Australian Hotels Association pays for news copyright breaches

Newspaper publishers have received damages and a prominent apology from the Australian Hotels Association for copyright infringement.

The Australian has been told the NSW AHA had been republishing articles relevant to the hotel industry from News Corp Australia, Fairfax Media and APN News and Media on its website without permission.

The publishers won a damages payout. A News Corp spokesman would not comment on the particulars.

The following apology ran in newspapers and online today:

"The Australian Hotels Association (NSW) has for a number of years displayed on its website a large number of newspaper articles without the authority of the relevant newspaper publisher.

"The AHA (NSW) acknowledges that in doing so it infringed the publishers' copyright and apologises to the publishers.

"It has now agreed to obtain a licence from Copyright Agency Limited and has paid the publishers appropriate damages in respect of these breaches of the publishers' copyright."

A link on the AHA site that points to "Today's Articles" today contains a short message, saying, "The page you tried was not found. You may have used an outdated link or may have typed in the address (URL) incorrectly. We apologise for the inconvenience".

Source: The Australian, 14 November 2013