NNI submission In 2012, the NNI (the organisation that set up the NLI) made a submission to the Copyright Review Committee of the Department of Justice and Equality, relating to its position on
hyperlinking which asserted that it was "the view of NNI that a link to copyright material does constitute infringement of copyright".
"Cease and desist" to Women's Aid charity In May 2012, McGarr Solicitors stated that they had helped to draft a response to Newspaper Licensing Ireland on behalf of
Women's Aid Ireland, a charity that helps victims of domestic violence, after the latter had received a
cease and desist letter that sought money from the charity for linking to online newspaper articles that included positive mentions of the charity's work. In their letter, NLI alleged that the reproduction of copyrighted content without permission is theft, and that Women's Aid "will be breaking the law" if they did not comply with the NLI's demands. The NLI letter, which was described in the
Irish Times as having attracted "widespread criticism", sought a licence fee not for actual reproduction of an article or the publication of an excerpt from an article, but merely for publishing a
hyperlink to news articles. The NLI licence price-list, at the time, reportedly ranged from €300 for 1–5 links published annually, to €1,250 for 26–50 links published annually, with the price for publishing more than 50 links being "negotiable". The reply to NLI pointed out that the terms and conditions of the NLI's member newspaper websites in many cases explicitly granted permission to produce weblinks to articles and that some NLI member websites included sharing buttons to encourage the creation of weblinks for use on social media. Following a tweet linking to the release by
Graham Linehan, the topic was covered internationally by media outlets including
Boing Boing,
The New York Observer,
The Guardian and
Forbes. It was also addressed by Professors of Journalism
Jay Rosen,
Jeff Jarvis and
George Brock. An opinion piece published by McGarr, on Irish news website
TheJournal.ie, contrasted the international coverage of the story with a lack of coverage in Irish print media. == References ==