Many newspaper and magazine publishers have accumulated a collection of old material over the years. As the use of online digital content is becoming more common, several publishers are considering digitising their archives and making it available for their readers. From the perspective of copyright, this has been made possible with our newspaper and magazine publishers’ archive licence.
Publishers can purchase an extensive licence to use archived material in digital publishing from us. The licence permits the use and digitisation of works published in newspapers and magazines before 1999. We represent the authors of works published in newspapers and magazines. We distribute the copyright remunerations collected from the use of the archive licence to the authors of the newspapers and magazines.
The newspaper and magazine publishers’ archive licence includes the following rights:
- To digitise, or copy, archived material
- To release archived material in a closed network in order to be made available for subscribers of a newspaper or magazine, for example
The licence includes the copyrights of Finnish journalists and photographers, photo agencies, foreign writers, authors, graphic designers and comic artists, among others.
Material published after 1998 is not included in the scope of the licence, and its use must be negotiated separately.
The price of the licence depends on the quantity of material to be digitised and the number of users of the archived material. A one-time remuneration must be paid for the digitisation, or copying, of the material. In addition, making the archived material available to the subscribers of a newspaper or magazine is subject to an annual remuneration for usage.
The newspaper or magazine publishers’ archive licence grants you the right to
- copy and communicate works included in archived material in their original composition.
- store printed archived material in digital format and create copies of the digitised works included in the material, grant search engines the right to index these works and use works in your own data mining processes by using the databases of the linked data.
- allow your subscribers access to the archived material as a digital copy in a closed network or by means of a similar procedure administrated by the publisher and in other material offered by the publisher’s brand.
- offer your subscribers a chance to search for and read works from the archive in a closed network administrated by you and copy these works for private use.
The price of the archive licence depends on the type of the archived material, the quantity of the material to be digitised and the number of users of the archived material.
The price consists of a one-time copying remuneration (digitisation of the material) and an annual remuneration for the use of the material (communicating the material to subscribers).
Calculating the copying remuneration
Formula for calculating the one-time copying remuneration of the archive licence:
The number of copyrighted pages x fee per page
In 2024, the fee is € 0,0449 + VAT 10 %.
Not all digitised newspaper or magazine material is considered to be copyrighted. The number of copyrighted pages is assessed in two phases as follows:
Phase 1:
- The content of newspapers is assessed to be divided into editorial material and advertisements so that the proportion of editorial material is 60 % and the proportion of advertisements is 40 % of the total number of pages.
- The content of magazines is assessed to be divided into editorial material and advertisements so that the proportion of editorial material is 75 % and the proportion of advertisements is 25 % of the total number of pages.
Phase 2:
- The proportion of copyrighted material subject to remunerations varies between newspapers and magazines published at different times.
- The proportion of pages in newspapers and magazines published before 1946 subject to remunerations is 5 % regarding both editorial material and advertisements.
- The proportion of pages in newspapers published between 1946 and 1998 subject to remunerations is 90 % regarding editorial material and 10 % regarding advertisements.
- The proportion of pages in magazines published between 1946 and 1998 subject to remunerations is 100 % regarding editorial material and 10 % regarding advertisements.
Calculating the amount of remuneration for usage
The annual remuneration for usage of the archive licence depends on the quantity of copyrighted material, which defines the user-specific fee, and the number of users. The remuneration is calculated by multiplying the number of users with the fee based on the quantity of the material.
The number of users
At the beginning of the agreement period, the number of potential users can be used as the number of users, if the number of actual users is not known. In such cases, the number of users in the first and second year of the agreement period is considered to be 10 % and 15 % of the number of potential users, respectively. Potential user refers to all subscribers with access to the digital content of a newspaper or magazine, subject to a fee, and who have accessed such content at least once per year.
Actual user refers to subscribers who have accessed a publication included in a newspaper’s or magazine’s digital archive at least once per year.
The user-specific fee is classified according to the number of copyrighted pages. The fee to be applied is incrementally defined as follows:
| Newspapers: number of copyrighted pages | Fee (users per year) +VAT 10 % |
| 1,000 – 50,000 | € 0.26 |
| 50,000 – 100,000 | € 0.53 |
| 100,000 – 200,000 | € 1.05 |
| 200,000 – 300,000 | € 1.31 |
| 300,000 – 500,000 | € 1.58 |
| Magazines: number of copyrighted pages | Fee (users per year) +VAT 10 % |
| 1,000 – 25,000 | € 0.26 |
| 25,000 – 50,000 | € 0.53 |
| 50,000 – 100,000 | € 1.05 |
| 100,000 or more | € 1.58 |
As a publisher of a newspaper or magazine, you can acquire an archive licence, ask for a price estimate or enquire about matters concerning the copyrights of newspaper or magazine archives by directly contacting our customer service by email or telephone.