Last month, the PMCA brought you this article on Copyright Licensing: Debunked Myths and why you should care, part of a three-part series to help you understand what you can/can't do when it comes to copyright.

Read on for part two, getting down to the details.

Scenario

It's Monday morning and the first episode of that new Netflix series ran last night. Did everyone like it as much as you? You check Facebook, online reviews, Rotten Tomatoes - what's the entertainment reporter saying? Verdict - Yep, they all seem to like it. You make your morning coffee, and head into a meeting. 

Meeting over, coffee number two in hand, time to check the media monitoring clippings for the day. Okay, these need to get distributed; send onto the exec team, Sally over at the PR agency and Mark for his marketing team preso. 

Sounds familiar right?...

The difference between these two scenarios is that you don’t need a licence to send that article by the film reviewer to your friends, but you probably need one for the media clips. 

Why? One is for personal use, while the media clips are for commercial or work purposes. They may be sent on to others and/or used by an organisation to help inform their decision-making.

Who needs a copyright licence?

Publishers own the copyright in their content and most will allow you to use it personally. However, if you use something for work, you’ll likely need a copyright licence. The fact that it’s freely available is irrelevant, and a read of the publishers’ terms and conditions will generally show you that they restrict non-personal use.

Actually… if you have access to publisher’s content from a media monitor then it’s likely that you will need a copyright licence. Because publishers can decide who can access and copy their work, a licence may be needed to have initial access to articles stored by a media monitor or on a web-based platform they operate. If you include those clippings or parts of them in reports, etc then you will almost certainly need a copyright licence.

The same applies to pay-walled content. A subscription doesn’t give you the right to copy and distribute that content. Having access to content behind a paywall simply gives you access in the same way as a subscription to a hard copy. If you go on to make use of the material, then it’s just the same as retail outlets using music; they pay a licence. For photos from the likes of iStock or Getty, you pay a fee to use a photographer’s work as well.

The Print Media Copyright Agency represents NZ publisher’s content

The Print Media Copyright Agency (PMCA) licensing scheme was introduced in 2003 to give organisations a way to legitimately copy and make use of copyright material. The role of the PMCA is to ensure that the time, effort and skill that has gone into writing an article is valued and respected. The majority of the money paid by organisations that have a licence goes to publishers, so in this way, the PMCA also helps to support journalism in New Zealand.

To do this, PMCA sells licences for organisations wanting to use articles from newspapers, magazines and electronic publications such as websites. If content is being used, say for marketing/PR purposes, there may also already be a legal requirement for a licence to be in place.

To find out more about PMCA and Copyright Licensing, download this guide in the MA Resource Centre.

If you'd like to know more on obtaining a copyright licence, click here.