Times Online blocks NewsNow aggregator

Posted by Erina Lin on January 8, 2010 at 4:34 PM

News International will block the news aggregator NewsNow.co.uk from linking to its Times Online content, according to MediaGuardian. The aggregator said it was told Friday that it can no longer link to any content on Times Online.

"News International has for some time been indicating to us that it would like us to refrain from linking to their content," according to Struan Bartlett, managing director and chairman of NewsNow, Media Guardian reported.

"We note that no other major search engine has been blocked by News International in this manner. NewsNow is not fundamentally different to other news search engines that are part of the Internet infrastructure, such as Google News and Yahoo. Why block us and not them?" Bartlett added.

Last summer, News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch announced he would begin to charge for his online newspapers content in the spring 2010. He has also blamed search engines and news aggregators as "make money out of journalism without contributing anything in return."

News International has not yet responded to comment whether it would block other aggregators.

Meltwater, another online monitoring service, currently is taking the Newspaper Licensing Agency to a Copyright Tribunal over whether or not newspapers can control the use of their links, Press Gazette reported.

According to The NLA, it is suspending charges for the new web licences for end users , which is in effect as of 1 January.