• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, 7 hours ago

News publishers have been targeted with a more than threefold price hike for filing copyrights.

The increase is “significantly higher than any other commonly used registration option,” the News/Media Alliance writes in a comment on the proposal that was announced in March. 

The draconian boost affects  the Group Registration of Updates to a News Website (GRNW) fee option.

“A 268% price increase for GRNW far exceeds inflationary costs or proposed increases for other services, which generally hover around 50 percent,” the NMA writes. 

This is happening at a time when “the economic model for sustaining journalism is under increasing stress,” the NMA adds.

Publishers are navigating “a rapidly-evolving digital landscape, including the unauthorized use of content by third parties and emerging AI technologies,” Vox Media adds in a statement included in the NMA comment. 

Traffic is another challenge.

“From October 2023 to April 2026, McClatchy's portfolio experienced a 44.5% decline in unique pageviews and a 40.1% decline in total pageviews, representing a sustained erosion of both reach and volume across the entire footprint,” McClatchy says. 

You may recall that in 2024, the Copyright Office made registration of online content possible for the first time.

But the GRNW requires that a news website cover “all subjects and activities and is not limited to any specific subject matter,’ a content-based restraint that raises constitutional concerns and adds to examination costs, the NMA continues.

But the benefit from that will be reduced if publishers are hit with a disproportionate hike. “In trying to set up corporate differentiation between registration options, the proposal would burden local, independent news publishers with subsidizing the rest of the application pool, ranging from the largest motion picture studios to the very technology companies who are infringing publishers’ copyrights,” the NMA argues. 

The way things are these days, one wonders if this is a deliberate attempt to make things more difficult for local news media. Intentional or not, news organizations will suffer. 

These comments may not have impact at all on the final determination. But the NMA demands the following of the Copyright Office:

• Freezing or dramatically reducing the proposed fee increase for the Group Registration of Updates to a News Website (GRNW) option and not singling out the press for differentially burdensome fee hikes.
• Striking the content-based limitation in GRNW, which can deny access to copyright registration based on the subject matter. 
• Reducing the proposed increases for special handling and requests for reconsideration
• Reducing the amount of indirect costs credited to registration-fees by removing costs associated with non-fee bearing “services,” in keeping with the approach of the 2020 fee increase and instead of allocating $5.41 in indirect costs to every $1 of direct work.
• Removing costs associated with IT modernization for copyright registration. 

The takeaway?  A the Economist Group puts it, “Even for established publishers, copyright registration is not an unlimited compliance budget. A sharp increase would require publishers to reconsider the scope, frequency and economics of their registration programs. For some, it may mean fewer registrations.”