial news publishers ...................................... 11 
The need for incentives in the commercial production of news ............................... 12 
Causes of the decline ................................................................................................ 14 
How might a publishers’ right help? ........................................................................ 16 
Why might a publishers’ right be appropriate? ........................................................ 17 
Summary ................................................................................................................... 19 
Counter-arguments ....................................................................................................... 19 
Challenging the democratic argument ...................................................................... 19 
Challenging the notion that the news business is not thriving .................................. 21 
Challenging the idea that a publishers’ right should be part of the solution ............ 25 
Evaluation ..................................................................................................................... 30 
The challenge to the democratic assumption ............................................................ 31 
The challenge to the notion that the news business is not thriving .......................... 37 
The challenge to the idea a publisher’s right should be part of the solution ............ 40 
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 43 
3 The equality argument ................................................................................................ 45 
The argument ................................................................................................................ 45 
HP v Reprobel ........................................................................................................... 47 
Counter arguments ........................................................................................................ 47 
Truly similar? ............................................................................................................ 48 
More inconsistencies will be created ........................................................................ 49 
The costs this will incur ............................................................................................ 51 
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 55 
4 Free riders – ‘reaping where they have not sown’ ................................................... 57 
The argument ................................................................................................................ 57 
Counter arguments ........................................................................................................ 59 
Promotion or substitution? ........................................................................................ 59 
A new commercial activity? ..................................................................................... 64 
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 66 
5 Natural rights argument – news, coal, and cabbages ............................................... 67 
The argument ................................................................................................................ 67 
The strong version .................................................................................................... 68 

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The weaker version ................................................................................................... 68 
Counter arguments ........................................................................................................ 69 
The unattractive idea of news as property ................................................................ 70 
The implications of mutual copying ......................................................................... 73 
The limits of the notion ............................................................................................. 74 
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 75 
6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 77 
The four arguments, considered separately .................................................................. 77 
The arguments, aggregated ........................................................................................... 78 
Other problems with a publishers’ right ....................................................................... 78 
Problems of definition .............................................................................................. 78 
Problems of duration ................................................................................................. 80 
Other doctrinal concerns ........................................................................................... 81 
Appendix: Some prominent relevant copyright-related cases ................................... 83 
 
 

8

1 Introduction 
What’s being considered? 
This is a discussion about commercial news production, and copyright-related laws in 
Europe. It is a response to the consultation opened by the European Commission in 
March 2016 (‘the Consultation’) about whether to create an EU-wide neighbouring right, 
in the copyright family of intellectual property rights, that will benefit publishers (‘the 
publishers’ right’).1  
 
Any such right would be the latest in series of similar developments in many countries 
around the world, as there have been a number of copyright related interventions 
designed to benefit commercial news producers.2 These legal interventions have included 
litigation and legislation, and negotiation that has taken place against the threat of legal 
action. Such interventions have been prompted by a variety of factors, including the 
decline in fortunes of many parts of the commercial news industry in many parts of the 
world, and the rapid growth of online re-distribution of published news. The suggestion 
that an EU publishers’ right might be appropriate can be ascribed to similar factors. 
These will be discussed in more detail below. 
 
However, the foregoing interventions differ from the proposed EU publishers’ right in a 
number of ways. One is that the Commission is consulting on whether to create a right 
that is wider than those seen elsewhere. As well as proposing the idea of a right to benefit 
news publishers, it is also considering whether to adopt a publishers’ right that will 
benefit publishers in general.3  
 
The legal interventions in other countries – notably Germany and Spain -  have been 
deeply contentious.4 It should be no surprise, therefore, that the idea that there should be 
an EU publishers’ right –whether confined to news publishers or of wider scope - is also 
contentious. This work is intended to contribute to this debate, and evaluate the proposed 
publishers’ right. 
How will it be considered? 
This paper focuses on the question of whether a news publishers’ right is appropriate. 
This is because the analysis draws on a two-year study funded by the AHRC, entitled 
Appraising Potential Legal Responses to Threats to the Production of News in a Digital 
                                                 
1 European Commission, 'Public consultation on the role of publishers in the copyright value chain and on 
the 'panorama exception'  (2016) <https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/public-consultation-
2 A selection of cases can be found in the appendix. Legislation was introduced in countries such as 
Germany in Spain, and was discussed session 2 of the Amsterdam Conference – see text to and n7 
3 The differences between news and other publishers will be discussed in the text to nn 8, 44, 91, 196 
4 These were discussed in session 2 of the Amsterdam Conference. 
 

9

Environment, which concentrated on the position of news publishers.5 Hence when we 
discuss a ‘publisher’s right’ in this paper, we are only to referring to a news publishers’ 
right. The Principal Investigators were Professors Lionel Bently and Ian Hargreaves, and 
the Research Associate was Dr Richard Danbury. This final report was the work of Dr 
Danbury, and he gratefully acknowledges the enormous help and assistance he has 
received, while owning that any errors or omissions remain his responsibility. It does not 
necessarily reflect the views of Professors Bently or Hargreaves. 
 
This study consisted of extensive primary legal and interview-based research; and 
secondary research into sociological, economic, historical and other materials. This was 
supplemented by a series of workshops and a public conference. In terms of the primary 
interview-based research, at least thirty-five people contributed, from eight different 
jurisdictions: UK, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Italy, Spain, and the USA. The 
interviews were semi-structured, designed to discover the views of the interviewees on 
the nature and extent of any difficulties suffered by the commercial news industry, and 
the merits of any copyright-related policy response to these. Those who contributed 
publicly include representatives from, Cutbot, NLA Media Access, The Guardian, News 
UK and RELX. Many others contributed privately, including other news publishers, 
online redistributors of news, academics, practitioners and policy makers. 
 
A semi-public workshop was held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London 
on 3rd November 2015, a summary of which can be found online.6  Private meetings and 
workshops took place in the USA from the 10th to the 13th November 2015, and a public 
conference was held at IViR at the University of Amsterdam on 23rd April 2016 (the 
‘Amsterdam Conference’). A recording of the Amsterdam Conference, and a transcript 
can be found online. 7  
 
Three unpublished working papers were prepared: a comparative study of copyright-
related legal interventions that focussed on Denmark, Germany and Belgium; an analysis 
of prominent sociological and communications studies literature that considers the place 
of commercial journalism and its contribution to democracy in digitally networked 
world; and a comparative analysis of freedom of speech and copyright and related laws in 
the US, EU and ECHR. A number of presentations were delivered at a variety of 
conferences based on this work, in the UK, Italy, America and China. The feedback that 
was received from these was incorporated into our work.  
                                                 
5 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 
<http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/research/appraising-potential-legal-responses-threats-production-news-
digital-environment-ahrc> accessed 13 June 2016 
6 R Danbury, 'Evaluating legal responses to threats to news in a digital environment , London workshop' (7 
January 2016) <http://ials.sas.ac.uk/research/infolawcentre/docs/R-Danbury-Public-Summary-of-London-
Workshop1.pdf>   
7 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'Conference: Copyright, 
related rights and the news in the EU: Assessing potential new laws' (2016) 
<http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/conference-copyright-related-rights-and-news-eu-
assessing-potential-new-laws> accessed 13 June 2016 
 

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Four arguments for a publishers’ right 
From this research, four main normative arguments emerged for a news publishers’ right. 
These are: 
 
•  it will provide a necessary incentive to the commercial production of 
news, an activity that is valuable to a democratic society; 
 
•  commercial news publishers are treated unequally by EU copyright law, 
and a publishers’ right will resolve this;   
 
•  online re-distributors of published news are free riding on the effort of 
commercial news publishers, and a publishers’ right can be expected to 
restrain this; 
 
•  commercial news publishers have a natural right to the news they publish, 
and such rights are being breached by online re-distributors of news: a 
publishers’ right can be expected to protect them. 
 
The paper evaluates these arguments, and finds that, on balance, intervention to benefit 
the commercial news industry is merited, but these arguments do not establish that a 
publishers’ right is an appropriate way to intervene.  
 
There are other arguments for and against a publishers’ right, and other issues that a 
publishers’ right engages. Many will turn on the exact nature and wording of any right, as 
there are significant practical problems with a publishers’ right, and doctrinal debates are 
to be had about whether such a right is in accordance with regional and international law. 
But the Consultation did not provide a legal text to consider, and so it is difficult to 
engage with these questions. A short summary of the main further issues to consider will 
be given at the end of the paper. 
 

11

2 The incentive argument – ‘exposing wrongdoing’ or publishing 
‘ordures’? 
The incentive argument is perhaps the most important argument for a publisher’s right 
that emerged from our research. It is worth considering in detail. 
 
In essence, the argument observes the turmoil through which the commercial news 
industry is going, and suggests that there is reason to fear that the market will not, if left 
to itself, provide sufficient incentive for news producers to provide, in sufficient quality 
and quantity, the news that a democratic society considers valuable. It is therefore 
appropriate to intervene to create an incentive to produce news, and it can be appropriate 
for this intervention to be by means of the creation of a publishers’ right.   
 
The incentive argument provides a prima facie case for a publishers’ right, but there are a 
number of ways in which it has been challenged. These will be described, and then 
evaluated. The conclusion is that the argument provides a quite strong argument for 
intervention to assist the commercial news industry, but only weaker support for the idea 
that this intervention should be by means of a publishers’ right. 
The argument 
News is a democratic as well as an economic good 
The argument starts with the assertion that commercial news generation is of great value 
to a democratic society. Such an assertion is a relatively common one to make, and has 
been advanced since at least the eighteenth century. It is the headline quote, for example, 
on the website that a group of European publishers have set up to explain why they think 
a publishers’ right is needed, www.publishersright.eu. This begins by citing Thomas 
Jefferson, who famously wrote in 1787: ‘were it left to me to decide whether we should 
have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should 
not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter’.8  
 
The website goes on to say: 
 
The role of press publishers remains inextricably linked with the vital role that a 
free and independent press plays in democratic societies: enabling the open 
exchange of information and opinions, exposing wrongdoing and corruption, 
holding public officials accountable in the public eye, publicising difficult or 
important matters that need attention or scrutiny, and helping citizens to make 
informed decisions often creating communities of interest or concern. 
 
The relevance of this for a discussion about a publishers’ right is that it emphasizes that 
when we consider the commercial news industry, we ought to be aware that political 
                                                 
8 European Publishers Council and others, 'Publishers' Right in a Digital Age' (2016) 
<http://www.publishersright.eu> accessed 13 June 2016 
 
10 
12

issues of fundamental importance to the democratic structures of EU Member States are 
engaged, as well as mere economic considerations about a content creation industry. Any 
damage to commercial news publishers may result in damage to the fundamental 
democratic structures that make up our societies. The desire to avoid such damage can 
lead to a strengthened case for intervention to assist the commercial news industry, 
including intervention by means of a publishers’ right. 
The economic difficulties of commercial news publishers 
The argument continues by emphasising that the commercial news industry is 
increasingly finding it difficult to thrive. These difficulties, particularly those of the 
legacy newspaper industry, are widely known. True, sceptics have asserted that claims 
that the industry is in difficulties are nothing new, as commercial journalism – like many 
other activities – regularly claims to be beset by crisis.9 But there is now more substance 
to the claim than there has been in the past.  
Evidence of the decline in the fortunes of the European commercial news publishing 
industry was presented at length in the first session of the Amsterdam Conference, an 
account of which can be found online.10 But it is useful to highlight some of the points 
made here, to help establish the incentive case for a publishers’ right. 
The decline in the fortunes of the commercial news industry has been dramatic. In 2010, 
the average operating margin for publicly reporting US news companies, for example, 
had fallen from a high of 20% to 5.6%.11 And a similar picture emerged in many parts of 
the commercial journalism industries in Europe. In the UK, for example, a recent survey 
found that in 2011, newspaper groups had lost about £2 billion of revenue over five 
years, down to £6 billion.12 The Guardian has made losses every year since 2004;13 and 
the proportion of operating profit the Daily Mail and General Trust makes from 
newspapers fell from 86% in 1996 to 27% in 2009.14  
9 D Ryfe, Can journalism survive? : an inside look at American newsrooms (Polity, Cambridge 2012) for 
example, cites an article in the Los Angeles Times article that argued that ‘newspapers [were] challenged as 
never before’, and asked ‘are you holding an endangered species in your hands?’. It was published as long 
ago as 1976.  M Welch, 'When Losers Write History' in R McChesney and V Pickard (eds), Will the Last 
Reporter Please Turn out the Lights
 (The New Press, New York, London 2011) notes predictions of the 
industry’s imminent demise from 1999. 
10 N 7 
11  G Ellis, Trust ownership and the future of news : media moguls and white knights (Palgrave Macmillan, 
Basingstoke 2014) 16. 
12 Mediatique,'A Report for Ofcom (Annex 6 to Ofcom’s advice to the Secretary of State for Culture, 
Olympics, Media and Sport)' (Mediatique, London 2012). Globally, newspaper advertising revenues fell by 
22% between 2008 and 2012: Ellis (n 11) 17. 
13 Ellis (n 11)  184 
14 The underlying figure - £75 million – was the same in both years, which as Ellis observes, shows how 
the DMGT has diversified away from news publishing. Ibid.  
11 
13

In some cases, these numbers may appear to be still relatively healthy, but in others they 
are much less so.15 And, overall, the decline in profitability has led to or is associated 
with a number of consequences, many of which pose cause for concern for the 
contribution that commercial journalism makes to democracy. It is, for example, linked 
to falling sales and circulation,16 declining numbers of journalists employed by 
commercial news organisations,17 a net loss of titles,18 and, ultimately, the insolvency and 
bankruptcy of many companies.19 Regional commercial journalists working in both 
newspapers and radio have been hit particularly hard.20 Financial difficulties are likely to 
restrict the ability of commercial news organisations to undertake expensive, but largely 
unprofitable, journalistic activities such as investigative work. 
 
Alan Rusbridger, former editor of The Guardian, recently summed up the difficulties the 
commercial news industry is facing when he wrote to his former staff in May 2016:  
 
We all currently do our journalism in the teeth of a force 12 digital hurricane.21  
 
Studies have found similar patterns in other parts of the news market in many Member 
States in Europe.22 However, it is true that there are significant differences between the 
businesses in different European countries, and between different sectors of commercial 
news publication, and that the extent to which the commercial news industry is suffering 
has been challenged. These points will be discussed below.23 
The need for incentives in the commercial production of news 
The decline in the fortunes of the commercial news industry is likely to remove a key 
incentive that motivates the production of news by the commercial news industry. 
                                                 
15 J Herrman, 'Media Websites Battle Faltering Ad Revenue and Traffic' New York Times, (17 April 2016) 
<Media Websites Battle Faltering Ad Revenue and Traffic> accessed 13 June 2016, R Tofel, 'The sky is 
falling on print newspapers faster than you think' (Medium.com 20 January 2016) 
<https://medium.com/@dicktofel/the-sky-is-falling-on-print-newspapers-faster-than-you-think-
c84a2f9a9df4#.3o4eba9pk> accessed 13 June 2016 
16 I Hargreaves, Journalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2014) 112, 121. For a 
more detailed discussion, see text to n 111. 
17 Ibid. 111; R Levine, Free Ride: How the Internet is Destroying the Culture Business and How it can 
Fight Back
 (Vintage, London 2012) 111; Ellis 29, 120 
18 The Press Gazette reports that between 2005 and 2011, 242 local newspapers in the UK closed, and only 
708 new titles launched: Hargreaves 112; and in the UK in 2003 there were 1165 regional and local titles, 
but only 1054 in 2013: Ellis 30.  
19 Ellis 16, 31 – 32. 
20 Ibid. 161, 162, 230 
21 M Champion, 'Alan Rusbridger Steps Down As Chair Of The Guardian’s Owner' (BuzzFeed 13 May 
2016) <https://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewchampion/alan-rusbridger-steps-down-as-chair-of-the-
guardians-owner?utm_term=.hg0m86705#.rr2YaV0wL> accessed 13 June 2016 
22 DAL Levy, R Nielsen and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism., The changing business of 
journalism and its implications for democracy
 (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford 2010) 
23 Eg, text following nn 61, 122, 131 
 
12 
14

Without such an incentive, the commercial news industry will be less likely to produce 
the type of news, or the amount of news, that is valuable in a liberal democracy.  
News as a merit good 
One important reason for this is because news, particularly general interest 
democratically salient news, is generally conceived to be a merit good.24 This means that 
this type of news has a value to society that is greater than the price that people are 
prepared to pay to read or watch it. Moreover, readers are seldom prepared to pay a 
sufficient amount to cover the cost of publishing the news that a democratic society 
considers valuable.  
 
This means that, if left to the market alone, news would be produced in lesser quantities 
than would be optimal. Some way of incentivising the production of news is therefore 
required, above and beyond mere payment by customers.  
 
There have been many methods by which the merit good problem has been addressed by 
commercial news producers. One, not related to subsidy, has been the technique of 
bundling different types of news together into a package, so they can cross-subsidise each 
other.25 But there have also been overt and covert subsidies provided by many states to 
news production. The US, for example, provided postal subsidies, and many countries 
have provided zero rating for newsprint for tax purposes, and distributed valuable 
electro-magnetic spectrum to news broadcasters for free.26 
The two sided market of sales and advertising 
But one of the most important means of subsidising news has, for the past 300 years or 
so, been advertising revenue. In the US, it was said that Wal-Mart funded the Bagdad 
bureau,27 and the point is also valid in Europe.  
 
                                                 
24 See generally the work of Picard, but a good introduction can be found in chapter 6 of L Hitchens, 
Broadcasting pluralism and diversity : a comparative study of policy and regulation (Hart Publishing, 
Oxford 2006). 
25 Discussed in text to n 95 
26 Silberstein-Loeb, The International Distribution of News: The Associated Press, Press Association, and 
Reuters, 1848-1947
 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014). An account of action taken after 1927 
League of Nations Conference of Experts of the Press, UNESCO memo, Paris 12/10/1947 says:  “The 
Association of Journalists accredited to the League of Nations pointed out that the press could not live on 
its sales and that it constituted a real “public service” in the same way as teaching (but without being able 
to avail itself, like the latter, of any form of subsidy); the Association accordingly suggested that the answer 
to the problem be sought in a systematic lessening of the financial demands made by the State on the press 
(postal and telegraphic charges, duty on paper, taxes, etc.).” H Tworek, 'Protecting News before the 
Internet' in R John and J Silberstein-Loeb (eds), Making News: The Political Economy of Journalism in 
Britain and America from the Glorious Revolution to the Internet
 (OUP, 2015) 
27 C Shirky, 'Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable' in R McChesney and V Pickard (eds), Will the 
Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights
 (The New Press, New York, London 2011); Levine; G Brock, 
Out of Print (Kogan Page, London 2014) 99; Hargreaves 110. 
 
13 
15

Advertising has underpinned the profitability of much commercial news since at least 
1624, when the first English language news publication carried an advert.28 That event 
heralded the development of the two-sided market that is characteristic of news 
publishing in many countries throughout the Europe, and much of the rest of the world.29 
Publishers sell news to readers, and readers’ attention to advertisers.30  
 
This is a business model that has been extraordinarily robust. It has been the dominant 
model until recently, yet was well established by the early part of the eighteenth century, 
and is described in an English pamphlet from 1728:  
 
[newspaper proprietors] are paid on both hands; paid by the advertisers for taking 
in Advertisements; and paid by the coffee men for delivering them out: which (to 
make use of a homely comparison is to have a good dinner every day, and be paid 
for eating it ‘Here’s luck, my lads!’ Never was there so fortunate a business31 
Causes of the decline 
There are a number of reasons for the decline in the fortunes of the commercial news 
industry, some of which are less relevant to the arguments for a publishers’ right. For 
example, it has been proposed that the decline may well be down to sociological and 
demographic changes, as younger people lose the habit of buying and consuming news.32 
It is difficult to see how a publishers’ right could reverse any such change.  
Some effects of digitization and the Internet 
Other factors, though, are more relevant to a publishers’ right, and relate to the Internet 
and its associated technologies. The publishersright.eu website explains: 
 
technology has radically changed where our readers find and read our content – 
with profound consequences for the future viability of professionally produced, 
independent quality journalism and general press content. With a growing shift 
from print to digital, the problem of funding an independently edited digital press 
is increasingly challenging. Indeed online press is in most cases still cross-
subsidized from the print side of the business where sales and advertising 
revenues are declining.33 
 
                                                 
28 RB Walker, 'Advertising in London Newspapers, 1650 - 1750' (1973) 15:2 Business History 112 
29 Although the exact proportions of revenue made up from subsidy, subscription and advertising vary from 
country to country, as will be discussed later: text to n 61. 
30 The economics of broadcast news are different, as they can include a third side to the market – the selling 
of broadcast formats to third parties. 
31 A Coffee-Man, The Case of the Coffee-Men of London and Westminster. (G Smith (1728), Gale ECCO 
Print Editions (2010), London 1728), 16 
32 Mediatique, Ryfe 34 f. 
33 European Publishers Council and others, (accessed  
 
14 
16

Part of the problem, from the point of view of news publishers, is the fact that digitization 
makes the perfect copying and re-distribution of published news a quick and easy task. 
This has had a number of effects. It disrupts, for example, the first to market advantage – 
the scooping by one paper of its rivals – from which news publishers have traditionally 
made money, because digital redistributors can immediately redistribute news content 
produced and placed online by news publishers. This affects sales and subscription 
revenue. 
 
But digitization also disrupts advertising revenue. It means online redistributors of news 
can attract audiences interested in news without producing their own content. The 
attention of these audiences is valuable, as online operators can sell it to advertisers. 
Online redistributors can attract an audience by carrying news in general, and because 
they carry material published by, say, the Guardian, or Die Welt, or El Mundo. The 
different brand reputation of the news publisher can alter the type of audience that a site 
can attract, and different audiences will have different values to advertisers. And a site 
can benefit even if it doesn’t sell advertising against news content, because it may enjoy a 
boost to its perceived utility because it carries news. Being seen as useful will, in turn, 
mean a site will attract more attention, and this – as has been seen – is a valuable 
commodity.  
 
Online redistributors can also use Internet-related tools to collect information about the 
preferences of the audience who are attracted by news, by analysing their online 
behaviour. This is particularly valuable information, which has been called ‘the new oil’, 
for which advertisers will pay a premium. (This is a controversial development that has 
been called ‘surveillance capitalism’, but the controversy is not immediately relevant to 
the discussion about a publishers’ right.) If the audience encounters published news on 
the site of an online redistributor, rather than that of a news publisher, then it will be the 
online redisbributor who will enjoy this benefit.  
 
This extraction of value from commercial news publishers is, as the Commission 
economist Bertin Martens explained at the Amsterdam Conference, part of a wider trend. 
 
It’s indeed very hard to beat platforms and especially large platforms when it 
comes to the revenue and the attraction that they offer and so there is the risk and 
we’ve seen that in many industries, not only in newspapers is that content 
providers, the ones who actually publish or produce the content, whether it’s 
digital services, media services or even goods, they become a sort of almost a 
subcontractor to the platform.  And the platform has a lot of leverage on the prices 
and on the margins they extract from them, we see that in the hotel business, we 
see that in airline bookings, we see that in so many industries and the same is 
happening to the newspaper industry.34  
                                                 
34 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference, 
Bertin Martens, Session 3, transcript 42 
 
15 
17

How might a publishers’ right help? 
The incentive argument says that a publishers’ right may help provide a flow of revenue 
to incentivise the production of news that society considers valuable. There are a number 
of ways this may happen. 
 
A publishers’ right, it was argued in our research, could help news publishers control the 
use of the news they produce. They could control when and under what conditions online 
digital operators could redistribute it, where this is not already regulated by copyright and 
related rights. It might thereby provide a means of obtaining a share of sales and 
advertising revenue that flows to online redistributors of news. A publishers’ right could 
in essence be an extra card that publishers can use when negotiating with Internet search, 
aggregation, social media and other companies. 
 
Other reasons why a publishers’ right might help that were highlighted in our research, 
which relate to enforcement. So, for example, a news publisher in the UK described the 
difficulties in using copyright to enforce their rights in a particular situation.  This occurs 
when they distribute their news online behind a paywall, and when media monitoring 
organisations or others scrape the collected material on their site without permission. 
Such an action potentially results in a variety of authors and copyright owners having 
their rights infringed, in respect of a wide range of copyright material. It can be difficult 
to establish that the publisher is entitled to sue for each individual breach of copyright, 
when pursuing the infringer who has scraped the publisher’s collected material. If there 
were a publishers’ right, the interviewee argued, enforcement would be much easier. 
 
Such issues of enforcement are even more important in Member States without a work 
for hire doctrine. Here, it can be even more difficult for a publisher to establish that they 
are entitled to sue for breach of copyright, when they publish a variety of different 
copyright works. A German interviewee explained the point in this way: 
 
In the continental tradition, copyright comes into existence to the creator, and 
then is transferred to the publisher. There is no idea of work for hire, or 
producer’s copyright, as there is in the UK. As a media publisher you’ll have 
journalists as employees – and these can fully transfer their title by a buyout of 
their copyright. This isn’t so difficult to show. The publisher has exclusive rights 
for this content. But a publisher will also have thousands […] of freelancers, and 
a publisher will get non-exclusive rights when you publish their material. So as a 
defence for the claim against someone like Google News, the defendant says the 
rights that are being enforced are non-exclusive right. To win such a claim, you 
are forced to give evidence in each case of claim of title. This is impossible if 
there are, for example, 22,000 articles. 
 
A publishers’ right can be expected to help resolve this difficulty by simplifying the 
process of proving that a publisher has title to sue, when large amounts of published 
material is redistributed by, say, Google News. 
 
16 
18

Why might a publishers’ right be appropriate? 
Not only might a publishers’ right be useful, but it might be appropriate. After all, part of 
the problem as characterised above has arisen from the digital duplication and 
redistribution of news published by commercial news organisations, which prima facie 
invokes issues of copyright. 
 
This is certainly the view of some news publishers. At the Amsterdam Conference, Matt 
Rogerson of the Guardian, placed copyright and related rights at the heart of the matter. 
He considered that online redistributors of news have been able to flourish because 
publishers have not in the past sought to enforce their IP rights in the content they 
publish. 
 
We have rights and we could enforce them if we decided that we wanted to.  It’s 
probable, I think, that in doing what they’ve done over the past decade or so, the 
caching of articles and the distribution of articles, Google has, you know, it’s 
infringed rights under UK copyright law but it’s a conscious decision by ‘The 
Guardian’ not to pursue against infringement because they have, kind of, 
generated this enormous reach.  I think what’s going on in Europe is publishers 
wanting to have similar rights; the ability to go after people who infringe 
copyright in the same way as UK publishers, Irish publishing and Dutch 
publishers are able to35 
 
This view, though, is contentious. Google and others have denied that it is correct, as a 
matter of doctrine, and have fought legal actions on these grounds in various Member 
States. For example, Google fought an action in respect of news aggregation in Belgium, 
arguing that their actions did not open them up to copyright liability. They argued 
(amongst other things) that the news material aggregated on their site was not covered by 
copyright, that they were not performing infringing acts when they aggregated published 
news, and that even if the material was copyright and they were infringing, that they were 
protected by one of the copyright exceptions.36 Similar disputes involving copyright and 
related issues have taken place in a variety of Member States, including France, Sweden, 
the UK, Germany, Italy, and Denmark.37 
 
In many of these disputes, and on many of these issues, Google lost. Nonetheless, 
Google’s position has been strengthened somewhat by some recent decisions by the 
CJEU on the question of what particular acts performed online are regulated by 
copyright. Prominent amongst these is the case of Svensson v Retriever Sverige AB,38 
which found (in very general terms) that hyperlinking to a copyright protected work was 
not necessarily an act that infringed copyright. This, on balance, can make it more 
                                                 
35 Ibid., session 1, transcript 9. 
36 Google v Copiepresse Presented 11/5/2011, Cause List No: 2007/AR/1730  (Court of Appeal of 
Brussels, 9th Chamber) 
37 The appendix lists some of these. 
38 Svensson v Retriever Sverige AB C-466/12, [2014] Bus LR 259, [2014] ECDR 9   
 
17 
19

difficult for news publishers to argue that some of the actions of online redistributors of 
news are infringing. 
 
There are other decisions that are also relevant to this issue.39 It is not necessary for 
present purposes to describe these, as the point is that they confirm that copyright – and 
so a publishers’ right – might be an appropriate tool to use here, to help assist news 
publishers.  
 
Indeed, this appears to be the view of Commission, because in December 2015, they 
issued a Communication that identified copyright and related laws as one of the sources 
of the difficulties in which news publishers find themselves.40 The Communication 
distinguished three aspects to this.  
 
•  The first related to the definition of certain acts performed online that are 
protected by copyright. These are the rights of ‘making available’ and 
‘communication to the public’. The Commission indicated that it considered that 
there are grey areas around these concepts, particularly the ‘communication to the 
public’ right. They held that this ambiguity created unwelcome uncertainty both 
for Internet users, and for participants in the market. The ambiguity for news 
producers and online distributors of news is said to be whether in an online 
context, ‘the basic principle of copyright that acts of exploitation need to be 
authorised and remunerated’.41 
 
•  The second area that the Commission see as highlighted by this issue is whether 
the current set of rights recognised by EU law is appropriate. This is on the basis, 
the Commission indicate, that ‘for news aggregators … solutions have been 
attempted in certain Member States, but they carry the risk of more fragmentation 
in the digital single market.’42 
 
•  A third area the Commission describe as relevant is the question of the 
applicability of the exemptions from liability contained in the e-Commerce 
Directive,43 and more generally the view by some internet platforms that they are 
not engaging in copyright-relevant acts. 
 
                                                 
39 For example, BestWater v Mebes C-348/13  . 
40 European Commission,'Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, 
the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: Towards a modern, 
more European copyright framework' (European Commission, 2015) 
41 This has been disputed: see text to n 74 
42 This is relevant as it may provide a competency for EU action – see text to n .221 
43 Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal 
aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (Directive 
on electronic commerce) 
 
18 
20

These issues, the Commission said, would inform its consideration of how value is 
created and shared by new forms of online distribution of copyright-protected works. In 
particular, they would inform the evaluation of whether action is needed on the definition 
of the rights of ‘communication to the public’, and ‘making available’, and whether any 
action ‘specific to news aggregators is needed’.  
 
The mooted publishers’ right is another way to address these issues. 
Summary 
In summary, then, there is a prima facie incentive case for a publishers’ right. This is on 
the grounds that that news is a valuable commodity in a democracy, that the commercial 
news industry is suffering a serious decline in its fortunes, that the general interest 
democratically salient news has always needed a form of subsidy because it is a merit 
good, that in the past this was frequently supplied by advertising revenue, that one reason 
for loss of advertisement revenue and the rise of online re-distributors of commercial 
news has been aspects of the EU’s copyright and related rights law, and so copyright and 
a publishers’ right can be seen to be a useful and appropriate response to the difficulties 
in which news publishers find themselves. 
Counter-arguments 
Our research uncovered a number of counter-arguments that can be advanced against the 
incentive argument, of which three of the more significant will be described here. 
 
The first critiques the case that there is a heightened reason to intervene because news is 
a democratic good. The second argues that any economic difficulties through which the 
news industry are going are insufficient reason for an EU publishers’ right. The third 
challenges the notion that, even if there are difficulties and these engage democratic 
concerns, this should have anything to do with copyright or related laws.  
Challenging the democratic argument 
The first counter-argument is that news publishers have overplayed the risk of damage to 
democracy that may occur, if they are not provided with assistance. One reason for this is 
because the alleged link between the commercial news industry and a healthy democracy 
is not as strong as the industry asserts. Indeed, the link between the commercial press and 
a functioning democracy, as well as being proposed since the eighteenth century, has 
been challenged since about that time. Thomas Jefferson, who it will be remembered is 
cited on the publishers’ website that defends the need for a publishers’ right, was also 
highly critical of the press.  In 1814, he wrote to a correspondent, Walter Jones:  
 
I deplore… the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the 
malignity, the vulgarity and the mendacious spirit of those who write for them… 
[t]hese ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste, and lessening its relish for 
sound food. As vehicles of information, and a curb on our functionaries, they 
have rendered themselves useless, by forfeiting all title to belief. 44 
                                                 
44 LW Levy (ed), Freedom of the Press from Zenger to Jefferson (Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc, 1966) 373. 
 
19 
21

 
This critique of the case about the strength of the links between a viable commercial 
news publishing industry and a healthy democracy resonates today, and was expressed at 
the Amsterdam Conference. Professor Naughton asserted that: 
 
the public sphere is one of the most important things about a liberal democracy.  I 
think we should, as it were, feed one red herring immediately to the nearest 
available cat and that is the idea much put about by publishers, especially by giant 
multimedia corporations, that they are great contributors to the public sphere. 
 
By contrast, what he thought was needed is: ‘truthful, high quality journalism … and 
when people fret, as indeed they have even today here, about the future of newspapers, 
they are confusing form with function and it’s the function that’s really important’.45 
 
Others attending the conference agreed, and indicated that if we are to intervene with 
copyright, that we should identify more precisely what we want to incentivise. 
 
I’m interested in thinking about whether or not the ultimate public good is over 
the generation of new information and how do we achieve that46 
 
I think we all have to make sure that there is enough quality journalism to apply 
the needed check on power, whether it’s in the hands of elected officials or 
private sector or whoever else.  But the question is, how do you get there?47 
 
I personally am open to public support, particularly for investigative journalism, 
which everyone from Clay Shirky to, well, most people in this room, would 
regard as the most important thing that media does other than facts and opinion 
which are free48 
 
Outside the Conference, this is an argument that has been advanced by others. Benkler is 
one of the most prominent proponents of this idea, and has argued that one may not need 
professional commercial news organisations at all, so there is no need for any 
intervention . This is because, he argues, networks of individual citizen reporters can 
replicate the useful democratic functions currently undertaken by news publishers.  
Benkler calls this the ‘networked public sphere’. 49 
 
That was a view that was echoed at the conference: 
                                                 
45 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference, 
John Naughton, session 4, transcript 60f 
46 Ibid., Chris Beall, session 2, transcript 37. 
47 Ibid. Marietje Schaake MEP, session 3, transcript 58 
48 Ibid. James Mackenzie, session 4, transcript 65. 
49 Y Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale 
University Press, New Haven 2006) 
 
20 
22

 
The Panama papers was an effort by journalists to collect news that wasn’t really 
under the auspices of a single news organisation and I’m interested in the extent 
to which the public is still receiving information that it needs to govern itself.  
They’re not receiving it all the time from news organisations.  They’re receiving 
it from other sources and that may not be a bad thing50  
 
But Benkler purses this line further, and argues that interventions, including copyright 
interventions, to assist the news publishing industry are not only unnecessary, but will be 
positively harmful. This is on the grounds that as they will inhibit the fuller development 
of a networked public sphere:  
 
[w]e still stand at a point where information production could be regulated so 
that, for most users, it will be forced back into the industrial model, 
squelching the emerging model of individual, radically decentralised, and 
nonmarket production and its attendant improvements in freedom and 
justice.51 
 
If true, these arguments undermine the incentive case for a general publisher’s right. The 
weaker version of the argument asserts that we ought not to incentivise all commercial 
news publishing, only some of it. A strong version of the argument asserts that we ought 
not to intervene at all, as in doing so we damage the prospects of a networked public 
sphere – an alternative to the commercial news publishing industry - developing.  
Challenging the notion that the news business is not thriving 
The second counter-argument against the incentive case for a publishers’ right takes issue 
with the notion that the news publishing industry is in sufficient crisis to merit 
intervention, by copyright or otherwise.  The argument suggests that sufficient incentives 
remain to make intervention unnecessary, because the crisis in the industry isn’t as acute 
as has been suggested, or is no longer so acute, or is not as acute in all sectors of the 
industry, and moreover there are significant differences in how it has been experienced in 
different parts of EU.   
 
A number of different claims can be distinguished in this argument. 
Excessive profits 
The first is that, in the words of the analyst and former journalist John Morton in the 
American Journalism Review, perhaps one ought to ‘stop the ax-wielding and accept that 
the era of exceptional profitability is over’?52   Professor John Naughton took the same 
line at the Conference:  
                                                 
50 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Chris Beall, session 2, transcript 38 
51 Benkler 26. 
52 Quoted in J Kaye and S Quinn, Funding journalism in the digital age : business models, strategies, 
issues and trends
 (Peter Lang, New York ; Oxford 2010) 85. 
 
21 
23

 
Every time I hear a spokesman for a very large multimedia company, for 
example, before the US Senate, shedding crocodile tears about the way in which 
this awful internet is doing terrible damage to poor authors living in garrets what 
it reminds me of is something that one of my heroes, Samuel Johnson, once said, 
a great 18th century British writer and journalist, he said that, “How is it”, he said, 
“The loudest yelps for liberty are heard from the drivers of slaves?”  He didn’t 
use the word ‘slaves’, he used a word that would not be politically correct now, 
but that was the point and when I hear publishers complaining about what the 
internet is doing to them what I’m hearing sometimes are the complaints of 
organisations which are having to get used to the idea that the era of monopoly 
rents might be coming to an end.53  
 
If true, this may mean that there is no need to incentivise commercial news, as publishers 
are merely experiencing an adjustment of their profit levels to more reasonable levels 
more equivalent to those attainable in other industries. It would be better for the news 
industry to acclimatise itself to a more sustainable level of revenue, than for there to be 
any intervention.54 But it may also mean that, even if the industry is experiencing real 
long-term systemic financial trouble, there is a risk that the commercial news industry 
may be over-benefitted by a publishers’ right, were one to be designed to re-establish the 
excessive profit levels of the past.  
A return to profitability 
Even if this is not a persuasive argument, some see a publishers’ right as inappropriate 
because some news publishers appear to have returned to financial health. To look at 
News Corp and the UK for instance, while the company itself recorded an operating loss 
of £35m in 2014, its titles the Times and Sunday Times and Sun had returned to profit. 
According to the Press Gazette, the Times and Sunday Times reported their first operating 
profit since 2001 (£1.7m), and while the Sun’s revenues were down 5.5% to £489m, this 
resulted in an operating profit of £35.6m – though this was down year on year from 
£62.1m.55 And the trend may be replicated in other areas, such as local news. In 2013, 
Johnston Press, following a debt restructuring in 2009, reported an increase in operating 
profit for the first time in seven years.56 Similar evidence can be found in other countries. 
Indeed, a questioner at the Amsterdam Conference noted that the German company 
Springer Verlag increased their turnover by 8.5% over the last year.57  
                                                 
53 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
' (accessed  John Naughton, session 4, transcript 61  
54 This is related to the argument for creative destruction, which will be considered below, text to n 84ff 
55 <http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/news-corp-records-operating-loss-£35m-down-£51m-profit-company-
spends-£100m-legal-costs-and-msc> accessed 17 December 2014 
56 Ellis 32 
57 Germany’s Axel Springer, for example, saw revenues rise by 12.7% in the first quarter of 2015: , 'Axel 
Springer profits from digital growth in the first quarter' (Axel Springer 2015) 
<https://www.axelspringer.de/en/presse/Axel-Springer-profits-from-digital-growth-in-the-first-
quarter_23325474.html> accessed 16 June 2015 
 
22 
24

 
Again, there are at least two conclusions that could be drawn from this. The first is that 
no intervention is required, because the worst is over, and companies are beginning to 
find a route back to profitability. The second is that even if this is not the case for all it is 
true for some, and one should be wary of any intervention because it will unduly benefit 
profitable companies, despite the laudable intention of assisting others who are 
struggling.  
Other sectors remain profitable 
So far, we have just concentrated on the legacy print industry: but some other sectors of 
the commercial news producing industry are also doing rather well. It’s important not to 
equate the fortunes of some in the legacy print industry, with the entire commercial 
news-publishing sector. The economics of the television, radio and online industries are 
different to print, so generalising from the experiences of some in the print industry to 
make a case about the whole of commercial journalism is inappropriate.  
 
And some online news organisations, such as BuzzfeedVice News and Huffington Post
are far from being in crisis, but have continued to attract funding.58 Furthermore, there 
are salient and important differences in the way money is made in different parts of the 
news value-chain, and the fact that news publishing is suffering doesn’t necessarily mean 
that news gathering, selection, writing or producing is in difficulty.59 The continuing 
vitality of companies that make their money from providing news selecting services may 
be taken as evidence of this. If this is so, there is less of a reason to intervene with a 
publishers’ right, as other sectors of commercial news publishing with more viable 
business models can be expected to step into the breach vacated by legacy print 
operators, who are suffering economic difficulties.60 A publishers’ right would be a 
mistake, as it would impede this. 
Differences between Member States 
And even for those legacy print news publishers who have not seen a return to rude 
financial health, there are other concerns about a publishers’ right. There is a risk that a 
publishers’ right risks over-benefitting industries and sectors in some Member States that 
do not need it, to ameliorate the situation for others who do.61 
                                                 
58 Buzzfeed for example, has attracted $70 million of venture capitalist funding: E Bell, 'The Rise of Mobile 
and Social News and What it Means for Journalism' in N Newman (ed) Reuters Institute Digital News 
Report 2015
 (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford 2015) 
59 A very useful analysis of the different activities can be found in Mediatique,'The Provision and 
Consumption of Online News - Current and Future' (Mediatique, 2014) 
60 Again, this argument is related to the creative destruction argument, which will be considered below, text 
to n 84ff. 
61 There is some evidence that the news industries in countries less affected by the crisis have benefitted 
from copyright interventions, for example, in China: Staff Reporter, 'Beijing Tightens Copyright 
Legislation for News Media' (WantChinaTimes.com 2015) <http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-
subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20150426000003&cid=1104> accessed 27 April 2015, National Copyright 
Administration General Office (China) and Rogier Creemers (tr), 'Notice Concerning the Standardization 
of the Online Reprinting Copyright Order' (Creemers, Rogier 2015) 
 
23 
25

 
Research has indicated that there are significant and important differences in the revenue 
models of commercial news producers in countries in the EU. This was established by 
work undertaken by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in 2010,62 and 
continues in the Institute’s annual Digital News Reports. These track changes in the 
business and consumption of news in various countries each year.63  
 
The picture here is complex and changing, but for present purposes, the essential point is 
that this work establishes that the division between subscription and advertising – both 
legacy print and online - as a source of revenue for news publishers differs in different 
countries in the EU. Moreover, there are changing patterns in online reading of news, and 
old-fashioned reading of print newspapers in different Member States. This leads to the 
concern that any legal intervention, including a copyright related intervention, to assist 
the commercial news publishers whose business model is at risk in some parts of the EU, 
risks over-benefitting those in other parts of the EU, who have a different revenue model. 
This is a particular concern, for example, if the rationale for a publishers’ right is founded 
on the need to replace advertising revenue, as the news businesses of some countries in 
the EU depend less on advertising, and more on subscription and sales for revenue. A 
harmonised publishers’ right is inappropriate, says this argument, given the variety of 
business models and news consumption patterns in each Member State. 
 
Reuters’ work on Denmark and Germany can be used to demonstrate this, both of which 
have seen legal interventions in the past decade to protect the position of news 
publishers.  
 
To take Denmark first, one can focus on 2008, a date that is illustrative as it was in the 
middle of the seminal Infopaq litigation, which dealt with copyright and news 
publishing.64 In this year, just over 60% of Danish newspaper revenue came from sales, 
as opposed to advertising. This compares with the position in Germany, where sales 
contributed around 10% less to total revenue – 50%. (This can also be compared with the 
US, where sales amounted to only around 15% of revenue).65  It seems that the extent to 
which the protection of news content as a commodity to package and sell, rather than the 
protection of the ability to sell advertising to companies on the basis that people read 
news material, is of relatively more importance in Denmark than in Germany. Moreover, 
                                                                                                                                               
<https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/notice-concerning-the-standardization-of-the-
online-reprinting-copyright-order/> accessed 27 April 2015. 
62 Levy, Nielsen and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. 
63 For example, N Newman and DAL Levy (eds), Reuters Institute Digital News Report (RISJ, Oxford 
2014). 
64 Infopaq v Danske Dagblades Forening C-5/08,  [2009] EUECJ C-5/08 (16 July 2009) , Infopaq v Danske 
Dagblades Forening 
C‑302/10, [2012] EUECJ C-302/10  . 
65 Levy, Nielsen and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. 12. 
 
24 
26

far more people read newspapers online in Denmark or downloaded them in 2008 (52%) 
than a comparable group in Germany (21%).66   
 
Thus, even if there it is true that news publishing is suffering financial difficulties, 
research shows that the mechanisms by which this is happening is different in Denmark 
and Germany.  Any harmonized EU publishers’ right is likely to be insufficiently 
nuanced to recognise these differences, and may over-benefit Danish publishers because 
it seeks to assist German publishers who have suffered to a greater extent from the 
decline in advertising. The same point, no doubt, can be made in relation to other 
Member States. 
Challenging the idea that a publishers’ right should be part of the solution 
The third argument challenges the idea that even if there is a problem, and even if the 
problem is serious because is engages democracy, that a publishers’ right is part of any 
solution. It says (amongst other things) that a publishers’ right is inappropriate for such a 
task, it would be harmful, ineffective, and would impede the development of a new 
sustainable model of funding commercial news.  
A publishers’ right would be inappropriate 
One senior policy maker we interviewed was sceptical as to whether, even if news was a 
democratic good and was going through financial difficulties, copyright should be part of 
the solution.  They suggested that if the problem is the decline of the business model of 
commercial journalism caused by the rise of the Internet, then they were not sure that 
there was any reason to bring in a publishers’ right.  This scepticism was shared by 
Professor Hugenholtz at the Amsterdam Conference: 
 
realising fully the crisis in which news production, news publishing finds itself in 
and it is very serious and I know this industry very well too, it is a very serious 
[…] I don’t think intellectual property is going to help us out of this crisis, I really 
think we should not even waste our energy thinking along those lines67  
 
There are a variety of reasons that have been proposed as to why one might not look to IP 
as part of the solution. One involves the rationales for copyright in a European context. 
While some countries might consider it appropriate to use copyright as a tool to 
incentivise the activities of news producers, this is not clearly the case in all Member 
States. Professor Xalabarder explained:  
 
if we’re going to look at it from a copyright perspective, it should be the authors 
who get the remuneration and no-one is talking about them, right, and the 
newspapers go to Google and they ask remuneration for them.  The authors are not 
going to get anything, so if it was really a matter of copyright enforcement, we 
would be talking about completely different ballgame here.  So, I think that if the 
                                                 
66 Ibid. 27 
67 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Bernt Hugenholtz, session 3, transcript 47 
 
25 
27

news publishers have some sort of freeriding concern against what Google is doing, 
that should be fought in another area, not within copyright, but maybe in fair 
competition or whatever else it’s going to be, but not copyright because we’re 
distorting it.68   
 
But even if one only considers an entrepreneurial right to be uncontroversial as a matter 
of principle, there remain problems. One arises if a publishers’ right is intended only  to 
encourage journalism that is worthwhile in a democracy, as discussed above. If this is the 
case, there must be doubts as to whether copyright or related rights are an appropriate 
tool to achieve this.  
 
These doubts again engage questions about the function of copyright and related rights. 
Copyright and related rights are generally considered to be a relatively content-neutral 
doctrine, in that the nature of the content of a copyrighted work is frequently not relevant 
to the fact of copyright protection. (There are exceptions to this broad statement, and the 
US Copyright Clause, for example, explicitly envisages copyright being intended to bring 
about useful content, and there are content-based restrictions on copyright protection in 
the UK.69) However, it can be asked whether it is evident that the function of copyright in 
the EU should be to distinguish between 'good’ content, which is to be encouraged, and 
bad content, which is not to be encouraged. That seems to be, at least by the account 
described earlier, one requirement of a publishers’ right. 
 
A particular reason why it might not is the fact that one is dealing with highly subjective 
judgments of what is good and bad content. This is a notorious issue in relation to 
journalism, and indeed is a key element in discussions about the appropriate limits of 
freedom of speech and the Press. This is not least because opinion is likely to vary as to 
whether journalism is good or bad. Harm, for example, and the incurring of it by 
journalism, is an insufficient criterion for distinguishing between good and bad 
journalism, because many people will be harmed by journalism that may be useful to 
society. A famous journalistic aphorism makes the point: ‘news is what someone, 
somewhere doesn’t want you to know: all else is advertising’. Indeed, this is a central 
problem to the whole of free speech and free press theory and law, and it would be a 
brave copyright policymaker that steps into this area unawares. 
 
And there are further doubts about whether copyright would be an appropriate tool, even 
if one can be clear what we mean by ‘good’ journalism. Does copyright have appropriate 
mechanisms in-built to its doctrine, to be able to police this boundary? Is it, other words, 
likely to be an good way of regulating journalism to improve quality? Moreover, is this 
something that should be done at an EU level, or is it better achieved by Member States? 
And even if a harmonised EU approach is appropriate, are there not other EU tools - such 
as the Audio Visual Media Standards Directive, currently under review – which are likely 
to be more appropriate, and a better fit for the job? 
                                                 
68 Ibid. Raquel Xalabarder, session 2, transcript 38. 
69 For example, s 171(3) Copyright Designs and Patents Act (1988). 
 
26 
28

A publishers’ right would be harmful 
There are also a set of concerns are about the potentially harmful effects that can be 
expected from any change in copyright and related law that is designed to benefit news 
publishers. These will be discussed in more detail in the next section,70 but it’s worth 
describing them briefly here. 
 
The risk that a publishers’ right may cause harm has been articulated forcefully by the 
MEP Julia Reda, who is particularly concerned about the effect of such a right on users 
of the Internet. Reda is concerned, amongst other things, that any publishers’ right will 
amount to a ‘tax on hyperlinks’, which at best would create a significant financial drag on 
the operation of the World Wide Web, and at worst severely hamper the Web’s 
operation.71  
 
The publishersright.eu website says that there will be little impact on normal internet 
activity, and the Commission have been at pains to emphasise that a publishers’ right will 
not amount to a tax on hyperlinking.72 But it is difficult to see whether this will be so 
without seeing the text in question. Indeed, if an EU publishers’ right alters the position 
established by the CJEU in Svensson,73 for example, that would have a dramatic effect on 
the operation of the Web, which would be felt beyond the interests of news producers. If 
it does not, it is difficult to see how it might bring in sufficient revenue to be useful to 
publishers. 
 
Similarly, Reda raises concerns about the case put forward by the Commission as to why 
copyright and related rights are prima facie relevant. She has challenged the notion set 
out in the Commission’s December Communication that there is ambiguity about the 
concepts of making available and communication to the public, which acts to the 
detriment of commercial news producers. Copyright is relatively clear, Reda argues, and 
the idea that a publishers’ right may be appropriate to resolve this ambiguity is 
misleading.74  
A publishers’ right would be ineffective 
Even if copyright is appropriate, some argue that will be ineffective. This was the view of 
James Mackenzie, one of the founders of a small aggregator called Cutbot at the 
Amsterdam Conference: 
 
                                                 
70 Text to n 146 
71 J Reda, 'Ancillary Copyright 2.0: The European Commission is preparing a frontal attack on the 
hyperlink' (Reda, Julia 6 November 2015) <https://juliareda.eu/2015/11/ancillary-copyright-2-0-the-
european-commission-is-preparing-a-frontal-attack-on-the-hyperlink/> accessed 11 January 2016 
72 European Commission, 'Making EU copyright rules fit for the digital age - Questions & Answers' (2015) 
<http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-6262_en.htm> accessed 14 June 2016 
73 Svensson v Retriever Sverige AB   
74 J Reda, 'Reform of Copyright Law in the European Union' (2015) <https://juliareda.eu/2015/12/ancillary-
copyright-open-letter/> accessed 14 June 2016. See text to n 41, above. 
 
27 
29

Think about this: we did not cause the decline in newspaper industry revenue.  
Squeezing a little bit of revenue out of us won’t save it.  Putting us out of business 
won’t save the newspaper industry.  They need to find their own models ….75  
 
There are figures that validate the claim that a publishers’ right would be unlikely to raise 
much revenue. Industry research in the UK, for example, found that ‘[i]n a typical week, 
over 13,000 articles from 5 major newspapers are cut and copied into other sites. These 
are often professionally run sites supported by advertising and ecommerce services. One 
site alone took 488 articles in one week.’76 This, clearly, represents a loss of sales, 
attention and therefore revenue to news publishers. A broad-brush indication of how 
much this is worth, at least in terms of sales, can be found in the Meltwater litigation in 
the UK, where it was indicated that the licensing of newspaper articles by the members of 
the newspapers’ collecting society, NLA Media Access, raised about £20 million per 
year. 77  In 2015, the NLA raised a greater amount, £32 million.78  
 
These may not represent the position in all countries in the EU, but it is plausible to 
assume that they represent the general scale of revenue that we are dealing with when 
considering a publishers’ right. Are they enough to solve the problem? Are they, in other 
words, sufficient to re-incentivize the production of commercial news, lost from the 
decline in advertising revenue? That is unlikely. They remain small beer given the scale 
of revenues involved in commercial news production. For example, the entire £32 million 
raised by the NLA in 2015 would just about have covered the losses incurred by the 
Guardian’s newspaper division in 2012-2013.79 
 
The concern about the efficacy of a publishers’ right was raised at the Amsterdam 
Conference, when a comparison was made with the utility of the broadcasting right: 
 
Another interesting thing is that the neighbouring right of the broadcasters does 
not bring them very much, it brings them a little bit of a share in the private 
copying levy and it gives them a right to take action against rebroadcasting, 
retransmission, which is always the live rebroadcasting.  So it is the signal piracy 
actually, it’s a very short term of protection, it’s about ten seconds protection, it’s 
not even 24 hours, it’s only against a live rebroadcasting that it’s actually used in 
some cases. 80  
                                                 
75 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference, 
James Mackenzie, session 4, transcript 65. 
76 G Shepherd, A Hughes and NLA Media Access,'Copyright Infringement and Newspapers, Online Article 
Tracking System (OATs)' (NLA Media Access, 2014), 2. 
77 Meltwater v Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd CT114/09, 14 February 2012  (Copyright Tribunal 
(Interim Decision)), [6]. 
78 ,'Annual Report' (NLA Media Access,, London 2015) 
79 Ellis, 184 
80 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
session 3, transcript 52 
 
28 
30

 
Another speaker, the Danish lawyer, Søren Christian Søborg Andersen agreed: 
 
I also had the privilege of representing quite a lot of broadcasters and they have, 
and have had for decades, an ancillary right and I can tell you that they’re hurting 
too.  You know, so they blame YouTube which is essentially also Google but 
they’re also… their business is declining because the behaviour of their 
consumers is changing.  Okay.  So, I propose to you that if the intended result is 
to generate more revenue for news publishers, the example of the broadcasters tell 
you that the way to achieve it is not to introduce a new ancillary right.  You have 
to find something else.81   
 
Moreover, there are reasons to believe that a publishers’ right will become less effective, 
as the online market in news develops. Social media platforms are fast becoming more 
important than search engines and aggregation as the main routes by which people find 
news that has been published online.82 It’s not clear how effective a publisher’s right 
would be at deriving a flow of income from such organisations. Facebook’s Instant 
Articles platform, for example, is based on permission, and sharing of advertising 
revenue.  
 
There is a further argument that a publisher’s right is unlikely to be effective, based the 
experience of news-related copyright laws that have been passed in Member States, 
particularly those passed in Germany and Spain. These were subject to detailed analysis 
in the second session at the Amsterdam Conference, and the conclusion was that they had 
been ineffective in bringing in a revenue flow to news publishers.83   
A publishers’ right would be counter-productive 
A final reason against a publishers’ right is the argument, at least pursuant to the 
incentive argument, is that it may impede the development of new business models that, 
in the long term, will be more sustainable and beneficial to the commercial news 
industry.  
 
A central idea here is Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction. The Internet can be 
seen as one in a long history of disruptive technologies that have forced those who seek 
to make money out of news to change the ways they act. This argument against a 
publishers’ right is that it would be a foolish attempt to preserve doomed business 
structures. This is an argument that is widely proposed in the wider literature that 
considers the place of journalism in a digital era. Authors such as Hargreaves,84 Picard,85 
                                                 
81 Ibid. session 2, transcript 34. 
82 Levine 127, 128; ‘Facebook and Google continue to build some of the world’s most profitable 
companies based on targeted advertising wrapped around relevant and interesting content.’ , Reuters 
Institute Digital News Report
 (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2015) 19. Bell. 
83 Text to n 129 
84 Hargreaves chapter 8. 
 
29 
31

Xalabarder,86 Brock87 (and others,88 including in interview) have suggested that the best 
thing to do might be to let market forces restructure the commercial news business, rather 
than intervene, for example with a publishers’ right. A simile that has been used to 
advance this point, is that that attempting to preserve the business models of commercial 
news publishers is like attempting to preserve the interests of buggy whip manufacturers 
after the development of the motorcar.89  
 
Professor John Naughton developed the point at the Amsterdam Conference: 
 
as the discussion went on today, some names of past thinkers came to my mind; 
one of them was Joe Schumpeter and his view about how capitalism evolves.  As 
you know, Schumpeter’s view was that capitalism renews itself in ways of what 
he called creative destruction.  We’re all living through one such wave and it’s 
both creative and it’s both destructive and it is true that some great things, very 
valuable things, are being destroyed and it’s also true that some very interesting 
and perhaps potentially very important things are being created.  But much of the 
discussion about this consists of the wailing of incumbents who are now 
threatened with destruction.90 
 
This point is related to Benkler’s suggestion intervention may impede the development of 
a networked public sphere, but is distinguishable. That is because Benkler’s proposal was 
intervention may impede the development of an activity that replicates the function of 
commercial journalism. This creative destruction argument against intervention turns, in 
contrast, on the idea that intervention may impede the development of new business 
models that can help sustain commercial journalism.  
Evaluation 
I will consider each of the three counter-arguments in turn. It will become clear that the 
first two are in some ways similar, as they include a similar critique of a publishers’ right. 
This is that a publishers’ right risks over-benefitting those who, for policy reasons, we 
have no compelling reason to benefit: we risk over-benefitting poor-quality news content, 
                                                                                                                                               
85 RG Picard, 'see p000 check' in R John and J Silberstein-Loeb (eds), Making News: The Political 
Economy of Journalism in Britain and America from the Glorious Revolution to the Internet
 (2015) 
86 R Xalabarder, 'The Remunerated Statutory Limitation for News Aggregation and Search Engines 
Proposed by the Spanish Government; Its compliance with International and EU law' (infojustice.org 2014) 
<http://infojustice.org/archives/33346> accessed 10 October 2014 19 
87 Brock 
88 For example, P Schlesinger and G Doyle, 'From organizational crisis to multi-platform salvation? 
Creative destruction and the recomposition of news media' (2014) Journalism: Theory, Practice and 
Criticism  
89 Ryfe 29; W Patry, How to Fix Copyright (OUP, Oxford 2011) 3; D Simon, 'Build the wall' in R 
McChesney and V Pickard (eds), Will the Last Reporter Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism 
and What Can be Done to Fix it
 (2016) 50. 
90 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Professor John Naughton, session 4, transcript 61 
 
30 
32

and already profitable news organisations. On this basis, the question of whether they are 
persuasive or not will come down to an assessment as to whether it is appropriate to 
provide these benefits to people who may not need them, set against the costs of not 
benefitting those who do need them. It is here that the relevance of the commercial news 
industry to democracy becomes significant.  
 
The third counter-argument is somewhat different, as it criticises the notion that 
copyright and related rights are an appropriate tool to bring to bear on any problem that 
exists. This is difficult to evaluate without seeing a definite text– and in particular, it is 
difficult to asses what the costs and harm will be caused (if any) by a publishers’ right. 
However, some general observations can still be made, which lead to the conclusion that, 
whilst intervention itself may be appropriate, it’s far from clear that intervention by 
means of an EU publishers’ right is the way forward.  
The challenge to the democratic assumption 
It will be remembered that the first challenge to the incentive argument had two parts – a 
strong and a weak argument. The weaker argument was that the commercial news 
industry damages the public sphere as well as benefits it, and a publishers’ right would 
over-benefit harmful acts we ought to deprecate. The stronger argument asserted that a 
publishers’ right would be inappropriate, as it would impede the emergence of Benkler’s 
networked public sphere, which can be expected to replace the commercial news 
industry. Neither are convincing. 
The weak argument 
The weaker argument against the incentive case is that a publisher’s right will benefit the 
malignity, vulgarity, mendacious spirit, and the ordures, to use Jefferson’s words, 
manifest in contemporary journalism. This is true: it will. Even those who support 
commercial news production should accept that it can both detract from democracy, and 
contribute to it, and indeed this was conceded at the Amsterdam Conference. But does 
that mean that a publishers’ right is inappropriate? 
 
A first way of could seeking to resolve this is by asking whether commercial journalism, 
on balance, promotes democracy more than it harms it? If commercial journalism on 
balance promotes more than harms democracy, a publishers’ right becomes appropriate. 
If harm comes to the fore, it is not. 
 
However, this is a complex debate with an extended pedigree. It predates the current 
dilemma, and indeed the Internet, by centuries, and has raged in many different countries. 
As the briefest of example, Habermas is perhaps the most prominent contemporary 
European critic of the argument that the advertising funded commercial news industry 
contributes to public sphere,91 and I have already cited Thomas Jefferson’s 1814 letter to 
                                                 
91 J Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of 
Bourgeois Society
 (Polity, Cambridge 1989). A recent American, but relevant to Europe, critique has been 
made by R McChesney, Digital Disconnect (The New Press, New York, London 2013). 
 
31 
33

a similar effect.92 But this view remains deeply contentious.93 It cannot be expected that 
this question be resolved before any right can be said to be appropriate.  
 
Perhaps, then, one could seek to incentivise only the production of democratically useful 
– ‘good’ journalism, and impede the production of harmful journalism? This sounds like 
an attractive way of resolving the dilemma, but it is in practice, not. Two reasons show 
why this is so. 
 
 The first is, as has already been mentioned, because of the extreme difficulties in 
defining ‘good journalism’. Even if one adopts a more nuanced definition, say 
democratically salient journalism, there are legitimate differences of opinion as to what 
this entails. These are manifest, for example, in the jurisprudence of the European Court 
of Human Rights about the appropriate balance between article 8 rights of privacy and 
article 10 rights of freedom of speech.94 ‘What content is it in the public interest to 
publish?’ these cases ask, an issue very closely aligned with the question of what 
journalism is ‘good’ journalism for present purposes. It is difficult to see a publishers’ 
right being a mechanism that could be expected to provide a convincing way of 
determining what is democratically salient or ‘good’ journalism, given the content-
neutral nature of copyright and related law.  
 
A second point is that a problem arises for the idea of incentivising only good journalism 
from the observation that disseminating content is only one part of the picture of what a 
news publisher does. The other half is encouraging the audience to read or consume the 
content. Journalism is, by its essence, an activity that involves communication not just 
dissemination. This is commonly achieved by mixing democratically salient news with 
other forms of journalism designed to attract the attention of the audience.  
 
This process of mixing content has been called ‘bundling’ when describing print 
journalism, and hammocking when describing broadcast journalism. Bundling or 
hammocking are undertaken for various reasons. One is economic – to attract more 
audience to make more money. But another is psychological: popular, but less 
democratically salient journalism attracts the attention of an audience to more worthy 
journalism, and - in effect - cross subsidises the attention deficit in democratic 
                                                 
92 Text to n 44. Not that it is relevant to the current argument, but the criticisms are distinguishable: 
Habermas objects to advertising-funded journalism, Jefferson objected to partisan journalism. 
93 Such a wealth of work exists on this subject in a variety of disciplines that it can be misleading to select 
any examples to demonstrate the point. Habermas himself has spawned a large secondary literature. 
However some important material relied on in this research that tends to support the argument that 
commercial news remains of great value to democracy in a digital era includes CR Sunstein, Republic.com 
2.0
 (Princeton University Press, Princeton ; Oxford 2007), M Schudson, The Sociology of News (2nd 
Edition edn W W Norton & Company, 2011), and some of the essayists in R McChesney and V Pickard, 
Will the Last Reporter Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can be Done to Fix it 
(New Press, New York 2011). 
94 This can be illustrated by the trio of Von Hannover cases: Von Hannover v Germany (No 1) (2006) 43 
EHRR 7  Von Hannover v Germany (No 2) 55 EHRR 15  (Grand Chamber)Von Hannover v Germany (No 
3) 
[2013] ECHR 835   
 
32 
34

journalism. It is the psychological point that is relevant to the argument about a 
publishers’ right. 
 
Now, if copyright were to incentivise the production only one type of journalism – 
investigative work, for example, ironically there is a strong chance that this would lead to 
consequences we may not wish to see. At the least, there is no guarantee that using 
copyright and related laws to encourage the production of one type of content would 
necessarily increase the consumption by the audience of this content, which is ultimately 
the purpose of incentivising democratically relevant content. 
 
This is because it is not clear that encouraging commercial news publishers to produce 
one type of content will change the psychological fact that some news is less attractive to 
the audience other sorts of news. Encouraging the production of some type of content 
will not necessarily encourage its consumption.  
 
The irony is, therefore, that if copyright incentives are tailored to encourage commercial 
news publishers only to produce more democratically useful content, such as 
investigative work, this might not lead to an increase in the amount of people would in 
the end read or watch this content A publisher’s right might incentivise production, but 
not necessarily attention. 
 
Indeed, one reason for this is due to the Internet. This has facilitated the unbundling of 
print journalism, and the de-hammocking of broadcast journalism. As Brock, for 
example, argues: 
 
[the internet] works against the logic of bundling a varied collection of content for 
delivery to the reader. The internet […] allows [readers] to go straight to the 
material they want without passing through the rest of the package95  
 
If this is so, then we return to the central dilemma. It seems one cannot avoid the 
difficulties raised by this critique of a publishers’ right, by asking whether commercial 
journalism on balance promotes democracy, or by attempting to promote only one type of 
content. Accepting that some commercial journalism damages democracy, then, the 
question becomes whether this is sufficient reason to not intervene? Should one, to put 
the point another way, refrain from benefitting the good because one will also benefit the 
bad?  
 
There is no clear answer to this. Sceptics of a publishers’ right are wary of benefitting the 
producers of harmful material, but advocates of a publishers’ right emphasise what good 
there is that would be lost. At the Amsterdam Conference, for example, Andrew Hughes 
said: 
 
                                                 
95 Brock 151. See also J Keane, Democracy and Media Decadence (Cambridge University Press, 
Cambridge 2013) 7 -8. 
 
33 
35

Not all newspaper activity is good, that’s for sure, and we picked up some 
references to that.  But I was in Washington last week and visiting AP and also 
‘Washington Post’ who are proudly clutching a couple of Pulitzer prizes: 
‘Washington Post’, for having created a database of the police shootings of 
civilians, which is having a direct and positive impact on public policy there; and 
AP for having invested in creating a story about slavery in the fishing trade in the 
Pacific and tracing how fish caught using slaves, literally a camp on an island of 
slave labour, is being fed back through into not just American but other Western 
restaurants.  That kind of activity, I think, is very easy to see as terribly important.  
What ‘The Guardian’ have done with Snowden is a classic and more local 
example of that.  So, that’s a statement of the bleeding obvious, but it’s worth 
restating, I think, and losing that is what we’re talking about and copyright policy 
has to fit into that view.96 
 
But one resolution may be found in the words of the author of America’s First 
Amendment. James Madison famously said in 1876 ‘some degree of abuse is inseparable 
from the proper use of every thing: and in no instance is more true that that of the 
press.’97  The context of Madison’s argument is of course different from the current 
dilemma, and there is no reason for a European necessarily to pay regard to Madison’s 
opinion. But the point he articulated remains forceful in a contemporary European 
context: one has to accept the risk of harm if one is to encourage an activity that can also 
produce good. The more attractive view is, therefore, that the fact that the commercial 
news industry can create harm should not be a reason, by itself, not to intervene. Hence 
the failings of the commercial news industry are not by themselves a reason to refrain 
from a publishers’ right. 
 
That said, one should bear in mind Professor Naughton’s point that we should ultimately 
not confuse form with function. What we seek to protect is journalism’s contribution to 
the public sphere, and the activity of engaged participatory journalism. It just happens to 
be the case in our society that these functions are largely performed by the commercial 
news industry. But this may not always be the case. 
The strong argument 
This leads to the strong argument, which argued that no intervention at all is appropriate, 
as this may hinder the development of a networked public sphere that may replace 
commercial news. The expectation is, in other words, that a new form can be expected to 
arise to undertake the functions of the commercial news industry.  
 
A problem with this suggestion is that it’s difficult to believe that such a development 
would truly replicate the scale and resources of commercial professional journalism. 
These resources include access to lawyers, collective expertise, various professional 
                                                 
96 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Andrew Hughes, session 1, transcript 9. 
97 4 Elliot’s Debates on the Federal Constitution at 571 
 
34 
36

codes (which are more respected in broadcast, perhaps, than print, because broadcast is 
more highly regualted) and the like. This means that institutions, in short, can do things 
that networks of individuals cannot (or are unlikely to be able to). This has been argued 
by a variety of authors, such as Jones,98 Schudson,99 Levine,100 and Starr 101 Indeed, the 
point was also made at the Amsterdam Conference by Matt Rogerson, drawing on his 
experience at the Guardian:  
 
the idea that kind of an individual blogger could have done the Panama Papers at 
all so is ridiculous.  An organisation like The Guardian or the Times that did the 
Lance Armstrong story, it requires teams of journalists and teams of lawyers to go 
through a story line by line so I think this idea that kind of bloggers on their own 
can survive and can produce public interest journalism is kind of fantasy.102  
 
And yet, many will be unconvinced by this. Indeed, this is another debate with a 
substantial pedigree, as even before the development of the Internet, scholars were 
arguing about whether citizens with pens, or lonely pamphleteers, who perform 
functional journalism, can replicate the activities of institutions that do journalism.103 
Clearly it cannot be resolved conclusively in a discussion about a publishers’ right.  
 
What can be said, though, is that even if - as Benkler expects to happen - these qualities 
can be replicated by networks of individuals, that hasn’t happened yet. In fact, it seems 
that a quite different pattern is emerging. Some research has shown that the networked 
public sphere is actually, to a large extent, dependent on the work of the commercial 
news industry. It recycles and churns content produced by legacy print journalists. 
 
This was the conclusion of research has been done in the US into the provenance of 
online stories. This found that newspaper journalists generated the vast majority of news 
reporting, with one estimate putting the figure as high as 85% of the total material 
produced in a particular area at a particular time. Another, a frequently cited Pew Centre 
survey of news in Baltimore in 2010, reported that 95% of stories with new information 
                                                 
98 A Jones, Losing the News: The Future of News that Feeds Democracy (Oxford University Press, Oxford 
2009) 
99 Schudson 
100 Levine 
101 P Starr, 'Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers' in R McChesney and V Pickard (eds), Will the Last 
Reporter Please Turn out the Lights
 (The New Press, New York, London 2011) 
102 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Matt Rogerson Session 3, transcript 57 
103 This was an issue in, for example, .Branzburg v Hayes 408 US 665 (1972)  . The case concerned, in 
basic terms, the question of whether the Press were sufficiently functionally distinct in the US state to merit 
special protection under the First Amendment to the Constitution. The Supreme Court decided they were 
not, because individuals could perform the same tasks as institutional journalists. The issue generated a 
large amount of discussion, some of which is collected in part 1 of E Barendt, Media Law (International 
library of essays in law and legal theory, Dartmouth, Aldershot 1993). 
 
35 
37

arose from traditional media, of which newspapers produced the lion’s share.104 This is 
perhaps unsurprising, as US newspapers used to employ three times as many journalists 
as were employed by other media.105  
 
One cannot be sure that this US research reflects what is happening in the EU. But there 
are reasons to expect that it does. As Levy and Neilsen argue in their comparative study 
of the news business in an online world, the legacy print industry is the engine room of 
journalism and the flow of news.106 Indeed, even in the UK, which might be expected to 
reflect a different picture because its news ecology is dominated by the non-commercial 
journalistic behemoth of the BBC, a similar position about the important contribution 
made by print journalists has been established.107  
 
This evidence makes it is reasonable to suggest that it is too optimistic to base the 
justification for failing to intervene to protect commercial journalism, and in particular 
print journalism, on the hope that something equivalent will arise to take its place. 
Benkler himself has conceded that it is unclear whether this is happening.108 A more 
likely view of the facts is that commercial journalism, particularly legacy print 
journalism, is unlikely to be replaced by something functionally equivalent any time 
soon, and so the incentive argument remains viable. There may well develop a symbiosis 
between the two forms of production of journalistic information, as Naughton has 
argued,109 but that is insufficient reason to refrain from taking steps to protect the 
viability of commercial news.  
Summary 
Neither the weak nor the strong argument are a compelling reason not to create a 
publishers’ right. However, it is appropriate to recognise the limitations of the democratic 
argument for a publishers’ right. Publishers do harm as well as good, and one should not 
confuse protecting the function of journalism with its form. This means any intervention 
bears the risk of rewarding content that is harmful to democracy,  
                                                 
104 Levine 132; McChesney 179  
105 N Gamse, 'Legal Remedies for Saving Public Interest Journalism in America' (2011) 105 Northwestern 
University Law Review 329 
106 Levy, Nielsen and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. 
107 Ibid. 4. One survey found that that the majority (65%) of the spending on news in the UK is accounted 
for by the print sector, with the national press spending about £875million and the regional press £470 
million. Mediatique,'A Report for Ofcom (Annex 6 to Ofcom’s advice to the Secretary of State for Culture, 
Olympics, Media and Sport)'. 
108 Y Benkler, 'Giving the Networked Public Sphere Time to Develop' in R McChesney and V Pickard 
(eds), Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights (The New Press, New York London 2011) 
109 J Naughton, From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: Disruptive Innovation in the Age of the Internet (Quercus, 
New York, London 2014) 
 
36 
38

The challenge to the notion that the news business is not thriving 
The second area to address is the notion that the commercial news publishing industry is 
not faring as badly as it seems, and so no intervention is necessary. Here, again, there are 
a variety of points that can be made.  
Concerns about the long term remain potent 
The first is that it may be premature to conclude from any returns to profitability that 
parts of the industry have enjoyed, that any crisis has been successfully weathered. There 
are reasons to expect that the longer-term trends in the commercial news industry will be 
downwards, due to substantial long-term systemic problems. Intervention, therefore, 
remains potentially appropriate.  
 
These fundamental difficulties have been widely noted. Indeed, one example has been 
discussed above, namely the decline of the traditional advertisement revenue model, 
which was for so long a stalwart of the news industry’s finances.110 Another long-term 
problem is the protracted and extended decline in circulation figures that show little sign 
of being reversed. People in Europe and the USA seem to be, in general, consuming less 
and less news, and printed news in particular,111 and while this is particularly true of the 
young, social and demographic changes have also been identified as reasons why older 
people are also losing the habit of purchasing news.112 Falling circulation figures have 
knock-on effects that create a vicious circle for the commercial news industry, as 
advertising revenues are frequently linked to circulation figures.113 Moreover, declining 
revenues makes it more difficult to spend sufficiently to create good quality 
journalism.114   
 
Indeed, when Professor Dr Hegemann was pressed at the Amsterdam Conference on how 
a publishers’ right may be justified when Axel Springer had returned to profitability, he 
said: 
 
rising turnover and profits are not stemming from the traditional news business.  
As you might know, Springer has sold quite a group of its traditional regional 
newspapers, […and…] decided some years back to completely restructure its 
activities and to invest almost more than a billion into internet or digital-based 
companies that have not much or nothing to do with the traditional publishers’ 
                                                 
110 Text to n 9. 
111 Ryfe 1, 34; Hargreaves 112, 121;  Schudson 225; S Wunsch-Vincent, 'Online News: Recent 
Developments, New Business Models and Future Prospects' in DAL Levy and R Nielsen (eds), The 
Changing Business of Journalism and its Implication for Democracy
 (2010); , Reuters Institute Digital 
News Report
  64-66.  
112 Starr. Some have argued that it may be that these figures are misleading, and there is a decline in the 
consumption of print journalism only – and there is less of a decline when consumption of digital 
journalism is taken into account. However, this has not been demonstrated yet.) 
113 Ellis 33, provides a survey of other problems that have been identified. 
114 Kaye and Quinn 5 
 
37 
39

business.  The publishing side of the business today is ‘Die Welt’, ‘Bild’, and so 
on, and the ‘Bild’ is profitable; ‘Die Welt’ is not, as you know.  But Springer has 
understood that they will not be able to keep on their traditional content, 
journalist-driven content business without backing it with activities that are far 
away from the classical journalism.115   
Other sectors, and the commercial news industry  
This suggestion was that there should be no general intervention to benefit the legacy 
print news industry, because such an act will benefit other sectors – such as broadcast and 
online – that are not suffering to the same extent. An answer is that, to begin with, it’s not 
clear that this statement is true, and if it is, whether it is likely to be true for long: there is 
evidence of significant closures of local radio stations that might have transmitted 
news,116 and there are concerns that the Internet will undermine television’s advertising 
model, as it did that of print.117  
 
Moreover, for example, optimism about the long-term prospects of digital native 
commercial news producers is not clearly well-placed. They have not been around long 
enough for us to have a robust idea of their continued viability, and indeed many of them 
are funded by venture capitalist money, or philanthropy, or other means rather than by 
profit, which may not be sustainable in the long run. BuzzFeed, for example, recently 
announced it missed its financial targets by over $80 million,118 and Vice Media recently 
laid off 20 staff, including two foreign correspondents.119 It is too early to tell whether 
online digital news operators have developed sustainable business models that will 
generate valuable news content, as opposed to – for example – paid advertising material, 
dressed in the garb of journalism. 
 
But perhaps more importantly, there remain other cogent reasons to pay particular 
attention to the legacy print industry, as legacy print journalists constitute the prime 
motive force of the news industry. This was argued earlier, based on research that 
analysed the provenance of various forms of news in circulation.  
 
This shouldn’t be taken as an argument for the preservation of the dissemination of news 
by ink on paper: a confusion, in Professor Naughton’s terms, form with function.  Rather, 
                                                 
115 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR 
Conference, Jan Hegemann, session 1, transcript 15 -16. 
116 GMG Radio, the UK’s third largest radio broadcaster in 2010 suffered losses of £68.6m, which were 
greater than losses of Guardian and Observer together. It was sold in 2011 Ellis 162 
117 McChesney 128  
118 S Thielman and M Sweney, 'BuzzFeed cuts projected revenue by half after missing 2015 financial 
target' The Guardian (12 April 2016) <http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/12/buzzfeed-
projected-revenue-cuts-missed-financial-target> 
119 B Quinn and J Jackson, 'Vice Media lays off 20 staff in restructuring plans' ibid.(24 May 2016) 
<http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/24/vice-media-lays-off-20-staff-in-restructuring-plans> 
accessed 14 June 2016 
 
38 
40

as Ellis observes ‘[t]he concern should not be with the predicted demise of the ink-on-
paper edition but with the possible death of the type of serious journalism for which the 
printed page has become an idealised metaphor.’120 Perhaps even more so, the argument 
should be to attempt to preserve those who are skilled and trained to undertake ‘difficult 
journalism in the public interest – either requiring large resources or resilience against 
attack’, who for historical reasons exist in large, predominantly print-based companies, 
that can cross-subsidize news operations and afford expensive staff lawyers.121  
Excess profits 
These points aside, there remains force in other aspects of this argument against a 
publishers’ right. In particular it is a fair to say that the levels of profitability that 
commercial news expected in the past were excessive, and some drawing in of belts is 
appropriate. A publishers’ right that is intended to bring back the historic levels of high 
profitability enjoyed by commercial news publishers would be indefensible.  
 
That said, there are some complicating factors that need to be taken into account.  One is 
that there are reasonable grounds to believe that, given the longer-term trends affecting 
the commercial news industry that were described earlier, any financial adjustment will 
be not merely to levels of profitability that are closer to those found in other industries. 
These long term trends give us reason to suspect that the decline may well be to levels 
insufficient to support a large-scale news industry. This is likely to have a detrimental 
affect on the ability of the commercial news industry to perform some of the tasks we 
have come to expect of it in our democracy. 
 
Specifically, a reduction in profitability may well have an affect on the character of the 
news material that is generated. The absence of a generous profit line may encourage 
some commercial news producers to produce cheaper, and lower common denominator 
material that will please advertisers and pander to audiences, rather than more expensive, 
less popular and less remunerative journalism, such as investigative work. Indeed, to 
some extent, this appears to have been the pattern in broadcast news, in some 
countries.122  
Differences between Member States 
The fact that there are differences in business models, and the patterns of economic 
difficulties predicated on differences in subscription, sales and ad revenue in different 
Member States is a significant argument against a publishers’ right.  It leads to the 
concern that a EU harmonized publishers’ right may risk of over-benefitting those whom 
there are policy reasons not to benefit. In this respect, when evaluating the publishers’ 
right, one again comes to the question of whether it is acceptable to provide a benefit to 
those that may not need it – in this case, some profitable commercial news businesses in 
some Member States.  
                                                 
120 Ellis 17. 
121 Brock 122. 
122 Hitchens chapter 6.  
 
39 
41

 
But it is true that, as was the case earlier, the better view is that the concerns about the 
seriousness of the potential cost in democratic terms, of losing the commercial news 
industry are greater than the concerns about providing a benefit to some elements of the 
industry who do not need it. But that does not mean that measures cannot be taken to 
attempt to reduce the levels of over-benefit. One way of achieving this is to ensure that 
the targeting of benefits to assist those who need them is done at the level of Member 
States, rather than a European level. This is because Member States will be better placed 
to calibrate the benefits of a intervention so that it deals with the specific problems in its 
news industry.  Clearly, however, this would lead to the development of different 
solutions in different Member States, and therefore would be in tension with the desire to 
create a digital single market.123  
The challenge to the idea a publisher’s right should be part of the solution 
The final set of arguments to assess suggests that there is no sufficient reason to think 
copyright as part of the solution to any problem. Again, there are a variety of points to be 
made.  
The suggestion that a publishers’ right is not appropriate 
One preliminary question was the issue about whether copyright and a publishers’ right 
was an appropriate tool to incentivise the production of commercial news. An aspect of 
this was that it was not appropriate, on the grounds that copyright and related rights 
should, as a matter of principle, focus on the interests of authors. This seems to be a bad 
point, as far as it goes. A publishers’ right could be an entrepreneurial right. 
Entrepreneurial rights are already part of the EU’s copyright acquis, and are designed to 
protect financial investment in the production of content by other content producers.124 
There is therefore nothing problematic per se in the creation of a publishers’ right as 
another entrepreneurial right.  
 
Indeed, the fact that news publishers do not already benefit from such a right leads to the 
claim that news publishers suffer from unequal treatment, as other content producers 
benefit from these entrepreneurial rights, but news publishers do not. This leads to the 
equality argument for a publishers’ right, which will be discussed at length below.125  
 
By contrast, another point that was raised is more telling. This is the argument that 
copyright and related rights are ill-suited to incentivise the production of a particular 
content or type of journalism. For reasons discussed earlier, it is unlikely that a 
publishers’ right could incorporate a test that appropriately distinguished some content 
from others, and only incentivised content that was desired – even if there could be 
consensus about what journalistic content was desirable.  This means that if a publishers’ 
                                                 
123 This is an aspiration of the Commission, and a rationale for EU legislation see text to n 42. 
124 Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the 
harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society. For a discussion, 
see L Bently and B Sherman, Intellectual Property Law (OUP, Oxford 2014) 32-33, chapter 13. 
125 Text following n 132. 
 
40 
42

right is intended to achieve this outcome, it is likely to be a bad choice as a means of 
intervention. 
 
More difficult to assess are the questions that have been raised about the appropriateness 
of a publishers’ right by, for example, by Julia Reda MEP. Some of the concerns here are 
that a publisher’s right may give rise to harmful unintended consequences on others. The 
harms that may arise will be set out in more detail in the next section,126 but it is 
sufficient to mention here that they present a considerable challenge for the notion that a 
publishers’ right is an appropriate means of dealing with the difficulties that face the 
commercial news industry.  
The suggestion that a publishers’ right is not effective 
The second argument was that it is unlikely that a publishers’ right would be effective. It 
would not bring in sufficient income to create an incentive of the sort required to produce 
commercial news in the future. Here, it is true, a publishers’ right is unlikely to be 
sufficient.  
 
However, while a publishers’ right will not resolve news publishers’ financial 
difficulties, it may well help. As Andrew Hughes said at the Amsterdam Conference, 
‘copyright reform is not the solution to the news problem, but the solution to the news 
problem is a much bigger and more challenging issue than that’.  And this was the 
argument advanced at the London Workshop by representatives of the publishing 
industry, who ‘observed that even if copyright wouldn’t provide enough revenue to 
resolve the difficulties facing the news industry, it would likely help. It should be seen as 
an ‘and-and’, not an ‘either-or’.  Newspapers are not looking, it was said, for a magic 
bullet, but for help in areas that are ‘leaking revenue’’127 
 
More difficult, though, for those seeking to defend a publishers’ right, are other concerns 
about its efficacy. One of the more pertinent is the worry that a publishers’ right may be a 
solution to yesterday’s problem, not tomorrow’s. It was described how a publishers’ right 
seems primarily aimed at the problems publishers have with news aggregation, but 
aggregation is becoming eclipsed by social media, particularly Facebook, as a means by 
which news is distributed. A publishers’ right is unlikely to be well-tailored to enhance 
the generation of more revenue from the distribution of news by social media platforms.  
  
A further serious concern about the efficacy of a publishers’ right derives from the 
experience of the Spanish and German laws. As Professor Xalabarder and Professor Dr 
Gruenberger described at length at the Amsterdam Conference, these were not an 
effective way of raising revenue. Professor Xalabarder said that after the Spanish law, 
‘Google was not affected. Google simply closed the Google news site and went on with 
its business. Instead, such a provision puts a Damocles sword on top of the small 
                                                 
126 Text to n .146 
127 Danbury 
 
41 
43

aggregators and blog sites which fear that maybe one day the newspapers will come and 
ask for the compensation’.128 Of the German law, Professor Dr Gruenberger said: 
 
The ancillary right in Germany has been a complete regulatory failure.  It 
promised way more than it could ever deliver.  Eventually, it re-created, with 
regard to Google, exactly the same de-facto situation as before, however, with 
substantially higher transaction costs.  The ancillary right – and this is a point 
regulators really should look into, particularly with regard to Google – is also 
responsible for possible competitive disadvantages of other search engines. 
Finally, copyright law needs technology and media sensitive access rules.  The 
German press publisher’s right as an exclusive right does not meet that 
standard.129 
 
Clearly, though, a publishers’ right is likely to be different in form to either of these 
examples, so perhaps it might fare better? Whether this is so, or not, again depends 
largely on the wording of any provision. But there are some reasons to be pessimistic. If, 
for example, a publishers’ right is not a mandatory right, then Google may respond to it 
in the way it responded to the German News Publishers’ Ancillary right, and make 
indexing and listing on its servers conditional on publishers signing a waiver. If, by 
contrast, it is mandatory, there is a real risk that Google may respond in the way they 
responded to the Spanish amendment to the quotation exception, and shut down their 
news aggregator. This is because – given the size and revenue model of Google – that the 
news industry needs Google more than Google needs the news industry. The same, 
arguably, applies to the other major online redistributors of published news.  
Creative destruction 
That leaves the argument about creative destruction, that we ought to leave the 
commercial news industry alone, so that the hidden hand of the market can develop a 
new viable business model, just as it did out of advertising some three hundred years ago. 
 
‘Creative destruction’ is a powerful metaphor, but there are a number of problems with 
applying it to the real world, some of which have been prefigured in the related 
discussion about the networked public: it hasn’t happened yet, and how can we be sure it 
will happen? Of these, perhaps the most pertinent is how can we be sure that any 
destruction will be creative? And why should we be phlegmatic about the levels of 
destruction? Given the fact that a commercial news publishing industry is (on balance) 
valuable to democracy, there are significant concerns about what will happen if it is 
destroyed.  
 
How, in other words, can we be sure that anything that replaces the commercial news 
industry will be of equal or greater value to that which may be lost? How can we be sure 
                                                 
128 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
transcript 31 
129 Ibid., transcript 23. 
 
42 
44

that the new business models that evolve will create something that is functionally 
similar, rather than functionally worse? Indeed, some evidence –namely the rise of 
advertorials, sponsored content, and click-bait journalism, and the continuing failure to 
find an effective business model that replicates the type of journalism we have today, 
leads one to be sceptical. Andrew Hughes made this point at the Amsterdam Conference: 
 
I agree absolutely with John that, you know, the Schumpeter diagnosis of creative 
destruction is what we’re going through and it’s going to be a very exciting time 
to see what emerges from that.  You cannot hold on to what you’ve got and hang 
on to it and assume you have got a right to your model lasting forever.  I think 
everybody would agree with that.  I just hope that the new models that emerge are 
not dominated by PR paid for by corporate rather than independent journalism, of 
admittedly very varying qualities over the years130 
 
Here, we must balance risks. Even if there is creative destruction at work, this does not 
rule out the fact that intervening – for example with a publishers’ right. Such a right 
would still be appropriate, on the grounds that what we stand to lose is of such value to 
democracy, and after recognising that the production of democratically salient journalism 
has always been subsidised.  
Conclusion 
The incentive argument provides a cogent set of reasons to intervene to benefit the 
commercial news industry. This is because on balance, the commercial news industry can 
be seen as contributing to a healthy democracy in a valuable way, and there is insufficient 
reason to expect it to be replaced by something as useful if it fails. There are cogent 
reasons to expect that the difficulties in which the commercial news industry finds itself 
are severe, and long-term. If many commercial news operators go bankrupt or withdraw 
from expensive but democratically important activities, this is likely to significantly 
impair communication valuable to our democratic states. This leads to the conclusion that 
an intervention would be useful and beneficial. 
 
However, the incentive argument contains some manifest weaknesses. There is a risk of 
benefitting those who do not need it, or do no longer need it, or for doing things we do 
not want to incentivise. The industry has had in the past remarkable levels of 
profitability, and it would be an error to intervene and replicate these. We must not 
confuse the need to protect the function of journalism with the need to protect its form, 
and we need to disregard any arguments from the commercial news industry or others 
that seek to collapse these together. But, on a balance of risk, it seems appropriate to 
intervene. 
 
What is less clear is that any incentive should be by a right related to copyright, and even 
less clear that any such right should be harmonized across the EU. There must remain 
concerns about whether a publisher’s right would be effective, particularly given the 
experience of the copyright-related laws that were adopted in Germany and Spain in an 
                                                 
130 Ibid., Andrew Hughes session 4, transcript 70. 
 
43 
45

attempt to benefit commercial news producers. It may well provide a marginal benefit, 
which would be welcomed by the news industry, but there is also a very real risk that any 
benefit will become less significant in the future, given the changing patterns of news 
distribution in an online world. And, given differences in the news businesses in Member 
States, intervention might be better if it were not at a European level. 
 
Also significant are the concerns that a publishers’ right may harm or damage others. The 
risk of this should be weighed in the balance against any benefits a publishers’ right 
might be expected to deliver to society. At present, this is difficult because we have no 
text to consider. 
 
In summary, the incentive argument leads to the conclusion that some intervention is 
appropriate, but it does not lead to the conclusion that a publishers’ right is the 
appropriate means of intervention. As Professor Hugeholtz said at the Amsterdam 
Conference: 
 
it is a common reflex, look at IP law, it’s always IP law that is at fault here, but I 
don’t think IP law in any imaginable world is going to help us out of this 
conundrum.  Other business models surely are, that’s not my department of 
course, I’m not competent here but I would obviously look at that.  Subsidies, 
always interesting, I’m from the Netherlands, we love subsidies, I’m all in favour 
of that.  Re-routing money that now goes to public broadcasts to the press, I’m all 
in favour of that.  More taxing Google and having them pay their taxes in the 
countries where they’re really making money, yes please. 131 
 
 
                                                 
131 Ibid., Bernt Hugenholtz, session 3, transcript 47. 
 
44 
46

3 The equality argument 
The second argument, the equality argument for a publishers’ right, has only emerged 
recently. It is less complex than the incentive argument, but is more involved than at first 
appears. It is not, by itself, sufficient reason to establish a publishers’ right. 
The argument 
The equality argument has arisen because news publishers claim that they are not treated 
the same way in EU copyright law as others who conduct similar activities. They argue 
that other content producers – phonogram producers, broadcasters and film-makers – 
receive rights under the Related Rights Directive in respect of reproduction, 
communication and making available to the public and distribution, but news producers 
do not. This is a point that the Commission have acknowledged is relevant to their 
considerations about a publishers’ right, and is on the Commission’s consultation 
website:  
 
Current EU copyright law grants neighbouring rights to performers, film 
producers, record producers and broadcasting organisations. Publishers are not 
among the neighbouring right holders at European level.132 
 
This is unequal treatment, publishers argue, and inconsistent. A senior decision maker 
interviewed for our research explained: ‘why should broadcasters, record producers have 
neighbouring rights, but [publishers] don’t?’  This inconsistency, publishers argue, can be 
remedied by the creation of a publishers’ right.  
 
The equality argument sounds simple, but there are other aspects to it. It is not merely a 
claim for equal treatment, but is a claim that equal treatment is merited given the fact that 
the activities undertaken by news producers are of a similar nature to those undertaken by 
producers who already enjoy these neighbouring rights, and that these activities are 
valuable to society. 
 
Publishers have indicated what some of these activities are. The democratic argument has 
been discussed at length,133 but there are others. A significant example is the result of 
financial investment that publishers make in producing news. Such an investment is 
important because it sustains the legal, professional and other institutional aspects of 
news publishing that contribute to the value in a democracy of commercially published 
news. But such investment also, as the publishersright.eu website argues, has wide 
economic benefits, equivalent to those created by other neighbouring rights-holders. 
 
                                                 
132 European Commission, 'Commission seeks views on neighbouring rights and panorama exception in EU 
copyright' (2016) <https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/commission-seeks-views-
neighbouring-rights-and-panorama-exception-eu-copyright> accessed 14 June 2016 
133 Text to nn 8,  44, 91, 196 
 
45 
47

Being acknowledged, as rightsholder is an important basis for publishers to 
maintain sustainable journalism and would benefit employees, freelancers and 
photographers alike. It will allow for further investment in digital skills and the 
creation of new jobs. This would ultimately benefit the EU’s economy as well as 
society.134 
 
This was an argument that was forcefully expounded at the Amsterdam Conference. 
Andrew Hughes said: 
 
You employ 1,000 people to make and create news for you and then when you get 
into the courts in Europe, less so in the UK, you aren’t recognised as existing at 
all in copyright here.  It’s an obvious nonsense that needs to be addressed and it 
will simplify and streamline licensing.  It will put news organisations, who are not 
dissimilar, particularly in the digital age, from the other publishing organisations 
that have that protection135 
 
Publishers also argue there is a creative act in the production of commercial news that 
should be recognised, and this is another reason why a copyright-like publishers’ right is 
appropriate. This arises because a news publisher does not just collate news reports, but 
creatively selects, edits, and produces news in such a way that the brand identity of the 
publishers is adhered to and promoted, and an audience attracted and retained. As the 
publishersright.eu website explains:  
 
A press publisher does not merely publish content created by journalists and 
photographers. The publisher is responsible for overseeing the entire operation 
involved from the initial concept to the financing, production and management of 
a newspaper or magazine, in print or online, and takes legal responsibility 
together with the editor for the making available to the public of the final 
published edition(s) and any updates thereafter. Crucially, the publisher creates an 
editorial brand.136 
 
This will be discussed in a little more detail later, as it is relevant to the natural rights 
argument for a publishers’ right.137 
 
The equality argument suggests a relatively easy way of creating a publishers’ right. The 
Information Society Directive, and/or the Related Rights Directive, could be amended to 
recognise news publishers as rightsholders in European copyright acquis. 
                                                 
134 European Publishers Council and others, (accessed  
135 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Andrew Hughes, session 1, transcript 11. 
136 European Publishers Council and others, (accessed  question 5 
137 Text to n187. 
 
46 
48

HP v Reprobel 
The equality argument has become more significant of late because of the recent CJEU 
decision in the case of Hewlett-Packard v Reprobel.138 This decision has limited the 
extent to which publishers – and not only news publishers – are entitled to certain types 
of compensation. The compensation in question is that payable under the reprography 
and private copying exceptions, as provided for in article 5 (2) of the Information Society 
Directive. The CJEU indicated that only authors are entitled to such remuneration. This 
means that article 5(2), properly construed, precludes national laws from allocating a part 
of that compensation to publishers, where the publishers are under no obligation to 
ensure that the authors benefit from this allocation of funds.   
 
The funds in question can be substantial in many countries in Europe, and publishers 
would feel their loss acutely. Professor Dr Hegemann explained at the Amsterdam 
Conference how the decision would affect German publishers, by referring to a recent 
German case. 
 
Following a decision of the European Court, the Federal Court, Civil Court, ruled 
that the publishers are not any longer more qualified to get money out of these 
reproduction fees but rather will have to repay what they got in the last couple of 
years to the authors which will sum up to a three digit million.  This causes really 
a danger of insolvency for small and mid-sized book publishers.139  
 
However, if by applying the equality argument, publishers can establish themselves as 
rights-holders in EU copyright law of equal status to other neighbouring rights-holders, 
they might have a greater chance of sharing the revenue restricted by the Reprobel ruling. 
The creation of a publishers’ right may achieve this.  
 
This provides an incentive for publishers other than news publishers to seek recognition 
as EU rights-holders, as the Reprobel ruling applies to all publishers. It presents a threat 
to all of their income. This may be one reason the Commission’s consultation is now 
envisaging creating a neighbouring right for all publishers, a proposal that was not 
canvassed in the Commission’s Communication in December 2015.140 
Counter arguments 
There are a number of problems with the equality argument. First, though, it is important 
briefly to discuss one aspect of the Reprobel decision. This is because it is appropriate to 
distinguish the case for a news publishers’ right from the case for a general publishers’ 
right. It was discussed at some length in the last section how the publishing of news 
                                                 
138 Hewlett-Packard Belgium SPRL v Reprobel SCRL Case C-572/13  (CJEU (Fourth Chamber)) 
139 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Jan Hegemann, session 1, transcript 6. 
140 European Commission,'Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, 
the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: Towards a modern, 
more European copyright framework' ( 
 
47 
49

engages issues related to the functioning of a healthy democracy,141 but these arguments 
only apply to news publishing. They do not to publishing more generally. It follows from 
this that the arguments about whether news publishers should benefit from a copyright-
like right are different from the arguments about whether publishers in general should 
benefit from such a right. To conflate news with general publishing will create confusion: 
it will either inflate the importance of general publishing to democratic communication, 
or to undervalue the importance of news publishing.  
 
Turning to the equality argument more generally, the claim that the law is inconsistent 
needs further investigation – is it, and is it in ways that are important? And even if the 
law is inconsistent, resolving this inconsistency may create other inconsistencies, and this 
is something we wish to avoid. Indeed the force of the equality argument derives from its 
desire to remove inconsistencies from the law, and it must be an error if by changing the 
law we create more inconsistencies. Moreover, even if the creation of other 
inconsistencies is not a problem, the fact that changing the law will incur other costs, 
including harm to others, will need to be justified. They cannot be justified merely by 
claiming that the law is inconsistent, and other considerations will have to come into 
play. 
Truly similar? 
The first point rests on the claim that publishers undertake similar tasks as those 
performed by phonogram producers, film-makers and broadcasters. Do they? And, what 
do we mean by ‘similar’? To answer that, we need to find out what reasons were put 
forward at the time of the Related Rights Directive to explain why the law should afford 
rights to these entrepreneurs. We then have to consider the similarities and differences 
between news publishers and those who currently hold rights, and establish whether any 
similarities engage the reasons that were advanced for creating the original neighbouring 
rights. If they do not, then the claim of inconsistency falls.  
 
This is quite a task, and we do not have space to undertake it here. That may seem 
unsatisfactory, but it is sufficient for the moment to note that the equality argument is 
more complex than it first appears. If it is to be persuasive, this work needs to be done to 
establish that there is indeed an inconsistency. 
 
Moreover, there are reasons to believe that the original rationales for the introduction of 
the other neighbouring rights in EU law may have been, in fact, rather different from the 
reasons that publishers are now seeking a right, This was a point suggested by Professor 
Hugenholtz at the Amsterdam Conference: 
 
I would like once again to draw the comparison with the neighbouring rights for 
the broadcaster.  First of all, of course, the funny thing is why did we get that 
right in the first place?  Most people were involved in getting it here in the 1960s 
are dead but I have been told that the only reason why this right came about was 
to give them something where they would be the people who had to pay for the 
                                                 
141 Text to n 44, 91, 196 
 
48 
50

other new neighbouring rights.  So it was the performing artists who got their own 
right and obviously the Phonogram producer got that right because they were the 
strong lobbyist at the time and especially the public broadcaster at the time were 
very much against it, especially in the Netherlands as late as the 1990s were 
against it, and only when they were convinced and was absolutely sure that the 
Olympic Games would come to Amsterdam in 1992 and that it was necessary for 
them to have their own neighbouring right at the time were they convinced it was 
a good idea.  So it was a funny reason why we got the neighbouring right for the 
broadcasters in the first place.142   
 
We also need to ask whether, whatever the reasons why the original set of neighbouring 
rights were granted, these reasons remain apposite. A lot has changed since the Related 
Rights Directive was passed, and the rationales for its existence may no longer be 
persuasive. That means that it cannot necessarily follow that the mere fact that news 
entrepreneurs were left out of the Related Rights Directive in the past, that there is 
sufficient reason to provide them with rights now. A hard look is required into the 
question of the ways in which the Internet has changed things, and the effect of such 
changes on the normative question of whether neighbouring rights are appropriate, before 
we can accept the equality argument as providing a reason for a publishers’ right. 
 
In any event, evaluating the claim that an inconsistency would be removed by a 
publishers’ right is hampered by the fact we do not know, at the moment, what a 
publishers’ right would entail. This makes assessing whether there is or is not an 
inconsistency very difficult, as Professor Bently explained to the Amsterdam Conference: 
 
people who know something about what neighbouring rights contain know that 
they all differ.  So having a consultation about having a new neighbouring right 
for publishers just doesn’t tell you anything about what the content of the right 
that’s being proposed is, and how can you possibly respond to a consultation 
when you don’t know what the content of the right being proposed is?143 
More inconsistencies will be created 
The second set of difficulties arises because if one admits publishers into the class of 
recognised rightsholders under EU law, who will now be left out? Who, in other words, 
will then have a claim that they have been treated inconsistently? For if consistency is 
our watchword, and we are motivated by a desire to ensure that the law is treating anyone 
consistently, we need to be very careful not to leave out another group if we create a 
publishers’ right.  
 
Part of the problem here is in identifying who we want to benefit, and how, and drafting a 
publishers’ right in such a way that that they are benefitted in the way we want, and 
                                                 
142 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
, Bernt Hugenholtz, session 3, transcript 52 
143 Ibid., session 3, transcript 53 
 
49 
51

others are not. These problems were articulated by Professor van Eechoud at the 
Amsterdam Conference: 
 
there are too many worrisome concepts that we need to pin down: what type of 
use are we talking about; by whom; can we make meaningful distinctions 
between different actors in the light of changing technologies about who should 
be limited from doing what exactly?  Can you make a meaningful distinction 
between commercial and non-commercial uses?  I’m not sure, particularly if you 
start looking at social media, you know, and who should be the addressees of this 
norm?  Is it just traditional search; is it news aggregators; is it all kinds of 
platforms?  Very importantly, also, who are the beneficiaries?  How would you 
demarcate those?  Even in an ideal world where you could actually come up with 
a legal provision that clarifies this enough to provide a certain level of legal 
certainty then the other question, of course, is okay, that’s the law in the books 
and what happens on the ground?  How does it actually affect the market?  How 
does it play out in markets?144  
 
But, even if it is possible to identify and specify to whom and to what we wish a 
publishers’ right to apply, any line drawing exercise will leave some people out. These 
people may then themselves have a claim that they have been inconsistently treated, and 
this is a problem. Three possible groups of claimant can be readily identified.  
 
The first are the wire services – news wholesalers – like Reuters, Associated Press, the 
Press Association, and Agence France Presse. These, and similar organisations, provide a 
task that is similar to news publisher, in that they collect and distribute news. But the 
difference, historically at least, between news publishers and wire services is that news 
distribute news to the audience, and wire services – the news wholesalers -  distribute 
news to the publishers.  
 
Will the creation of a publishers’ right extend to news wholesalers, as well as news 
publishers? We do not know at the moment, because we do not have the text of the 
legislation to consider. But if it does not, then we will have created a further 
inconsistency in our attempts to remove one. The wire services will surely have the same 
type of claim of inconsistency that the publishers have now. 
 
The second group of people who may have a claim are others who undertaken 
functionally similar tasks as news publishers. In other words, people who gather and 
distribute news in our society. Now, it is notorious that the Internet has made everyone – 
arguably – functionally equivalent in terms of news gathering and publishing to those 
who used to buy ink by the barrel. The barriers to entry to the news market have fallen. 
Given this, there is a claim by any citizen journalist or blogger who publishes news 
online to be treated the same way as news publishers. 145  If the text of any legislation 
                                                 
144 Ibid., Mireille van Eechoud, session 4, transcript 67. See also text to n 209. 
145 It was argued earlier that individuals and networks of individuals are unlikely to be functionally 
equivalent to institutional commercial journalism. However, aspects of what individuals and networks of 
 
50 
52

omits these people, then – again – they may have a claim to equality of treatment under 
the law of the same type as is currently being advanced by news publishers. 
 
A third group of people may also have a claim to inconsistency, but it’s unlikely that 
they’ll voice it. That is because the inconsistency that they face may be beneficial to 
them. The people in question are the broadcasters, who already are afforded rights under 
the Related Rights Directive. If the law is changed in such a way that those who publish 
news are benefitted, then there is a risk that they’ll receive two sets of benefits – both 
under the Related Rights Directive as broadcasters, and when they publish news as news 
publishers. Is that a defensible situation? It’s unlikely that it is, and if it is not we will 
have created a new inconsistency – one group of people benefitting twice – from our 
attempt to resolve an old one. 
 
It may be that with appropriate and subtle drafting, these problems – particularly the last 
one - can be avoided. But, however subtle the drafting, there is always a risk – a systemic 
risk from the nature of drafting laws that include some and exclude others – that 
resolving one consistency will create others. The upshot of this is that a claim of 
inconsistency is not by itself enough to justify establishing a publishers’ right, and it also 
ceases to look like a simple argument. 
The costs this will incur 
The third problem with the equality of treatment argument is the fact that making the law 
consistent – assuming that it isn’t consistent at the moment, and that it can be made 
consistent without creating other inconsistencies –will cause costs to be placed on others. 
This, of course, is a consideration that the Commission have recognised. They say: 
 
The Commission will take into account the impact that introducing a new 
neighbouring right for publishers would have on all relevant stakeholders and 
ensure the coherence of any possible intervention with other EU policies.146 
 
One of the curiosities of the equality argument is that it does not, by itself, provide us 
with a reason why we should accept these costs. To understand why it might be 
appropriate for others to bear any costs created by a publishers’ right, we have to 
examine other arguments beyond questions of equalty. This makes the equality argument 
by itself deficient as a rationale for adopting a publishers’ right. 
 
Who might suffer these costs? There are at least three types of people whose interests 
should be considered. The first class is Internet operators who currently redistribute 
published news online. The second is individual users of the Internet. The third is society 
in general.  
                                                                                                                                               
individuals do undoubtedly replicates some of the activities of news publishers, and it is on this that any 
claim would lie. 
146 European Commission, 'Commission seeks views on neighbouring rights and panorama exception in EU 
copyright'  
 
51 
53

Online operators 
A specific example of the first type of person who will suffer costs is, of course, Google 
– whether in respect of their provision of search tools, or news tools. Indeed, imposing 
costs on Google and others who redistribute published news online is exactly one of the 
results of a publishers’ right is intended to bring about, as the incentive argument 
showed, and the free riding argument will show. But a publishers’ right is also likely to 
also affect media monitoring organisations, and other news aggregators. This was 
emphasised at the Amsterdam Conference by James Mackenzie, who runs a small media 
monitoring organisation called Cutbot. 
 
We are not the target.  Even if you get this through you would aim at Google; you 
would miss.  They would close down Google News or they would take Spain out 
of it or take Belgium out of it and you would hit us and you would be putting 
small businesses out of work in a failed attempt to try and get big businesses who 
do behave unethically. […] 147 
 
Leaving aside, for the moment, the question of whether the imposition of such costs are 
appropriate,148 the point is that the interests and legitimate expectations of these online 
operators need to be taken into account, when considering whether to establish a 
publishers’ right. 
Users of the web 
The second group of people who may suffer from the introduction of a publishers’ right 
comprises ordinary users of the web.  
 
One reason that users of the Web may suffer costs from a publishers’ right is if a 
publishers’ right placed a financial drag on hyperlinking or embedding to news content. 
This is a point on which Julia Reda has campaigned, as was mentioned earlier.149 At the 
moment, generally speaking, after Svensson150 and similar cases, there is frequently no 
such financial liability. But Reda and others are concerned that a publishers’ right would 
create financial obligation that would arise when news material was hyperlinked to, or 
embedded. Many would find this deeply problematic, as Professor Naughton said at the 
Amsterdam Conference. 
 
There are some people in this discussion, although I hope nobody in this room, 
who actually thinks that we should do something about hyperlinking.  If anybody 
thinks that the publishing industry will do anything about what has become one of 
                                                 
147 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR 
Conference, session 4, transcript 72 
148 This will be addressed in the text to n 159. 
149 Text before n 72. 
150  Svensson v Retriever Sverige AB C-466/12, [2014] Bus LR 259, [2014] ECDR 9   
 
52 
54

the most fundamental technologies of the whole world then I begin to wonder 
what these people are smoking. […]151 
 
It was described earlier how both the publishers’ website, publishersright.eu and the 
Commission have strongly asserted there is no intention to create a ‘tax on hyperlinking’. 
But, be that as it may, it is difficult to assess whether there is any damaging effect on 
users of the web by a publishers’ right, as predicted by Reda or in another way, on 
because we don’t have a text to consider.   
 
Even if a publishers’ right has no effect on hyperlinking and the like, there are other ways 
in which it might have a detrimental impact on users of the web. It may deprive them of a 
benefit to which they have become accustomed because, for example, they have become 
used to services that would be curtailed by a publishers’ right.. This was a point raised by 
the representative of the BEUC, the European consumers’ association, at the Amsterdam 
Conference.  
 
Of course, I’m not defending here Facebook or Google, you know, they have all 
these trade associations in Brussels so they can do the job, but we have to 
acknowledge that these have given the possibility for consumers to reach or 
creators also to reach their audiences in a greater way. 152 
 
The economist Bertin Martens provided a reason why this is so: 
 
people go to aggregators because you get an overview of all the newspaper 
articles anywhere in the world or in your country, in your language or on your 
subject and that’s where if you’re more targeted research.  So that is the main 
advantage of these news aggregators from a consumer perspective153 
Society 
The third class of people who may suffer a cost from providing a publishers’ right, and so 
making the law consistent, is society in general. This is a less evident point, but society in 
general may suffer a cost if a publishers’ right curtails beneficial activities. One concern 
is about suppressing innovation. Society may lose the possibility to benefit from 
something that does not exist yet, and could not develop if a publishers’ right is created. 
This may seem somewhat remote, and indeed the notion was expressly challenged at the 
Amsterdam Conference by Andrew Hughes. 
 
creating a connection between looser copyright laws and innovation is utterly 
ridiculous.  I don’t see any evidence and I don’t think any of you can produce any 
evidence that relaxing copyright law creates innovation.  All it does is encourage 
                                                 
151 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR 
Conference, John Naughton, session 4, transcript 62 
152 Ibid. Agustin Reyna, session 4, transcript 63 
153 Ibid., Bertin Martens, session 3, transcript 54 
 
53 
55

people to sit in bedrooms and play with taking other people’s content and trying 
to resell it, that’s not innovation and I think we should be clear in our heads about 
that.154 
 
But this is too strong a view. It’s important to recognise it is at least plausible, and many 
think it has happened. Indeed the Hargreaves review was (in part at least) set up because 
of a concern that Google would not have been permitted to arise in the UK because 
copyright law would fetter this type of innovative use of content created by other 
people.155  And there are extensive works that describe how loosening copyright can be a 
spur to innovation: either to those who are not motivated by profit, or who are motivated 
by profit in particular ways.156 
 
Andrew Hughes’ assertion was challenged at the Amsterdam Conference, Marietje 
Schaake MEP, for example, responded: 
 
Well I think exceptions for example are crucial for remixing just to give you an 
idea for access to culture, for digitising cultural heritage and making it available 
to the public and not only in Europe but globally.  For scientific cooperation 
across borders, I think there are actually a lot of ways in which exceptions and 
more flexible copyright can help innovation but I understand that’s a political 
discussion.157 
 
And James Mackenzie, provided a example of innovation being suppressed:  
 
A few years ago I met the former founder of a start-up who sought to use software 
to scan newspaper articles and conduct sentiment analysis which is, for 
programmers here, a difficult field.  So they didn’t have a single customer.  They 
weren’t sure how they were going to monetise this.  They were a university spin-
off, but from day one they were required to pay a licence for the articles that their 
software was looking at; a licence that obviously had no revenue.  They had a 
very small amount of money and this requirement put them out of business.  So it 
might have been a great business; it might have been a terrible business, but 
because the law has treated those unpublished server site copies as potentially 
infringing we’ll never know. […] Neither of these rights would undermine the 
business of publishing, nor would they prevent new media from entering the 
media market.  There’s no substitute here for the necessary work being done by 
journalists, but they might lead to the kind of flowering of sophisticated analytical 
                                                 
154 Ibid., Andrew Hughes, session 3, transcript 57 
155 BBC, 'UK copyright laws to be reviewed, announces Cameron' (BBC 2010) 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11695416> accessed 14 June 2016 
156 Examples include L Lessig, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy 
(Bloomsbury Academic, London 2008) Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production 
Transforms Markets and Freedom
 , and Patry 
157 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Marietje Schaake, session 3, transcript 59 
 
54 
56

businesses that we so rarely see in the European Union.  It’s not a coincidence 
that innovation happens elsewhere.158  
The publishers’ response 
Now it may well be that the costs of the sort described here should be borne by the 
various people described. Google, for example, may be free riding on news publishers’ 
effort, and so may be is appropriate to impose costs on them.  And the costs on users of 
the web might be justified, because if they continue to enjoy a free aggregated news 
service, the funding that generates the news itself may dry up and the production of news 
grind to a halt. There is much force in Andrew Hughes’ observation to the Amsterdam 
Conference that: 
 
[y]ou can say at this moment in time consumers are benefiting; infinite demand 
for a free good, is what I remember from my economics, but I don’t think you can 
impute from that, that that’s an acceptable or a sustainable position and I don’t 
think what you’re suggesting there really is sustainable.  […] 159 
 
It may also be appropriate to prevent innovative use of publishers’ content, because such 
use is immoral in some way, amount to free riding, or breaches publishers’ natural rights. 
And there may be other reasons it is appropriate that a publishers’ right imposes the costs 
described here.  
 
But in a way, these arguments establish the point at issue. That is that the equality 
argument can only amount to a small, contributory case for the establishment of a 
publishers’ right. Other considerations need to be taken into account, beyond a claim of 
inconsistency, before a publisher’s right can be justified. For, as we have seen, when 
evaluating the appropriateness of any costs imposed on others by a publishers’ right, it 
will be necessary to look beyond the mere claim of inconsistency to see if they are 
appropriate. 
Conclusion 
The equality argument seems simple, but this is deceptive. It may, perhaps, be true that 
news publishers are not afforded neighbouring rights, while other entrepreneurial content 
producers are, and that this appears inconsistent. But before this can amount to a reason 
to bring in a new neighbouring right for news publishers, a variety of complex judgments 
need to be made. What, in detail, will a new right entail; what were the reasons that the 
old rights were afforded; do those reasons pertain now; are they sufficient to support 
providing news publishers with rights?  
 
Moreover, other questions need to be answered, that are raised by the equality argument: 
what other inconsistencies might be created by establishing a news publishers’ right, and 
can these be defended, given the fact that we wish to pass a publishers’ right to avoid 
                                                 
158 Ibid. James Mackenzie, session 4, transcript 65 
159 Ibid., Andrew Hughes, session 4, transcript 69 
 
55 
57

inconsistencies? And, finally, and importantly, the question arises of the costs that a 
publishers’ right may impose on others. What will these be, and how can they be 
justified? Any justificatory argument will have to look beyond the fact that publishers are 
currently treated in an unequal way. Hence, the equality argument is not, by itself, 
sufficient reason to establish a publishers’ right.
 
56 
58

4 Free riders – ‘reaping where they have not sown’ 
The third argument that emerged from our research, as a rationale for a publishers’ right, 
is the free riding argument. This is the argument that online redistributors of news benefit 
from the effort of news publishers without paying for it, or providing sufficient other 
compensation. 
 
This is an argument that is susceptible to empirical proof, as economic studies can reveal 
whether or not there is unrecompensed benefit, and so whether or not a publishers’ right 
is indicated. However, such evidence seems to be at the moment equivocal, and there are 
reasons to suspect that it will continue to be so. This is partly because online 
redistribution of news affects different publishers in different ways. Better-known 
publishers may suffer from free riding, while smaller publishers may benefit from having 
their brands promoted. It is also because re-distributors of news may be building new 
markets, rather than free-riding in older established ones.  
 
This, therefore, is an area that would benefit from more primary research, and perhaps a 
meta-study, that distinguishes the different interests of different publishers, and pays 
regard to the new market argument.  
The argument 
The benefit that online redistributors may receive from published news may be direct, as 
is the case with commercial media monitoring organisations, clipping services, or news 
aggregators, who collate published news and sell it to clients. Or, alternatively, it may 
also be direct where a social media service attracts the attention of the audience by 
presenting published news, and then sells this attention on to advertisers, or advertising 
brokers. An indirect benefit may arise where an online service bolsters its brand by 
redistributing news, or by gains goodwill from doing so, without directly selling 
advertising against it.  
 
In each case the actions of the online redistributors of news is free riding, publishers 
argue, and is wrong and something the law should restrict: this could be achieved by a 
publishers’ right. 
 
The publishersrights.eu website explains the point in a way that brings to the fore the risk 
of diverted sales and subscription revenue, lost to news publishers: 
 
Whilst the significant role of the press has not changed, the way in which press 
publishers’ content is created and distributed is vastly different from the pre-
digital era. In a purely analogue world no third party has been free-riding on 
publishers’ services during the regular marketing period of the daily, weekly or 
even monthly press. But in the digital world, the online press in particular runs the 
risk of, and often is, partially or completely taken over by a third party in seconds 
 
57 
59

and exploited and marketed in a variety of ways, without any remuneration to the 
rightholders.160 
 
At the Amsterdam Conference, Andrew Hughes emphasised the concern extends to the 
diversion of advertising revenue: 
 
What they do, in Google’s case, is take everybody else’s content and index it and 
create a utility based on that.  In Facebook’s case they encourage everybody, 
including me, to create a lot of content and in doing that they also gather a 
tremendous amount of very interesting information about the individuals using it 
and a huge of amount of traffic.  That makes them phenomenally powerful as an 
advertising resource. […] bear in mind what the business model of news is; it’s 
about gathering enough readers together and selling them something, which is 
news, and then selling advertising to those readers.  The issue for newspapers and 
the issue that any change to copyright law has to be put in the context of is that 
their ability to sell that advertising is declining and declining very rapidly161  
 
There is a close relationship between the free riding argument and the other arguments 
explored in this paper. So, for example, it may be that as the incentive argument claims, 
an incentive is needed to produce news because the free riding of online redistributors 
redirects revenue away from news publishers. And the argument is also linked to the 
natural rights argument, which will be considered in the next section. This, it will be 
seen, suggests that a publisher might be able to own and control published news in some 
way. If so, then those who use ‘owned’ published news without sufficient recompense 
are probably freeriding.  
 
However, the arguments are distinguishable. In the case of the natural rights argument, 
it’s important to describe how, as the two are closely connected. The distinction arises 
because one doesn’t have to agree with the natural rights argument that news is property, 
for the free riding argument to be viable. There are serious difficulties with the notion 
that news should be considered property, but even if news should not be seen as property, 
third parties may be free riding on acts news publishers.  
 
This is recognised in much traditional copyright doctrine.162  So, for example, while 
declining to consider news property, North J in the 1892 English case of Walter v 
Steinkopff
 still found there to have been free riding. 
 
In the present case what the Defendants have had recourse to is not a mental 
operation involving thought and labour and producing some original result, but a 
                                                 
160 European Publishers Council and others, (accessed  
161 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR 
Conference, Andrew Hughes, session 1, transcript 10 
162 See also the American Supreme Court case of International News Service v Associated Press 248 US 
215 (1918)  , which is discussed in the text to n 190. 
 
58 
60

mechanical operation with scissors and paste, without the slightest pretension to 
an original result of any kind; it is a mere production of ‘copy’ without trouble or 
cost. […] For the purposes of their own profit they desire to reap where they have 
not sown, and to take advantage of the labour and expenditure of the Plaintiffs in 
procuring news for the purpose of saving labour and expense to themselves. 163  
Counter arguments 
What can be said against the free riding argument? Our research highlighted two main 
challenges, both of which concentrate on the assertion that any actions by online 
redistributors of news actually amounts to free riding. The first argues that online 
redistributors of news actually promote news publishers’ content, rather than free ride on 
it; and second that online redistributors of news are actually creating a new market, rather 
than free riding in an old market. 164 
Promotion or substitution? 
The first challenge, then, is whether it is in fact true to say that there is free riding. Online 
redistributors of news argue that they promote the activities of news producers, rather 
than free ride on them.  Publishers, evidently, reject these claims. One senior opinion-
former interviewed for our research framed the issue in this way. Aggregators may, they 
said, promote news publishers’ interests in part, by bringing published news to the 
attention of a much larger group of people than publishers themselves can. But, on the 
other hand, it’s a common sense that people in a hurry may read any headlines generated 
by news publishers, and snippets of text on a mobile device, and not click through to visit 
the publishers’ sites. Publishers are thereby deprived of the attention of an audience – 
which, as can be discussed, can be sold to advertisers. The opinion former said that 
they’d heard the promotion argument before. It is used by anyone who wants to use 
someone else’s content without paying, and was used by the broadcasters about music in 
the 1950s. But broadcasting didn’t promote music, it substituted it. 
 
The question of whether there is promotion or substitution can be addressed by empirical 
economic research. There has been a considerable amount of work done on this subject, 
some of which was discussed in the third session at the Amsterdam Conference.165 But a 
problem with the empirical evidence is that it may be equivocal, as some studies support 
the idea that there is promotion and some substitution.  
                                                 
163 Walter v Steinkopff [1892] 3 Ch 489   495 See also another historic UK news and copyright case, Walter 
v Lane 
[1899] 2 Ch 749  ‘I should very much regret it if I were compelled to come to the conclusion that 
the state of the law permitted one man to make profit and to appropriate to himself the labour, skill, and 
capital of another’, per Lord Halsbury, 545. 
164 As is the case with most of the arguments addressed in this paper, this is an incomplete survey, as there 
are other challenges that can be made. It can be asserted, for example, that free riding is not wrong, that it is 
not something the law should seek to restrict, or that even if it is wrong and should be restricted, a 
publishers’ right is not an effective way of restricting such action. 
165 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Bertin Martens. 
 
59 
61

Substitution 
It is not surprising that publishers rely on studies that show that there is substitution. 
Some have shown that even if Google is driving some traffic, many more Google visitors 
do not click through to the source sites. Some show that though Google is driving some 
traffic to newspapers, 44% of Google visitors do not visit the original newspaper sites).166 
And others note that even if clicks are being driven to publishers’ sites, that does not 
translate into much revenue. Andrew Hughes said at the Amsterdam Conference: 
 
One of the things that I’ve found frustrating at times is being told by people, “Oh, 
we should be allowed to do this because we’re sending clicks to your website and 
these are tremendously valuable and they will change the future of your 
business”.  Well, you might believe that, and a number of newspapers might have 
strategies based on that.  I, personally, as a business person, broadly don’t believe 
that to be true and, actually, the fact that they’re now running into this brick wall 
of ad blocking, which is the big new topic in the industry.  They think in some 
segments, particular younger populations in Europe, up to 50 percent are using ad 
blockers now.  The idea that that traffic on freely supplied content is going to 
employ the journalists that you need to uncover slavery in the south Pacific or do 
some of the other great things that news organisations have done is, I think, 
slightly specious.167  
 
The point here is that even if there is some promotion, it is not sufficient for the news 
industry to be viable in the longer term. This, publishers have argued, is galling because 
online distributors – and in particular Google – benefit disproportionately. A German 
newspaper publishers’ spokesman put this argument succinctly, when he said: ‘the 
problem is that Google earns billions, and we earn nothing’.168 And the point has been 
echoed by American commentators: ‘it is a point of ironic injustice, perhaps, that when a 
reader surfs the Web in search of political news he frequently ends up at a site that is 
merely aggregating journalistic work that originated in a newspaper, but that fact is not 
likely to save any newspaper jobs or increase papers’ stock valuation’. 169  
Promotion 
Those arguing against a publishers’ right rely on studies that show that digital 
redistributors promote news publishers websites. Xalabarder quotes a study that indicated 
                                                 
166  Cited in R Xalabarder, 'Google News and Copyright' in A Lopez-Tarruella (ed) Google and the Law 
(T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague 2012), footnote 179   
167 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Andrew Hughes, transcript 10. 
168 E Pfanner, 'An Antitrust Complaint for Google in Germany' New York Times (18 January 2010) 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/technology/19antitrust.html?_r=0> accessed 14 June 2016. Cited in 
R Xalabarder, 'Google News and Copyright' in A Lopez-Tarruella (ed) Google and the Law (T.M.C. Asser 
Press, The Hague 2012) 
169 R McChesney and V Pickard, Will the Last Reporter Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism 
and What Can be Done to Fix it
 (New Press, New York 2011) 
 
60 
62

that Google news sends one billion clicks a month to newspapers’ sites,170 and that when 
extracts are reproduced, this sends more traffic than when headlines are reproduced.171  
Other studies have been undertaken that replicate these findings.  
 
One of the more interesting was undertaken in Spain, after the Spanish law sought to 
make aggregation an activity that was regulated by copyright. This meant that Spain 
provided a natural experiment, in that it allowed economists to study what the effect was 
of stopping aggregation. The research was undertaken by Nera, the economic 
consultancy, at the request of an association of small Spanish publihsers, the Asociación 
Española de Publicaciones Periódicas (AEEPP).172 The Nera study showed that 
publishers saw traffic to their sites fall after the Spanish law was enacted, and so their ad 
revenue also fell. Clearly this study supports the view that in these circumstances at least, 
aggregators promoted, rather than substituted.  
 
Commenting on this study at the Amsterdam Conference, the economist Bertin Martens 
concluded that: ‘what we know from this empirical evidence is that the impact of 
dropping Google news aggregation is actually negative for newspapers’. He said that this 
‘leaves a puzzling question for an economist, why would newspapers want to do this or 
have this change in the law, have this neighbouring right when it doesn’t bring them any 
benefits’. Moreover, he said: 
 
What the study also showed is that indeed users, rather than going through the 
Google News aggregator that did not longer operate in Spain, went back to the 
old search engine, Google search and that way found their newspaper articles.  
But for me as an economist this is possibly the worst of all possible solutions in 
the sense that the newspapers lose in terms of traffic and ad revenue and 
consumers lose because it sets them back five years in time in access to internet 
[day? 00:15:42] services.173  
 
And Agustin Reyna, of BEUC – the European Consumers’ Association – was also acute 
to the interests of consumers: 
 
Of course, nobody should be making money out of the work or the effort that 
somebody has put without sharing, you know, a piece of the gain, but I think that 
it’s also leading to the interesting discussion there was before with snippets, you 
know.  It’s the fact that these aggregations cannot be considered as a substitute of 
the news piece as such because, nevertheless, if you are a user you go to the news 
                                                 
170 European Publishers Council and others, (accessed  
171 Xalabarder, 'Google News and Copyright' footnote 181, Citing a Google study saying Google News 
sends a billion clicks a month to newspapers’ sites.  
172 Association of Publishers of Periodical Publications. Nera Economic Consulting,'Impact of the New 
Article 32.2 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Act' (Nera, 2015) 43.  
173 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
', Bertin Martens, session 3, transcript 41 
 
61 
63

aggregator and you would go, if you’re interested on the topic or you’re interested 
on the title with something that draws your attention, then you will go, then you 
go and look for the whole piece.174  
 
On the basis of research like this, it was not surprising that James Mackenzie, of the 
small aggregator Cutbot, observed: 
 
We and Google create revenue for papers.  We send clicks their way.  In the case 
of Google vast numbers.  In the case of us, tiny numbers.  But if newspapers 
aren’t making money from those extra clicks they need to work out how to 
improve their business model rather than blaming us for decisions that are taken 
elsewhere and changes that have happened in other parts of the industry.175 
Publishers have different interests 
One important point can be drawn from Nera’s Spanish study that helps clarify one issue. 
This study found, as was mentioned earlier, that stopping aggregation resulted in a 
lowering of traffic and hence revenue for publishers. But the interesting fact was that 
there were differences between publishers in the extent to which traffic fell. The 
Asociación de Editores de Diarios Españoles176 (AEDE), a group representing larger 
publishers, that had lobbied for the law to be brought into force, reported that their traffic 
was down by 2%. But traffic to less well-known news publishers fell more, and some 
sites saw a reduction of traffic of up to 12%:177 The Nera study concluded that: 
 
the reform followed the interests of a particular group of publishers 
which, given the deterioration of their business, sought to obtain an 
additional source of income from one of the Internet giants, even to 
the detriment of other publishers, to the development of the online 
news production and aggregation sectors in Spain and, ultimately, to 
consumers (including advertisers) and to social welfare.178 
 
Smaller publishers may have suffered more than larger publishers may because their 
brands are less well-known. That means they are less likely to be found through search 
on a search engine, and are more likely to be found accidentally through a news 
aggregator, or by other online redistributors. Bertin Martens expanded on this point to the 
Amsterdam Conference: 
 
                                                 
174 Ibid. Agustin Reyna, session 4, transcript 70 
175 Ibid. James Mckenzie, session 4, transcript 65 
176 Association of Editors of Spanish Dailies 
177 telecompaper, 'Spanish News Sites Down up to 12% after Google News closure' telecompaper (30 
January 2015) <http://www.telecompaper.com/news/spanish-news-sites-down-up-to-12-after-google-news-
closure--1062419> accessed 13 January 2016 
178 Nera Economic Consulting(, viii 
 
62 
64

What happens is that let’s say the middle of the road, provincial or national 
newspaper that produces a bit of everything but is not very specialised in anything 
can lose out from these aggregators.  But the more high end newspapers, the 
quality newspapers or the more long tail newspapers that specialise in a particular 
topic and people who really want to read that newspaper because they’re 
interested in that topic, they don’t lose out, they gain a lot of traffic from these 
news aggregators.  It depends as a newspaper on where you are in that spectrum.  
We’ve seen these superstar versus long tail mechanisms in many other media 
industries.  Search engines put a lot of pressure on the middle ground but 
increased the superstar effect and increase the long tail effect.179   
 
This is important. It demonstrates that all news publishers are not affected equally by 
actions by an online re-distributor of news. For larger publishers, aggregation may 
amount to free riding, and as when people consume news from the aggregator, the 
aggregator becomes a substitute for the sites of news publishers. But for smaller, less 
well-known brands, the actions of online re-distributor may well amount to promotion.  
 
It is likely, therefore, that there will not be a simple answer to the question ‘do online 
aggregators promote or substitute?’  Publishers are affected in different ways by online 
re-distributors of news. If this is not recognized, there is a serious risk that 
unsophisticated studies that show online redistributors of news generally amount to 
substitution, and so a publishers’ right is appropriate, will result in the market being 
skewed in favour of larger players. This is a serious problem, as it would damage media 
plurality and diversity. 
Who bears the burden of proof? 
The empirical evidence, therefore, seems equivocal. Clearly this is an area which would 
benefit from more studies, either primary economic research, or a dispassionate meta-
study that summarises and compares the research that has taken place.   
 
However, in the absence of this, a question that becomes important is who should bear 
the burden of establishing the facts in issue? This is important as in the absence of clear 
evidence, we do not know whether or not there is free riding. Consequently, we do not 
know whether a publishers’ right is appropriate. Should publishers have the burden of 
showing that their product is being substituted before a publishers’ right can be accepted 
as legitimate? Or should the starting point be to assume that there is substitution and 
consequently a publishers’ right is indicated, unless online re-distributors of news can 
establish that their actions are actually promotion. 
 
A senior figure we spoke to in our research was firmly of the view that it is for online 
news redistributors to prove that their actions are not free riding. They said that it was up 
to those who argue there is no free riding to provide empirical arguments to show that 
this is the case. But this person didn’t provide reasons to back up such an assertion, and it 
                                                 
179 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
session 3 transcript 44. 
 
63 
65

could equally be argued that it is up to those who assert that there is free riding, to 
provide empirical evidence to support their position.  
 
But such reasons can be found. If the starting point is that, as the Commission say in the 
December Communication, ‘the basic principle of copyright that acts of exploitation need 
to be authorised and remunerated’,180 then it should be up to those agents who seek to 
depart from the basic principle to prove their case. In this debate, therefore, the onus falls 
on those who redistribute news, rather than those who publish it. Another way of arriving 
at the same conclusion is to observe that it seems fair to ask those who claim that their 
actions do indeed sufficiently remunerate rights holders, to show that this is the case. It is 
the online news redistributors who are the disruptive force, and it makes sense that the 
burden should be on them to explain why the change they are bringing about is 
beneficial. 
 
Whether they have demonstrated that this is so, or not, is beyond the expertise of this 
paper, given the lack of clarity in the empirical research. But this is clearly an area that 
would need to be explored before a publishers’ right is brought into force. If they have 
not, and until they do, then on balance (and subject to the concerns about there being 
differences in the interests between publishers) a publishers’ right is supported by the 
free riding argument.  
A new commercial activity? 
There is a second argument against the charge of free riding. This is the suggestion that 
the new online redistributors of news are not free riding, because they are creating a new 
product or service. They are transforming news publishers’ product. If this is so, the 
argument that they are free riding becomes weaker, as it can be met with the counter-
argument that the activity that is being undertaken is not one that it is appropriate for any 
publishers’ right to restrict. James Mackenzie advanced this case at the Amsterdam 
Conference: 
 
we’re not using your content in that way.  We’re not republishing it.  What we do 
with it, I believe, is entirely outwith copyright, should be outwith copyright.  You 
ask how your businesses and their staff should get a fair amount of money from 
our business.  I think the fair amount of money that you should get from our 
business is zero.  You don’t contribute to our indexing; to our analysis; to our 
email server building; to any of the work that we actually do.  The work we do is 
not the duplication of the articles, it’s the smart searching which is what people 
pay for.  They pay for the news coming in, in a...  Their company was mentioned 
in the ‘South China Post’ which they would never have noticed and then we drive 
a little bit of traffic to the ‘South China Post’.  So, we cost you nothing and we 
bring you revenue.  If there’s a financial transaction which should go on here you 
should be paying this. 181 
                                                 
180 Text to n 40. 
181 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
James Mackenzie, session 4, transcript 71 
 
64 
66

 
This argument has found favour in some of the courts in Member States: in the German 
Paperboy action, for example. Xalabarder’s analysis on this is valuable, and is worth 
quoting at a little length.182 
  
In the ‘‘Paperboy’’ decision, the German Federal Supreme Court concluded 
against any finding of unfair competition taking into account the fact that this 
service offered considerable added value in terms of providing access to 
information. It is undeniable that search engines (and also news search engines) 
offer considerable added value and are not competing with the copyright owners’ 
businesses; whether or not the same may be said about the news aggregation sites 
is more disputed. This leads us to another paramount question: whether news 
aggregators are in direct competition with the copyright owners or instead are 
they acting in different markets? 
 
 Ultimately, this question may touch on the scope and goal of the exclusive rights 
granted by the law: can copyright be exercised in a manner that avoids (directly or 
indirectly) the development of new markets? Usually, the exercise of copyright 
will not result in obstructing a whole new market (rather, it commonly affects the 
development of different means of exploitation within the same market); but 
when it does, competition law may intervene and force owners to grant a license -
thus, de facto reducing the scope of their exclusive rights. 
 
Following the ECJ’s ‘‘Magill’’183 essential facilities doctrine, when the copyright 
holder with a dominant market position on one market competes with other 
parties on a second market where the use of the copyrighted contents is necessary 
in order to build a position in (hence, an ‘‘essential facility’’), a refusal to license 
these essential facilities to the competitor/s is considered to be unfair exercise of a 
dominant market position (this includes where the user depends on entering into 
an agreement with each of the several entities sharing the dominant market 
position, i.e., the copyrighted contents) 
 
 If we accept that news aggregation amounts to a different market from the 
production and first distribution of news, then news works could be deemed an 
essential facility and copyright owners (newspapers, broadcasters and news 
agencies) be forced to license aggregators (as incumbents in the new market). 
 
Whether we do accept this, of course, is a contentious point. This is territory in which 
that the doctrines of competition law can help, and so this is a question to which there is a 
legal answer. This work ought to be undertaken – and it should be established that news 
aggregation and the like is not a new market – before one can conclude that the free 
riding argument for a publishers’ right is appropriate.  
                                                 
182 Xalabarder, 'Google News and Copyright' , 161 
183 ECJ Judgement of 6 April 1995, C-241/91 and C-242/92, ‘‘Radio Telfis Eireann (RTE) and Independent 
Television Publications Ltd (ITP) v. Commission of the European Community’’. 
 
65 
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Conclusion 
The free riding argument for a publishers’ right is based on the assertion that online re-
distributors of news are deriving an illegitimate benefit from the actions of news 
producers: they are, to quote the nineteenth century English judge North J, reaping where 
they have not sown. Whether this is the case or not is an issue susceptible to empirical 
proof, but it appears that this has not yet been unequivocal.  
 
What should one do in the absence of an unequivocal answer? It is the disruptors, the 
online re-distributors of news, who bear the burden of proving their actions amount to 
promotion rather than substitution. If they are unable to do so, then a publishers’ right 
may be appropriate under the free riding argument. 
 
However, there are some caveats to this conclusion. One is that online redistribution of 
news may be a different market, and that would undermine the argument that a 
publishers’ right would be appropriate. Another is that what the evidence does show, is 
that there are differences between the interests of various publishers, and this may result 
in different answers in respect of different publishers. This means there is an inherent risk 
that a publishers’ right may skew the market in favour of larger players. This is a 
significant concern, particularly for those who value media plurality and diversity. 
 
It is not clear, therefore, that the free riding argument provides a compelling case for a 
publishers’ right, without further evidence. 
 
One final point is worth emphasising. This is that even if the empirical evidence 
establishes that there is promotion, not substitution, this may not be the end of the matter. 
This is because beyond the economic argument, there is an ethical argument that engages 
issues of fairness. It might still be fair and right for there to be a publishers’ right, even 
though online redistributors of news promote news publishers. 
 
These are issues is that economics is ill-equipped to deal with. As Bertin Martens said:  
 
I understand that the newspapers want to get a fairer share of the advertising 
revenue that the platforms get from this business, but as an economist and I think 
for most economists of the word fairness or the lack of it, unfairness, is a concept 
we have a hard time to deal with.184   
 
But the fact that economists have a hard time dealing with issues of fairness is not a 
sufficient reason not to explore such arguments. It only means that the answers to the 
dilemmas they raise are not to be found in empirical economic research. This brings us to 
the last argument for a publishers’ right, as this is based – amongst other things – on 
ethical considerations.
                                                 
184 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Bertin Martens, session 3, transcript 42 
 
 
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5 Natural rights argument – news, coal, and cabbages 
The last argument for a publishers’ right that emerged from our research is the natural 
rights argument for a publishers’ right.  This does prima facie support a publishers’ right, 
though a very limited one, not least because there are very significant policy dangers in 
permitting any increase in the private control of information that would result from it. 
The argument 
The central idea of the natural rights argument is that significant amounts of labour, skill 
and judgment are involved in the production of items of news and published collections 
of news – in its sourcing, verifying, selecting, writing or producing, compiling, 
publishing and distribution.185 The expenditure of such effort should prima facie merit 
protection, the publishersright.eu website claims: 
 
Given the huge investment and resources required to produce professional press 
and other published content, it is only natural that press publishers should enjoy 
the same rights as producers from other creative industries, as regards 
reproduction and communication to the public (as set out in Articles 2 and 3 (2) 
of the InfoSoc Directive 2001/29/EC), as well as a distribution right (as set out in 
Article 9 (1) of Directive 2006/115/EC).186 
 
But the argument is not only based on labour, skill and judgment. For, as was described 
earlier, publishers argue that creative choices are made in assembling a published news 
product, which is not a mere compilation of facts.187 As one interviewee emphasised in 
our research, ‘there is more to putting a news publication together than making a 
telephone directory’. This is because a key aspect of news publishing is that it occurs in a 
vigorous market for attention, and the creative choices of news publishers are not 
marginal, they are central, to the activity of publishing news in such a context. There is a 
need to exercise skill and creative judgment in selecting, editing, and producing news to 
attract and retain an audience, and build a brand.  
 
One way of conceiving of a published news brand is as a collective personality, and 
creative choices are involved in establishing how it should express itself. This leads some 
almost see news publishers as stepping into the shoes of authors. For example, at the 
Amsterdam Conference, Professor Dr Hegemann argued: 
 
The question is – and I’m now looking to the author – how can we make it 
possible that the author gets a reasonable share of the revenues that a third person 
                                                 
185 A useful account of the different elements of the process of news production in various different sectors 
of journalism can be found in Mediatique,'The Provision and Consumption of Online News - Current and 
Future'  
186 European Publishers Council and others, (accessed  
187 Text to n 136. 
 
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makes on its contents that he produced? If they answer this question then the 
news publishers come in with, as I’m convinced, a very reasonable claim to say 
the author would not find its public without our creative work; with our financial 
impact; our organisational impact; with what we do when putting together a group 
of journalists as a ‘redaktion’ as we call it in Germany […] That’s the reasoning 
behind that, at least in the German discussion, the news publishers say, well, if 
here is a product that is the result of some creative doing we are in the position 
that even us, the news publishers, should also be entitled to take a reasonable 
share, whatever reasonable be, in the revenues third parties in the triangle make188 
 
Given the involvement of labour, skill, judgment, and the creative choices in publishing 
news and collections of news, publishers argue that copyright-like protection is 
appropriate. This can be established through a publishers’ right. 
The strong version 
There can be stronger and weaker versions of the natural rights argument. A strong 
version asserts that taking news without authority amounts to theft, as Rupert Murdoch 
has claimed: 
 
Producing journalism is expensive. We invest tremendous resources in our project 
from technology to our salaries. To aggregate stories is not fair use. To be 
impolite, it is theft. Without us, the aggregators would have blank slides. Right 
now content producers have all the costs, and the aggregators enjoy [the 
benefits].189 
 
Inherent in this variant of the argument is the notion of control, as one interviewee 
observed in our research: 
 
In my view copyright is more of a moral and ethical issue. Popper and Hayek are 
relevant. If copyright means anything it means if you make it you have the right 
to choose who else copies it - especially commercially. That’s why many 
publishers (and authors) object so deeply to Facebook, Google et al presuming the 
right to do as they please with others content.  
The weaker version 
There are also weaker versions of the natural rights argument. One rejects the notion that 
news is property and taking of it is theft, but recognises that news publishers should be 
able to control the news they publish, in limited circumstances. This was the position 
adopted by Pitney J in the famous case US Supreme Court case of International News 
                                                 
188 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Jan Hegemann, session 4, transcript 68 
189 Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive of News Corporation December 1, 2009 Source: 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/01/rupert-murdoch-no-free-news. Cited in R Xalabarder, 
'Google News and Copyright' in A Lopez-Tarruella (ed) Google and the Law (T.M.C. Asser Press, The 
Hague 2012) 
 
68 
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Service v Associated Press, which established the US doctrine of hot news 
misappropriation. 
 
And although we may and do assume that neither party has any remaining 
property interest as against the public in uncopyrighted news matter after the 
moment of its first publication, it by no means follows that there is no remaining 
property interest in it as between themselves. For, to both of them alike, news 
matter, however little susceptible of ownership or dominion in the absolute sense, 
is stock in trade, to be gathered at the cost of enterprise, organization, skill, labor, 
and money, and to be distributed and sold to those who will pay money for it, as 
for any other merchandise. Regarding the news, therefore, as but the material out 
of which both parties are seeking to make profits at the same time and in the same 
field, we hardly can fail to recognize that for this purpose, and as between them, it 
must be regarded as quasi property, irrespective of the rights of either as against 
the public.190 
 
The natural rights argument can stand even if other arguments for a publishers’ right fail. 
So, it might amount to a convincing reason for a publishers’ right even if (say) the 
incentive argument was rebutted by the fact that insignificant revenue would be raised 
from a publishers’ right, or the equality argument was rebutted by the fact that there was 
no true inequality. The strong natural rights argument might still, under these 
circumstances, be a reason to adopt a publishers’ right, on the grounds that publishers 
ought to have a right to control what happens to the news they publish, as a question of 
first principle. This is an ethical point: just as others can control what they produce from 
the sweat of their brows, so news producers should be able to control the news they 
produce. 
Counter arguments 
Is it convincing? Up to a point, yes. The skill and labour aspects of the argument may 
seem inappropriate in relation to reporting patent facts, but are clearly relevant in other 
circumstances. An example of this is where investigative work is involved. The natural 
rights argument fits very well here, as labour, skill and judgment is required to gather 
information in the first place, as well as to assess and formulate in a way that is attractive 
to an audience, and to resist the common legal pressures that arise from those who want 
to prevent publication.  
 
But, even where the subject matter relates to basic patent facts, the argument is still 
persuasive. Significant skill, labour and judgment is still required to put such facts in 
context, evaluate them, and work out how to effectively communicate the information 
and gain an audience’s attention by arranging them with others, while contributing to the 
development of the news brand. Hence, as both situations involve creative acts and 
creative choices, the natural rights argument for a publishers’ right is prima facie a 
convincing one.   
 
                                                 
190 International News Service v Associated Press   
 
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That said, there remain cogent reasons why policy makers need to be wary about the 
prospect of a publishers’ right that derive from natural rights arguments.191  
The unattractive idea of news as property 
The first reason is because the natural rights argument for a publishers’ right is associated 
with the notion that news is a sort of property, and many liberal democratic societies have 
been very wary of this idea.  
 
This can be seen after considering a little history. The natural rights argument for a news 
copyright-related law is not new. Tworek notes that ‘from the 1880s onwards, news 
procurers attempted to combine Locke’s labour theory with the cost of collecting news, 
hoping to create an indivisible association between protection of labour and the 
protection of financial outlay’.192 These notions were evident in, for example, a leader in 
The Times published in 1899:  
 
The principle is that when a newspaper has expended labour, forethought, and 
money in producing something which the public want to read, it ought to have the 
same rights of property in its production that are enjoyed by those who uses [sic] 
brains and capital in producing other articles having commercial value…193 
 
Such arguments were still prevalent in 1936, when Sir Roderick Jones, the Managing 
Director of Reuters tried to persuade a League of Nations conference to grant news 
protection under the International Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. 
He argued that ‘news is as much an article of property as coal, or cabbages, or 
diamond’.194 
 
But these arguments failed to result in international treaties of copyright protection or 
industrial property. The reasons for this are essentially the reasons why one should be 
wary of a publishers’ right today. They are diverse, as Professor Hugenholtz noted at the 
Amsterdam Conference: 
 
in copyright all Berne union states and that’s about 168 states including all the 
states that we consider civilised and a lot of uncivilised as well, are under an 
                                                 
191 This is leaving aside the cogent arguments that can be made against natural rights theories in general as 
a means of justifying intellectual property. These are briefly indicated in Bently and Sherman 36-37. 
192 Tworek 196   
193 The Times 11 August 1899. Cited in J Bellido and K Bowrey, 'From an Author's to a Proprietor's Right: 
Newspaper Copyright & The TImes (1842-1956)' (2014) Journal of Media Law, 6 (2) 206. An earlier 
editor had a different view, when he wrote that the purpose of the Times was ‘to obtain the earliest and 
most correct intelligence of the time and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property 
of the nation’. Hargreaves15 
194 Tworek 213 
 
70 
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obligation not to protect news of the day under copyright.  There are a number of 
reasons for not doing this: ideological, systemic, conceptual.195 
News is a democratic good 
One reason engages the notion explored earlier in this paper of how integral commercial 
news is to the healthy functioning of a democratic state. News is part of the lifeblood of 
an informed, participatory democracy.196 Indeed, if publishers seek to rely on this fact as 
a reason for them to be treated in a way distinct from general publishers, then they need 
to recognise that the close connection between news and democracy militates against the 
natural rights argument for a publishers’ right.  
 
One central reason this is so, is that permitting news to be owned as property, or 
governed by a publishers’ right, risks imposing too much control over a very important 
commodity.  This risk is a motivating factor behind particular provisions in various fields 
of law. One example can be found in the sector specific media merger regulations that 
exist in many countries to prevent concentrations of media ownership.197 These are 
designed to ensure media plurality and diversity. They exist, in part at least, to limit 
undue concentrations of power arising from excessive control of the flow of information. 
There is a risk, as a publishers’ right would increase the copyright-like protection of 
news, that it would increase some political risks in democratic societies that other fields 
of law have been designed to reduce. 
 
One way of demonstrating this is to look at some features of historic and contemporary 
international copyright law relating to news. These can be interpreted as a manifestation 
of the view that news is a special case. We can start, as Xalabarder notes, with the Berne 
Convention. 
 
At the end of the nineteenth Century, the protection of news articles under 
copyright was very limited and contested. In fact, Article 7 of the original Act of 
the Berne Convention (1886) expressly stated that newspaper and magazine 
articles published in any Berne Union country could be reproduced, in the 
original language or in translation, unless the authors or editors had expressly 
reserved so.198  
 
This article no longer represents the law, but the current Berne Convention contains 
provisions that are a legacy of this view. Article 2(8), for example, provides: ‘[t]he 
protection of the Convention shall not apply to news of the day or to miscellaneous facts 
having the character of mere items of press information.’ And it is also apparent in article 
                                                 
195 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Bernt Hugenholtz, session 3, transcript 45 
196 Text to nn 8, 44, 91. 
197 Comparative studies are found in Hitchens and chapter 7 of T Gibbons and P Humphreys, Audiovisual 
Regularion under Pressure
 (Routledge, Oxford 2012) provides a critique of the EU’s approach. 
198 Xalabarder, 'Google News and Copyright' 
 
71 
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10bis(1), which says that articles published in newspapers or periodicals as well as 
broadcasts on current economic, political or religious topics may be reproduced by the 
press as well as broadcasted and communicated to the public, provided that such uses 
have not been expressly reserved. Arguably, it is also present in the current article 10 of 
the Berne Convention, the sole mandatory exception to copyright in the convention. This 
provides:  
 
 It shall be permissible to make quotations from a work which has already been 
lawfully available to the public, provided that their making is compatible with fair 
practice, and their extent does not exceed that justified by the purpose, including 
quotations from newspaper articles and periodicals in the form of press 
summaries.199 
 
The wariness of affording copyright protection to news is also evident in the history of 
many national copyright doctrines. Bently, for example, describes the ambiguity in the 
19th century as to whether copyright protected news.200 This was manifest in a series of 
cases that culminated in the recognition of the distinction between ideas, which copyright 
does not protect, and expression that it does.201 This can be seen as an attempt to strike a 
balance between the interests of rights owners and the interests of the public in free-
flowing news.  
 
This balance has been baked in to areas of copyright law. The idea/expression dichotomy 
just described is one, and others include the various exceptions that exist in relation to 
news reporting and press clippings. These can, no doubt, be seen by publishers as a bug – 
a failure – of copyright and related doctrine, which impede their ability to control ‘their’ 
news. But it is better to see these doctrines as being deliberately constructed, a feature of 
copyright, present to try to strike an appropriate balance between ownership, arguments 
for natural rights, and the free flowing of information in a democracy.202  
 
This does not mean that the natural rights argument has no merit. But it does means that 
there are cogent reasons – evidenced in the structure and history of copyright law - to be 
                                                 
199 For a fuller study of the relationship between the iterations of the Berne Convention and news, see .S 
Ricketson and J Ginsburg, 'Intellectual Property in News? Why Not?' in S Ricketson and M Richardson 
(eds), Research Handbook on Intellectual Property in Media and Entertainment (Edward Elgar 
(Forthcoming)) 
200L Bently, 'Copyright and the Victorian Internet: Telegraphic Property Laws in Colonial Australia' (2004) 
38 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 71,  L Bently, 'The Electric Telegraph, and the Struggle over 
Copyright in News in Australia, Great Britain and India' in B Sherman and L Wiseman (eds), Copyright 
and the Challenge of the New
 (Wolters Kluwer, Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands 2012). 
201 Walter v Steinkopff   
202 RP Merges, Justifying intellectual property (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. ; London 
2011), 19. The argument that this ‘baking in’ is enough  - that it pays sufficient regard to the interests of 
free speech (of which free flowing information is an element) -  has been widely criticized, for example, in 
relation to UK law and article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, J Griffiths, 'Copyright law 
after Ashdown - time to Deal Fairly with the Public' [2002, 3] Intellectual Property Quarterly 240. 
 
72 
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wary of a publishers’ right. Such a right would upset the delicate balance that has been 
struck between natural rights arguments that support copyright, and other societal goods.  
 
In short, news is somewhat different to other forms of content, because of its close 
connection with democracy. One should be careful about upsetting the balance that has 
been struck over the years within the doctrines of copyright law by enacting a publishers’ 
right.  
The implications of mutual copying 
A second problem with the natural rights argument arises from the actions of news 
publishers themselves. This is because news publishers have honoured natural rights 
theories of news more in the breach than the observance. There has been a long history, 
which stretches back long before the days of printed news, of commercial news 
publishers copying from each other.  
 
This can be demonstrated with few examples. First, for example, Pettegree in his history 
of news, describes the early news market in the low countries in the seventeenth century. 
 
A comparison of a weekly issue of the Delft news-sheet of 10 May 1623 with that 
of Broer Jansz two days before shows that 90 per cent of the Delft reports were 
lifted unaltered from the Amsterdam paper.203 
 
A hundred years later, and in England, the practice is mentioned as being so 
commonplace, it is hardly worth mentioning: 
 
A third method taken by these dexterous sons of mercury [newspaper publishers], 
to supply themselves with matter, is to steal from one another. They copy every 
tale that is published to their hands, good and bad, without distinction; and the 
most bare-faced lie, as well as the post pitiful trifle, once published, has the 
sanction of them all. But every body knows this so well, that ‘tis needless to dwell 
on it. […] Most of the said papers having little of novelty, or any other merit, to 
recommend them, being only copies or extracts from one another…’204 
 
And the practice is prevalent today, was noted at the Amsterdam Conference by Bertin 
Martens: 
 
Ripping  nowadays  is  the  universal  phenomenon  in  the  newspaper  industry.  
Somebody did a study last year on the French newspaper industry, Julia Cage and 
some  of  her  researchers  from  Paris  Telecom  and  they  monitored  a  number  of 
newspaper websites, 50 or 60 newspapers in France for a period of time.  What 
they  found  is  as  soon  as  a  new  event,  news  item  appears  on  one  newspaper’s 
website, within half an hour or 40 minutes it appears on everybody else’s website, 
                                                 
203 A Pettegree, The invention of news : how the world came to know about itself (Yale University Press, 
New Haven ; London, England 2014)189,  
204 Coffee-Man 
 
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which means that they are just monitoring each other and as soon as something 
news appears they take that news event, rewrite it a little bit and then post it on 
their own website.  So ripping in that sense has become a universal phenomenon 
in  the  newspaper  industry,  not  because  of  the  aggregators  but  in  the  industry 
itself.205  
 
What are the implications of this for a publishers’ right? It tends to undermine the natural 
rights argument for copyright, or copyright-like protection. The fact that news publishing 
does, and has always, involved re-writing the published news of others, means it is 
somewhat incoherent for newspapers to complain when the activity they undertake 
themselves, is undertaken by others – in this case, online news redistributors.  
 
Of course, it remains appropriate to complain about the consequence of the activity, 
because for example it is happening to such a degree that commercial news is no longer a 
viable activity (the incentive argument), or because it is unprecedented in scope (the free 
riding argument). But it undermines publishers’ complaints about others exerting control 
over the material which they assert they have a natural right to, when at the same time 
they are breaching exactly similar natural rights possessed by others. It is difficult, in 
other words, for news publishers to assert a natural rights argument for the protection of 
news, when they themselves violate the natural rights of others, just as their forebears 
have done for centuries.  
The limits of the notion 
Even if, despite this, the natural rights argument still provides a reason to adopt a 
publishers’ right, an analysis of the way natural rights arguments work in practice 
supports the observation that it should be limited. This is because, even when natural 
rights arguments are reflected in copyright and related laws, they are not absolute. Again, 
to quote Professor Hugenholtz at the Amsterdam Conference: 
 
even in societies like the ones where we are here and like the ones in Germany 
where authors’ rights are primarily grounded on natural rights’ philosophies, the 
scope of rights are not limitless.  The scope of rights is not limitless.  We have 
everywhere in Europe accepted, including in Germany, a rule of exhaustion, for 
instance.  We do not control after-markets for reasons that have a lot to do with 
competition and manageability of rights and legal certainty.  All the same reasons, 
I think, that also would restrict any kind of an aggregation right into something 
very limited if existent at all. 206 
 
                                                 
205 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Bertin Martens, session 3, transcript 42. See also Express Newspapers v News (UK) Ltd [1990] 1 WLR 
1320   Sir Nicholas Browne-Wilkinson VC, 380 & 383 ‘I think [it] is the practice of the national press, […] 
to search the columns of other papers to find stories which they have missed and then using the story so 
found in their own newspaper by rewriting it in their own words.’ 
206 , Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR 
Conference Bernt Hugenholtz, session 4, transcript 73 
 
74 
76

As there frequently are appropriate limits set to the legal rights that flow from natural 
rights arguments for copyright and related rights, and so it is also appropriate to limit any 
publishers’ right that arises from natural rights arguments. Moreover, there are 
particularly strong reasons to limit such a right in such a case. This is again because of 
the central importance of news to democracy. If there is an extensive right over news, in 
time, ambit or strength, then the risks of undue control over the flow of information 
described in the last section become more cogent. Hence, even if a publishers’ right is 
appropriate, is should be afforded to a limited class of people, limited in duration, in the 
acts that it regulates, and made subject to a wide range of exceptions.207  
 
The fact that the natural rights argument should only lead, if at all, to a limited 
publishers’ right was highlighted by one, slightly cryptic, question at the Amsterdam 
Conference. The question concerned school books, but the point was more general.  
 
[my question relates] to the basic idea that right owners should participate in the 
revenues that are generated by using their content.  Should school book publishers 
participate in the live income of the kids that read their books?  That’s the 
question, I think.  I mean, they base everything on that.208  
 
One must ensure, the questioner was implying, that the ramifications of any natural rights 
argument are not excessive. Just as any natural rights of book publishers do not extend to 
control the benefits that accrue from their work to their child readers, so too any 
publishers’ right based on an idea of natural rights must also be limited.  
Conclusion 
The natural rights argument for a publishers’ right is persuasive, insofar as valid, as 
labour, skill, judgment and creative choices are involved in the production of an edition 
of published news. However, there are cogent reasons to be wary of a publishers’ right, 
nonetheless. A first arises because of the integral nature of published news to a 
democratic state. (This is a connection that is asserted by publishers in other contexts, for 
example when they seek to establish why they are different to other publishers.) This 
connection exists because news is seen as a powerful force in a democracy, and that 
means that it is advisable for policy makers to think long and hard before increasing any 
protection afforded to news, including by means of a publishers’ right that might entail 
greater control over information.  
 
Moreover, the natural rights argument for a publishers’ right is undermined by the 
common practice of news publishers frequently not to respect any natural rights that 
might exist in news that are possessed by other publishers.  
 
                                                 
207 The point about the limited duration of any right is discussed further in the text to n 213. 
208 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
session 4, transcript 74 
 
75 
77

And finally, even if the natural rights argument for a publishers’ right is viable, it should 
only lead to a limited and restricted right, as can be the case with other natural rights 
arguments.  
 
 
76 
78

6 Conclusion 
On balance, intervention to benefit the commercial news industry is merited, but a 
publishers’ right has not been demonstrated to be an appropriate way to intervene to do 
so.  
The four arguments, considered separately 
Four arguments for a publishers’ right were considered, which emerged from our 
research.  
 
The incentive argument was considered the most important, and was examined in most 
detail. This proposes that commercial news is of great value to our democracy, that it is 
likely to be under-incentivised partly as a result of the growth of the Internet, and that EU 
copyright and related laws were arguably part of the reason for this. The argument 
provides a persuasive case for intervention to assist the commercial news industry, but 
does not give sufficient reason to justify that intervention being by means of a copyright-
related publishers’ right. 
 
The equality argument asserts that news producers have been omitted from the corpus of 
rights-holders under EU copyright and related law, and that this is an inconsistency that a 
publishers’ right would remedy. However, for such a case to be convincing, more work 
needs to be done on why various rights holders have been afforded rights in EU law in 
the first place, whether these reasons are still pertinent, and whether news publishers are 
substantively in a similar position to those rights-holders. Furthermore, any attempt to 
resolve this apparent inconsistency is likely to raise other inconsistencies, and impose 
costs on third parties. Some justification for this needs to be provided, but the equality 
argument is incapable of providing this. In any event, the absence of any text of a 
publishers’ right makes it is difficult to assess what costs might be created by a 
publishers’ right, and whether they’d be appropriate. 
 
The free riding argument claims that online news re-distributors are benefitting from the 
work of news publishers without paying sufficient compensation. But more empirical 
economic research is required before this can be accepted. In particular, regard has to be 
paid to the different interests of different news publishers, and to the question of whether 
a new market has been created by online actors such as news aggregators and media 
monitoring organisations, and it must be borne in mind that any right might benefit larger 
publishers, damage smaller ones and therefore risk media plurality and diversity. 
 
Finally, the natural rights argument for a publishers’ right was considered. This holds that 
a publishers’ right would appropriately reflect the effort and creativity of news publishers 
in producing both news and published collections of news. This argument is convincing 
as far as it goes, but it would only supports a limited publishers’ right. The main reason 
for this is that any publishers’ right would tend to increase private control over the flow 
of information in a democracy. And, moreover, any case that publishers have a natural 
 
77 
79

right to news they publish is undermined by the fact that they copy each other’s news, 
and always have done. 
The arguments, aggregated 
When each of these arguments is considered separately, they do not provide unequivocal 
support for a publishers’ right. But when aggregated, they may.  
 
An aggregated argument would run as follows. The incentive argument provides a reason 
for intervention, as news producers are losing money, and because they face a systemic 
risk, intervention is merited. The reason a publishers’ right is an appropriate intervention 
can be provided by the natural rights argument, as publishers ought to have a right to 
control the news they produce. Moreover, the free riding argument says that one reason 
they are losing money is because their product is being misappropriated without 
sufficient compensation by online news-redistributors. And one reason this situation has 
been allowed to arise, says the equality argument, is because news publishers are not 
protected in EU law in the same way other publishers are. 
 
In aggregate, it seems there is a plausible case for a publishers’ right. But there are two 
reasons why the argument is still not convincing.  
 
The first is that each of the caveats to each element of the aggregated argument still 
applies. So, for example, it remains unclear whether there is free riding, in the absence of 
better and more thorough empirical economic research. And the case that there is an 
inequality in the provision of rights under EU copyright law has not convincingly been 
established, because we don’t know in sufficient detail why the earlier rights were 
created, and so whether there really is any inconsistency. The aggregated case is no 
stronger than the weakest of its composite parts. 
 
The second reason why a publishers’ right is still not sufficiently supported by this 
account is that, and this has been a recurrent theme in this paper, so much turns on the 
detail what a publishers’ right, and we do not have this detail. The devil, as is frequently 
the case, is in the detail. It is therefore impossible to say whether – for example – a 
publishers’ right will be efficient, effective, and appropriate, and will not incur 
indefensible costs on third parties, because we do not have a text. Aggregating the 
arguments together does not remove this difficulty.  
Other problems with a publishers’ right 
These concerns about the absence of a specific text lead to some final necessary 
observations, sketching out some further difficulties related to the wording of any 
publishers’ right that haven’t been canvassed so far. The first relates to definition, the 
second to duration, and the third to the wider doctrinal context into which any publishers’ 
right must fit. 
Problems of definition 
The first problem is that it is very difficult to identify what, exactly, should be the ambit 
of any right, given the difficulties that exist in defining news. What is it for which 
 
78 
80

protection is sought? Can we in any way relevant to copyright laws distinguish the news 
from other content? It is notorious that it is difficult to describe what news is, as has been 
recognised for a number of years.209 Hence, we have another problem in boundary 
drawing, which inherently leads to problems of inconsistency and over-breadth. Again, 
Professor Hugenholtz made the point at the Amsterdam Conference: 
 
So there, even if we would generally accept in Europe your proposition, which is 
sympathetic to all of us, that at least authors deserve some participation in 
whatever profit is made wherever of their works, even that does not necessarily 
lead to the recognition of a right if, as we have seen in all the discussion so far, 
such a right is impossible to define.  Its subject matter is vague, if definable at all.  
Its implementation at a national level are hopelessly unsuccessful.210  
 
True, problems of definition and line drawing are widespread in law, and indeed inherent 
to law making. Perhaps there will always be inconsistencies where line-drawing is 
concerned, as was argued earlier. And there is reason to suspect that, as Professor 
Schauer, an American legal philosopher has observed (albeit in another context) treating 
things that are unlike as alike is simply what rules do.211 So perhaps one shouldn’t be too 
concerned about difficulties of definition. 
 
But there is a particular concern in relation to news. This is related to the idea/expression 
dichotomy, described earlier. The problem is that it is difficult effectively to protect 
news, without protecting creating a right of great ambit. To quote Professor Hugenholtz, 
again: 
 
News simply does not have sufficient form to produce, to generate creative 
original works to which copyright can actually attach.  Items of information in 
other words are too abstract, there are only so many ways to express a news item.   
[...]  How could we prove infringing misappropriation of these abstract facts that 
have no shape?  How could we prove that we extracted it from this news producer 
and not from that?   […] Introducing a neighbouring right for news publishers 
could perhaps solve this originality issue but it would never deal with in a 
satisfactory way with the issues of scope and of evidence that are attached to 
that.212   
 
                                                 
209 ‘I think news is an impalpable thing and I have never seen a formula composed to define it […] 
Whatever it is interesting to the man in the street is news, it may be great events, or it may be trivial things, 
but, if it interesting to him, any event, I would say, was news.’ Sir Roderick Jones (1878-1962), MD 
Reuters, Sykes Broadcasting Commission, June 5 1923, cited in a draft of Tworek. This is a rather wide 
definition, to say the least. See also Part II in Ricketson and Ginsburg. See also text to n 144. 
210 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Bernt Hugenholtz session 4, transcript 73 
211 F Schauer, 'Towards and institutional first amendment' (2005) 89 Minneapolis Law Review 1256, 1269 
212 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Bernt Hugenholtz, session 3, transcript 46 
 
79 
81

Hence, this instance of over-breadth is something to which we should pay especial 
attention. This is because of the central importance of news to democracies. Here we 
have reason to be particularly careful of over-breadth, because we ought to be concerned 
about some agents gaining too much control over too much information, which they 
would if ‘news’ is defined too broadly.  
Problems of duration 
A second issue is that, given the concerns described at length earlier, if there is any 
publishers’ right, it should be no longer than is necessary. There can be no justification 
for a right to protect a perishable commodity like news that lasts 70 years from the death 
of its author. However, that is what a neighbouring right might provide. Professor 
Hugenholtz drew attention to this issue at the Amsterdam Conference.  
 
There have been in the past many attempts at the international level, particularly 
to introduce some sort of specific protection for the news industry, particularly in 
the form of news bureaus, news agencies like Reuters and AP in the past.  Many 
of those proposals were about very short term protection schemes of 24 hour or 
48 hours in line with [the American doctrine of hot news appropriation]. A very 
short period of protection would probably be sufficient that’s totally different 
from what neighbouring rights generally has on offer.  There a term of 20 years is 
sort of the minimum and it’s moving towards 50 or even 70 years, so we’re 
talking about very different kind of rights and needs.  There are actual several 
countries, I’ve been studying this, in the world that have such unfair competition 
law based very short term protections, for news producers I don’t think these are 
ever enforced in the digital realm but we have them and they are yes, certainly an 
interesting model to look at.  They’re not neighbouring rights, they’re specific 
rules of unfair competition.213 
 
It is therefore worth considering, as an alternative to a neighbouring right, ‘hot news’-like 
laws when considering what any publishers’ right might look like. These are laws that 
resemble the US ‘hot news’ misappropriation tort, which was described by Chris Beall at 
the Amsterdam Conference.214  In essence, ‘hot news’ laws protect news against other 
news publishers, but only for the short time it remains commercially valuable.  
 
Indeed, as Professor Hugenholtz mentioned, there are some contemporary European laws 
of this type. For example, s 72 of the Danish Copyright Act provides that ‘Press releases 
supplied under contract from foreign news agencies or from correspondents abroad, may 
not without the consent of the recipient be made available to the public through the press, 
the radio, or in any other similar manner until after 12 hours after they have been made 
                                                 
213 Ibid. Bernt Hugenholtz, session 3, transcript 51 
214 Ibid. Chris Beall, session 2. These flow from the US Supreme Court decision of International News 
Service v Associated Press 
 : see text to n 190. 
 
80 
82

public in Denmark’.215 A similar provision can be found in Italian copyright law, but the 
duration of protection is 16 hours.216  
 
But our research confirmed Professor Hugenholtz’s findings that these are doctrines that 
are not considered effective in those jurisdictions where they are present. Uncertainty and 
lack of use seem to surround them, and it seems they have not been used significantly in 
contemporary times. In relation to a provision that exists in Danish law, an interviewee 
said ‘no one knows what it is protecting – news as such, or the complete formulation of 
the press release….there have never been any cases on it.” An Italian interviewee said he 
though the law had been ineffective, and there had been little litigation on the subject. 217 
Other doctrinal concerns 
The third point is to emphasise that the text of any publishers’ right will have to be 
considered against various legal doctrinal requirements.  
 
In general terms, the text would have to comply with international or regional copyright 
law. Professor Xalabarder has undertaken such an analysis of the Spanish law,218 and 
Professor Bently laid out some of the considerations that an EU publishers’ right would 
need to take into account at the London Workshop.219  
 
More specifically, there are important discussions to be had about the extent to which any 
publishers’ right complies with the Berne Convention, particularly the mandatory 
quotation exception provided for in article 10. There are also significant questions of the 
extent to which a publishers’ right would comply with the Information Society 
Directive.220 Bently has argued that as well as creating a ceiling limiting the extent of 
exceptions to copyright that are permissible, one of the effects of the Information Society 
Directive has also been to create a floor. This means that any legislation that the EU or 
                                                 
215 An English translation is available from the Danish Ministry of Culture: Kulturministeriet, 
'Consolidated Act on Copyright 2014, Act No 1144 of October 23rd, 2014)' (Kulturministeriet 2014) 
<http://kum.dk/fileadmin/KUM/Documents/English%20website/Copyright/Act_on_Copyright_2014_Lovb
ekendtgoerelse_nr._1144__ophavsretsloven__2014__engelsk.pdf> accessed 18 January 2016 
216 Article 101. An unofficial English translation is available from Unesco Unesco, 'Italian Copyright 
Statute' (2004) 
<http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/files/30289/11419173013it_copyright_2003_en.pdf/it_copyright_2003
_en.pdf> accessed 22 January 2016 
217 In contrast, a Finn interviewed for our research indicated that the Finnish version of this law was, in his 
opinion, effective, even if there had been little litigation on the subject. This, perhaps, reflects different 
cultural evaluations of how the effectiveness of laws can be gauged with reference to the presence or 
absence of litigation. The Finnish provision is section 50 of the Copyright Act, and sets out a timescale of 
12 hours. An English translation is available from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, 
'Copyright Act' (2010) <http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/1961/en19610404.pdf> accessed 21 
January 2016. 
218 Xalabarder. 
219 Danbury, (accessed  
220 Info Soc Directive 2001/29/EC 
 
81 
83

Member States bring in – such as a publishers’ right - that is more protective of copyright 
material than is permitted by the EU legal acquis, may well be in breach of EU law. 
 
Further, as Professor Hargreaves observed at the Amsterdam Conference, questions need 
answering about the basis in EU law of any proposed right. It would have to be clarified 
why such a right promotes the aims of the Digital Single Market, or is appropriate under 
another source of EU competence.221 Similarly, thought would have to be given as to the 
extent to which such a right might violate the principles of free movement of goods and 
services within the EU, and if so whether this would be doctrinally acceptable. In other 
areas of law, Dr Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan has observed that the extent to which any 
right complies with the requirements of World Trade Organisation law might need to be 
considered.222 
 
Finally, and of great importance, as was highlighted at our conference by Professor 
Eechoud, is the fact that any new right would have to comply with the EU’s fundamental 
rights regimes, either set out in the Charter or the Convention.223 Professor Eechoud 
summed up her view of the difficulties a publishers’ right faces: 
 
the million dollar question [becomes] is such a right necessary in a democratic 
society to protect legitimate interests?  This is European Convention of Human 
Right type analysis.  […] So, from the free speech perspectives I’d definitely say 
to the European Commission this is a case where you really need to err on the 
side of caution and follow the precautionary principle and do not legislate 
publishers rights because we know it has certain costs, even if we don’t know the 
scale of them, and it has undefined benefits224 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
221 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
' (accessed  Ian Hargreaves, session 3. See text to n 42 for a possible answer.  
222 Personal communication and H Grosse Ruse-Khan, 'The End of Google's Reign in Spain?' (2014) 
<http://worldtradelaw.typepad.com/ielpblog/2014/12/the-end-of-googles-reign-in-spain.html> accessed 14 
June 2016 
223  Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union [2000] OJ 364/01, Convention for the Protection 
of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights) 1950. 
224 Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law University of Cambridge, 'CIPIL/IViR Conference 
Mireille van Eechoud, session 4, transcript 67 
 
82 
84

Appendix: Some prominent relevant copyright-related cases 
 

Australia 
Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd v Reed international Books Australia Pty Ltd 
225  
Belgium 
Google v Copiepresse (First Instance, re-hearing)226 
Belgium 
Google v Copiepresse (Appeal)227  
Denmark 
Danske Dagblades Forening v Newsbooster228 
Denmark 
Infopaq v Danske Dagblades Forening I (CJEU) 229 
Denmark 
Infopaq v Danske Dagblades Forening II (CJEU) 230  
Denmark 
Infopaq International A/S v Danske Dagblades Forening 231 
EU 
Svensson v Retriever Sverige AB232 
Germany 
“Paperboy”233 
Germany 
Elektronischer Pressespiegel Judgment of 11 July 2002 I ZR 255/00 
Spain 
Megakini (Pedragosa v Google), Supreme Court234 
UK 
Newspaper Licensing Agency v Meltwater Holdings (Court of Appeal) 235 
UK 
Public Relations Consultants v Newspaper Licensing Agency (Supreme Court)236 
UK 
Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd and others v Public Relations Consultants 
Association Ltd 
(CJEU) 237 
USA 
Barclays v Theflyonthewall.com (Appeal) 238 
                                                 
225 [2010] F.C.A. 984  (Federal Court of Australia) 
226 13 February 2007; No 06/10/928/C of the general roll  (Court of First Instance, Brussels) 
227 Presented 11/5/2011, Cause List No: 2007/AR/1730  (Court of Appeal of Brussels, 9th Chamber) 
228 SHD February 19, 2003, Case V 110/02  
229 C-5/08,  [2009] EUECJ C-5/08 (16 July 2009) 
230 C‑302/10, [2012] EUECJ C-302/10   
231 Case 97/2007, 15 March 2013   
232 Svensson v Retriever Sverige AB C-466/12, [2014] Bus LR 259, [2014] ECDR 9   
233 "Paperboy" Judgment of 17 July 2003 (BGH I ZR 259/00), BGH [2001] GRUR 958  (German Federal 
Supreme Court) 
234 Megakini [Pedragosa v Google] Tribunal Supremo (Civil ch.) Sentencia n. 172/2012, 3 April 2012  , 
discussed in R Xalabarder, 'Spanish Supreme Court Rules in Favour of Google Search Engine... and a 
Flexible Reading of Copyright Statutes?' (2012) 3 Journal of Intellectual Property, Information Technology 
and Electronic Commerce Law 162 
235 Newspaper Licensing Agency v Meltwater Holdings [2011] EWCA Civ 890   
236 Public Relations Consultants Association v Newspaper Licencing Agency (Meltwater) [2013] UKSC 18   
237 Newspaper Licencsing Agency Ltd and others v Public Relations Consultants Association Ltd Case C-
360/13; [2014] WLR (D) 244   
238 Barclays Capital Inc v Theflyonthewall.com Inc 650 F.3d 876, 2011 Copr.L.Dec. P 20,117, 99 
U.S.P.Q.2d 1247, 39 Media L. Rep. 2009, 77 A.L.R.6th 793   
 
83 
85

USA 
AP v Meltwater 239 
239 Associated Press v Meltwater 931 F.Supp.2d 537, S.D.N.Y. Mar. 21, 2013  (US District Court for 
Southern District of New York) 
84 
86

Document 2
Paper from EDiMA, Impact of ancillary 
rights in news, 25/11/2016 
(Ref.Ares(2016)2874320) 
87



Ref. Ares(2016)2874320 - 21/06/2016
The impact of ancillary rights in news products 
In this briefing document, EDIMA seeks to summarise research available on, so-called, “ancillary rights” in news, 
so as to contribute towards an open and evidence-based policy making process. All research cited – economic, 
empirical and legal - is publically available.  
The  research  demonstrates  an  overwhelmingly  negative  impact  for  consumers,  for  news  publishers  and  for 
innovation in countries which have attempted to create such ancillary rights. Research also highlights key legal 
issues such as compliance with international law and respect for fundamental rights. 
Furthermore, there is compelling evidence that online services are increasing the opportunities for news providers 
to reach their audiences online and develop their business in the digital age and online services are increasing 
pluralism, media diversity and access to information for EU citizens.  

88








 
 
The impact of an unworkable and invalid concept 
 
Negative impact on innovation
 
 
The laws in Spain and Germany concerning ancillary rights still 
European start-ups hit by ancillary rights 
appear to face near-insurmountable challenges in their practical 
 
implementation.  Their  scope  is  very  broad,  affecting  many 
“The  development  of  mobile  apps  sorting 
online  activities,  including  linking  and  quoting  and  many 
information  and  data,  an  area  with  an 
services, from websites to apps. Moreover, they touch upon a 
interesting  future,  will  remain  curtailed  in 
vast  array  of  creative  works,  as  “news”  is  a  malleable  legal 
Spain”, Niagarank, a now closed product of 
concept encompassing content that is regularly updated. 
Spanish start up CodeSyntax, employing 15. 
 
 
Small  innovative  companies  are  impacted  as  a  result.  For 
“A legal dispute with [the German publisher 
smaller European companies ancillary right provisions represent 
association]  would  have  dragged  on  for 
a  strong  deterrent  because  of  the  legal  uncertainty  and  the 
years,  finally  leading  to  bankruptcy  of 
enforcement through collecting societies. These concerns were 
tersee.de - regardless of the outcome. Four 
already raised before the adoption of the law in Germany, but 
years 
of 
intensive 
research 
and 
were  not  taken  into  account.  In  Spain,  Planeta  Ludico, 
development would have been for vain. We 
NiagaRank,  InfoAliment  and  Multifriki  have  already  closed 
thought  about  removing  German  media 
down, in addition to Google News (AEEPP/NERA, 2015). 
from  our search  index  and  to  relocate  our 
 
headquarters  abroad”,  Mikael  Voss,  from 
 
tersee.de, a German start-up. 
Ancillary rights would also create a competitive advantage for 
 
already established, successful online services, making it harder 
Other  start-ups  and  services  already 
for  new  European  companies  to  compete  and  develop  new 
affected  in  Germany  and  Spain  include 
services. There is a wealth of scientific opinions supporting this 
Radio Utopia (news agency), Unbubble.eu, 
view, from the Max Plank Institute to the report of the Spanish 
Links.Historische  (news  for  historians), 
Competition authority.  
Rivva  (blog  aggregator),  Nasmua.de  (news 
 
search 
engine), 
Newsclub.de, 
Services impacted - Spain
commentarist.de, 
DeuSu.de, 
Planeta 
Ludico,  NiagaRank,  InfoAliment,  Multifriki, 
Social 
Newsfeed 
Networks 
Meneame, Astrofísica y Física, Beegeeinfo… 
readers 
(Twitter, 
 
(Feedly, 
Facebook, 
 
Flipboard)
 
Google +)
Services  and  publications  that  rely  on 
Social 
Blog 
disseminating 
content 
under 
creative 
Marketing 
aggregators 
commons type licenses cannot escape the law. 
(Mktafen, 
(Divoblogger, 
Marketer Top)
Bitacoras)
Similarly,  scientific  publications  that  rely  on 
open  access,  e.g.  Public  Library  of  Science, 
Scientific and 
News 
would see a fee collected for the circulation of 
Technological 
Aggreators 
their  information  (Xalabader,  2014).  This 
Information 
(Meneame, 
(Divulgame, 
Huffington 
hampers innovation and knowledge sharing in 
Barrapunto)
Post)
Europe. 
 
 
 
 

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Negative impact on news publishers and pluralism 
Publisher views on ancillary rights 
 
 
The introduction of ancillary rights creates significant problems 
There  is  a  formidable  consensus  that  no-one  likes 
for news publishers in Europe, which has led to a number of news 
the law”; “as long as I am president of Prisa, no part 
publishers  already  condemning  the  creation  of  those  rights.  
of  the  media  group  will  collect  the  [Ancillary 
 
Copyright]  fee",  Juan  Luis  Cebrián,  CEO  of  Prisa 
Ancillary rights act as a barrier to competition and pluralism, by 
(owner of leading Spanish publication such as El País, 
making  it  harder  for  publishers  to  reach  their  readers  online. 
Diario AS and Cinco Días). 
Smaller  publishers,  regional  publishers  or  new  online  news 
 
publishers are disproportionally affected, suffering a competitive 
Rainer  Esser,  CEO  of  German  weekly  “Die  Zeit”, 
disadvantage.  In  Spain,  the  decline  in  traffic  following  the 
refers  to  the  German  law  as  a  “hazardous 
adoption of the law saw smaller publishers losing twice as much 
construction”.  
traffic as large publishers (AEEPP/NERA, 2015).  
 
This  legislation  is  a  step away  from  a  competitive 
Ancillary rights make it harder for news publishers to generate 
and diverse press. It will only make it harder for us to 
online  traffic,  creating  more  obstacles  to  the  dissemination  of 
compete with other news outlets”, Arsenio Escolar, 
their content. In Spain, the loss for the news publishing industry, 
Spanish  Association  of  Periodical  Publications, 
suffered predominantly by smaller, free or online publishers, is 
Benedetto  Liberati,  President  of  the  Italian  Online 
estimated  to  reach  EUR  10  million  a  year.  The  reduction  in 
Publishers  Association,  Alexandre  Malsch,  Co-
traffic threatens their advertising revenues (AEEPP/NERA, 2015). 
founder  and  CEO  of  meltygroup,  Tomasz  Machała, 
CEO  and  Editor-in  Chief,  naTemat,  Łukasz  Mężyk, 
The  property  rights  and  freedom  to  conduct  a  business  of 
Founder & Editor-in Chief, 300polityka.  
publishers is negatively impacted by the creation of these rights. 
 
Publishers are forced, through the Spanish law, to charge a fee, 
The very few large and international publishing 
through  the  intermediary  of  a  collecting  society,  for  the 
houses […] want to prove that despite their 
dissemination of their news products online.  
dwindling journalistic influence, they are still in a 
The global competitiveness and diversity of domestic European 
position to instrumentalise parliaments in Europe 
publications  suffers.  European  publications  such  as  the  Daily 
for their purposes and to create obstacles for 
Mail and The Guardian – respectively the 4th and 5th largest global 
unwelcome competition. In my opinion, those few 
audiences for news in 2014, Comscore – would find it harder to 
large companies have never been after the ancillary 
use online channels to reach their audiences. According to the 
copyright per se, but after strengthening their 
Max Plank Institute the availability of local domestic content will 
future bargaining position [...]”, Wolfgang Blau, The 
be reduced and non-domestic content will be more visible (MPI, 
Guardian, Director of Digital Strategy. 
2012). 
 
Hanspeter Lebrument, President of the Swiss media 
 
Association:  the  adoption  of  the  Spanish  law  is 
shooting yourself in the foot”. 
Sources: 
 
  Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law, Statement on the draft law for an amendment 
of the German Copyright Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz) to include ancillary copyright for publishers, 27 November 2012. 
Available in German here.
 
  AEEP, Open Letter to Commissioner Oettinger, 10 December 2014. Available here.  
  El Confidential, “Cebrián dinamita el 'lobby' de la prensa”, 7 July 2015. Available here.  
  Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen,  “Schweizer Verleger geschäften gut mit Google“, 11 December 2014. Available here. 
  Der Standard, 22 June 2015 
 
 
 

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Negative impact on consumers and citizens 
 
Ancillary right type laws create increased search costs for consumers, as it makes it harder for them to access 
news from aggregators, apps, blogging services, social networks etc. In Germany, 57% of the consumers find text 
“snippets” helpful (Bitkom, 2015).  
 
The choice and diversity of news sources available to consumers is also reduced.  
 
Reduced access to online news aggregation services results in users being less likely to investigate additional, 
related content in depth 
(Chiou and Tucker, 2015). 
 
Concretely, in Spain alone, this mean a loss of EUR 1.85 billion a year for consumers – in so-called “consumer 
surplus” 
(AEEPP/NERA, 2015). 
 
Links, without context, are practically useless to consumers and Internet or app users. Without small extracts of 
text, links in apps and on the Internet would be reduced to “blue URLs”. URLs themselves often include text for 
instance using the title of an article. This is why the Max Plank Institute clearly states that “copyright law cannot 
be applicable in such cases, as otherwise the use of links which contain minimum indications of the content to 
be found would often be blocked
”. 
 
There  would  be  a  clear  impact  on  the  ability  of  Europeans  to  exercise  their  right  to  information  (accessing 
information online), a chilling effect on freedom of expression and broader social and economic consequences 
from such a course of action.  
 
EU citizens also exercise their own freedom of expression online, using many online tools and services that will be 
affected by an ancillary right. As an indication of the scale of those activities, in 2013, over 20% of EU news users 
engaged in some form of news commentary every week. Close to 8% commented on news stories online, over 2% 
wrote blogs on news or political issues, over 3% sent news videos or pictures to a news website (Reuters Institute, 
2014). 
 
Sources: 
  Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Oxford University (2014), Reuters Institute Digital News report 2014. 
Available here. 
  Lesley Chiou and Catherine Tucker (2015), Content Aggregation: The Case of the News Media, NET Institute Working 
Paper No. 11-18. Available here.  
  Pedro Posada de la Concha, Alberto Gutiérrez García and Hugo Hernández Cobos (2015), Impact of the New Article 
32.2 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Act, Conducted by NERA Consulting, Commissioned by AEEEP. Available here.  
  Bitkom (2015), Ancillary Copyright for Publishers – Taking Stock in Germany. Available here.   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

91


Distortions of copyright and legal impact 
Academic opinions on ancillary rights 
Ancillary rights for publishers distort copyright law, using copyright 
to  subsidise  a  part  of  the  news  publishing  industry  (Xalabarder, 
Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property 
2014).  The  Max  Planck  Institute  adds  that  “[i]ndustrial  property 
and Competition Law: “When considered 
rights  are only  required where  such a market  failure is imminent. 
overall, the [bill does] not appear to have been 
This  situation  does  not  exist  in  the  case  of  published  works  in 
well thought-through. Furthermore, it is not 
relation to aggregators.” 
possible to justify the draft with any objective 
argument. Even the publishers are not fully 

The  1886  Berne  Convention  protects  the  right  to  quote  from 
supportive of the measure”. 
newspaper  articles,  the  only  mandatory  exception  under 
international  law.  Incorporated  under  EU  law  via  the  TRIPs 
Prof. Raquel XalabarderUniversitat Oberta de 
agreement,  restrictions against  quotations rights infringe  EU and 
Catalunya:” The proposal amounts to an 
international law (Xalabarder, 2014). 
attempt to subsidise an industry at the 
expense of another and it does so by distorting 

Restricting the ability to link meaningfully with accompanying words 
copyright law rules and infringing EU law and 
of  context  infringes  the  right  to  freedom  of  information  and  the 
international obligations”. 
right to link (MPI, 2012). 
Prof.  Dr.  Gerald  Spindler,  University  of 
The obligation to charge a fee administered by a collecting society 
Göttingen:  “The  [law]  is  a  strange  entity  in 
infringes the right of rightholders to conduct a business and their 
copyright  law  and  is  posing  several  problems 
right  of  property  –  or  to  dispose  thereof  (Xalabarder,  2014).  This 
which  can’t  be  overcome  effectively.”  “[It] 
includes the loss of the ability to apply creative commons licences 
needs to be abrogated as press products cannot 
and to allow indexing, linking and sharing freely to one’s works.  
be differentiated from other parts of texts. Even 
the weather forecast is covered by the AC
”. 
Ancillary  rights  generate  legal  uncertainty,  as  they  create  rights 
which  are  ill-defined  and  overlap  with  the  existing  rights  of 
Prof.  Dr.  Axel  Metzger,  Humboldt  University 
publishers and journalists, to such an extent that “circumstances in 
Berlin: “The [legislation] is a lobby-driven law” 
which the right is based can scarcely be rewritten” (MPI, 2012). 
and  “created  a  massive  bone  of  contention  in 
the information society. Legislation in this field 

Sources: 
seems half baked and lobby-driven”.  

AEEPP/NERA, ibid. Available here.

MPI, ibid. Available in German here.
Prof.  Dr.  Thomas  Hoeren,  University  of 

Raquel Xalabarder (2014), The Remunerated Statutory Limitation
Münster, “The introduction of [the legislation] 
for News Aggregation and Search Engines Proposed by the
has  been  a  disaster.  One  needs  to  have  the 
Spanish Government - Its Compliance with International and EU
courage to abolish it again. [...] Actions taken by 
Law, IN3 Working Paper Series, WP14-004, Internet
the [German publisher association] have been a 
Interdisciplinary Institute. Available here.
confession  of  failure  and  the  explanation  for 
 Bundestag Expert Hearing (2014), “Experten für den Wegfall des
this behavior are embarrassing”. 
Leistungsschutzrechts“.  Available here.

92



 
 
A destructive solution in search of a problem: digital technology is a positive force for pluralism and news 
publishing in Europe 
In search of a problem 
 
Research shows that there is no “substitution effect” – online services using links and snippets are not substitutes 
for news articles and do reduce traffic to news websites or apps (MPI, 2012; Spanish Competition Authority, 2014; 
Chiou and Tucker, 2015; AEEPP/NERA, 2015). 
 
Instead, online services drive online viewers to the websites of news publishers, who then generate revenue from 
advertising and / or subscriptions (AEEPP/NERA, 2015). 
 
Further, news and other publishers can opt-out simply of the various online services that provide links or snippets 
(Spanish Competition Authority, 2014). 
 
Consumers use a vast number of different online tools to access news and inform themselves (Reuters Institute, 
2014) – meaning publishers of news or others are not reliant on a single service to reach their readers.  
 
Sources: 

  AEEPP/NERA, ibid. Available here. 
  MPI, ibid. Available in German here. 
  Chiou and Tucker (2015), ibid. Available here. 
  Comision Nacional De Los Mercados Y La Competencia (2014), “Proposal on the Amendment of Article 32.2 of the 
Bill to amend the recasted Intellectual Property Act”, PRO/CNMC/0002/14. Available here.  
 
Consumers use a broad mix of services to access news 
 
 
In the EU (UK, FR, IT, ES, DE, FI, DK), according to the Reuters News Institute, close to 40% of news users directly 
access news via the website of a news brand. Other tools include email, social networks, news aggregators and 
micro-blogging services. 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

93


Online services increase diversity and pluralism 
European online news users access significantly more news brands than offline users. Users of social media, mobile 
apps aggregating news and search tools read more diverse news sources.  
UK 
FR 
ES 
FI 
IT 
DK 
IE 
DE 
Online  Offline  Online  Offline  Online  Offline  Online  Offline  Online  Offline  Online  Offline  Online  Offline  Online  Offline 
users  Users  users  Users  users 
Users  users 
Users  users  Users  users  Users  users  Users  users  Users 
# of 
news 
4.28 
2.8 
6.12 
3.28 
6.83 
4.13 
6.12 
3.96 
7.05 
4.61 
6.61 
4.47 
7.07 
4.88 
7.07 
4.64 
brands 
accessed 
Number of news brands accessed, comparison between online and offline news users. Source: Reuters, 2015. 
News aggregators allow readers to consume more news overall (AEEPP/NERA, 2015). 
French readers are found to consume more news, especially local news, when their news portal service is relevant 
to their geographical location (Athey and Mobius, 2015). 
Internet users in Germany and Italy visit new, smaller sites for their information, in addition to their usual sources. 
The Italian Institute for Policy and Data Valorisation finds that services such as search engines are significant in 
allowing smaller, alternative sources to be discovered and gain traffic. 
Sources: 

Susan Athey and Markus Mobius (2012), The Impact of News Aggregators on Internet News Consumption: The Case
of  Localisation,  Preliminary  research  presented  at  seminars  at  Microsoft  Research  and  Toulouse  Network  for
Information Technology. Available here.


Luca Bolognini et al. (2014), The Effects of Search Engines on the Pluralism of Information, Italian Institute for Policy
and Data Valorisation. Available here.

European publishers leading in digital 
Digital sales of The Economist have risen 47% in one year. Over two thirds of the FT’s total paying readership is 
online (and its digital circulation is growing 33% per year) and mobile is now generating 50% of total traffic. At the 
Guardian, print revenues remained stable in 2014 but digital revenues increased 24%.  
In Germany, Axel Springer reports that more than half of revenues for 2014 were generated from digital activities 
and an increase in profits of over 13%.  
In Italy, two of the larger national newspapers have successfully implemented paywall strategies. Italy’s RCS Media 
Group,  owner  of  the  Corriere  della  Serra,  reported  that  for  the  first  nine  months  of  2012,  some  20%  of  paid 
circulation came from digital subscribers and that digital revenues accounted for around 15% of group revenues.  
Sources: 

Reuters Institute, ibid. Available here

94

Document 3
EPC, Draft Position Paper: Presenting the 
Case for a Publishers' Exclusive Right, 
31/08/2015 ( Ref. Ares(2016)5575203) 
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Note  of  the  Commission:  despite  the  watermark 
"confidential",  the  former  motivation  and/or 
background  for  putting  that  watermark  are  not 
regarded  as  being  relevant  and  persistent  any 
longer,  not  least  since  The  European  Publishers 
Council  also  agreed  to  the  disclosure  of  this 
document
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Document Outline