Can you republish news articles? What copyright law says

News articles are copyrighted works, and anyone who wants to reuse them at scale needs a license. Content licensing is the arrangement that makes this possible. With content licensing, a publisher grants another party the right to reproduce, distribute, or display its articles on agreed terms. In short, you can quote and comment on news within limits, but republishing a full article requires the rights holder’s permission, regardless of attribution, links, or RSS availability.

For publishers, licensing turns an archive and a daily output into a revenue stream while platforms that license content receive legal certainty along with a reliable supply of material. Copying without permission and hoping for the best might seem like a viable alternative, but that can land you in all sorts of trouble.

US fair use allows limited reuse under a four-factor test 

US copyright law does allow limited reuse of copyrighted material under the fair-use doctrine. This has been codified by section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 which established that “the fair use of a copyrighted work…for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” The statute went on to establish a four-pronged test for evaluating fair-use claims that requires courts to consider:

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• the nature of the copyrighted work;
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Fair use is determined on a case-by-case basis, and judges have spilled gallons of ink as they wrestle with the concept.

UK fair dealing limits reuse to a short list of specific purposes

But other countries approach the subject differently. For example, the UK has fair dealing, which is a short list of specific exceptions set out in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A use has to fit one of those purposes before a court will even ask whether it was fair.

The purposes most relevant to news are criticism and review, quotation, and reporting current events (section 30). The news reporting exception does not cover photographs, and it generally requires a sufficient acknowledgement of the source. 

Even within these categories, courts look closely at how much was taken and why.

Copying more than the purpose requires, or using material commercially in a way that competes with the original, weighs heavily against a fair dealing defense.

The EU limits reuse to set exceptions and adds a press publishers’ right” 

The EU also has no general fair use doctrine. The 2001 InfoSoc Directive sets out a closed list of exceptions that member states may adopt. Two matter most for news: Quotation for purposes such as criticism or review, and use in reporting current events. Both are limited to what the purpose justifies, and both generally require the source and author to be named.

Because member states choose which exceptions to adopt and how to word them, the approach can vary from country to country. A use that is lawful in one EU state may not be in another.

The 2019 Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market added a further layer. Article 15 gives press publishers their own right over the online use of their publications by information society service providers, such as news aggregators and search platforms. Hyperlinks and very short extracts are excluded, but reproducing substantial portions of articles online now requires the publisher's authorization as well as permission from the author.

Republishing a full news article requires a license in the US, UK, and EU 

The common thread across the US, UK, and EU is that these exceptions protect limited, purposeful use. Quoting a few lines to comment on a story will generally be okay, but republishing an entire article is something else entirely. Attribution and a link back do not change this. If you want to republish an article in its entirety, you need permission from the rights holder, and in practice that means a license.

RSS feeds deliver content but don’t grant republication rights 

A common misconception is that content published in an RSS feed is free to republish, but that is not the case. An RSS feed is a delivery format, designed to let readers follow a site in a feed reader. Making content available that way does not transfer any rights or grant permission to reproduce it elsewhere.

Many publishers state this explicitly in their terms of use, and some limit their feeds to headlines and short excerpts for exactly this reason. Pulling full articles from a feed and republishing them on another site is considered copying, with the same legal exposure as copying from the web page itself.

Licensing news content with Newstex

Newstex makes licensing straightforward. Our licenses are non-exclusive, so publishers keep control of their work and can license it elsewhere, and every article carries visible attribution to its original source.

We deliver full text in XML or JSON, drawn from more than 1,600 vetted publications. Licensees can filter by topic, geography, and publisher type to fill specific gaps in their coverage, rather than taking more content than they need.

If you need to republish news content in full, licensing is the reliable way to do it. Contact Newstex to find out how we can help.

• Request a demo to see how Newstex expands coverage for news portals. → https://www.newstex.com/request-demo
• Get content samples to see a licensed feed firsthand. → https://www.newstex.com/get-content-samples

This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. Copyright rules vary by country and depend on the specific facts, so consult a qualified lawyer before republishing third-party content.

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