AI licensing coalition SPUR in huge expansion

Some 20 new publishers around the world join 'Nato for news' AI protection group.

SPUR logo

AI news licensing standards coalition SPUR has added almost 20 publisher members in a major international expansion of its work.

SPUR (the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights coalition) was announced publicly in February by The Guardian, Financial Times, Telegraph, BBC and Sky News.

They were later joined by Belgian-based Mediahuis as another founder member in a signal of their intent that it is not just a UK project.

They said they wanted to develop shared industry standards on ways journalism can be used by AI companies and products creating common standards around permission and payment.

SPUR said on Wednesday it has already made “significant progress” on its work towards the technical infrastructure that will allow publishers to see how AI systems are using their content and therefore better negotiate. This will be launched soon, the group said.

The new arrivals include French press group CMA Media as another founder member (which means they pay higher membership fees and sit on the board).

The first standard members include Canadian publishers The Globe and Mail, Quebecor, Postmedia, Torstar, CBC/Radio-Canada, La Presse and TVO Media Education Group.

Other new standard members are: SIPA Ouest-France Group, Ringier (based in Switzerland), Citywire (UK), Sanoma Media Finland, Der Standard (Austria), Bonnier News (Nordics) and FD Mediagroep (Netherlands).

Joining as associate members (meaning they pay a nominal fee either because they are smaller organisations or they want to show support without making a full commitment) are Times Higher Education, RNZ (in New Zealand) and AML Intelligence (Europe).

There are also a raft of affiliate members, meaning organisations that represent news publishers including trade bodies.

They are: WAN-IFRA/FIPP, the European Publishers Council, Digital Content Next (DCN), the Association of Online Publishers (AOP), Independent Publishers Alliance, Newsworks, the News/Media Alliance (NMA US), Independent Media Association (IMA), News Media Canada, the Hungarian Publishers’ Association, Hebdos Québec, the PPA (Professional Publishers Association) and PPA Magnetic.

Jean-Christophe Tortora, deputy CEO of CMA Media, said: “By joining SPUR at board level, we are making a clear commitment to collective international action… the world’s leading publishers are determined to open a new chapter in their relationship with technology platforms and public authorities: a ‘new deal’ based on fair value sharing, content protection, and the defence of reliable and independent journalism in the age of artificial intelligence.”

Guardian Media Group chief executive Anna Bateson said: “Welcoming 30 new members, including our first founding member from France, gives SPUR the scale required to turn its mission into a global mandate.

“This collective strength will help legitimise the standards we create, safeguarding the intellectual property of publishers and providing AI developers with a route to scalable, sustainable licensing.”

‘We don’t have to agree on everything’

Guardian chief strategy and business development officer Douglas McCabe told the WAN-IFRA conference, in response to a question about the fact that several of the original SPUR founding members have already signed their own AI deals including The Guardian, that they are “organisations that can get deals, but they want to create SPUR.

“This isn’t a bunch of companies that can’t get deals and are very angry and have created SPUR. These are companies that can, but they’ve created SPUR because they genuinely believe this is about the future of journalism.

“This is a collective, we’re in this together. It is an industry-wide initiative. It’s not trying to argue for collective licensing, which frankly will minimise the outcome. We want to maximise the outcome, and we want to maximise it for everyone.”

McCabe also said SPUR would work best if there are “lots and lots and lots of publishers working very, very closely together to set those standards.

“The great news is we don’t have to agree on everything, we don’t have to agree on lots of elaborate detail. We need to agree on first principles. We need to agree on quite simple stuff, and if we get that agreement, we can move this entire relationship and entire market forward.”

News Media Canada CEO Paul Deegan told Press Gazette: “News Media Canada is very pleased to have a seat at the table. We encourage other national publisher associations around the world to join the coalition. We are much stronger when we stand and act together.”

Pros and cons of joining collective action

But some publishers remain unsure about the benefits of joining SPUR. Louis Dreyfus, CEO of French newspaper Le Monde, told the WAN-IFRA Congress on Wednesday morning: “If we join an initiative, we need to make sure that we are a real contributor. We wouldn’t join an initiative just to be on the passenger seat and pay fees…”

Le Monde has signed AI licensing deals with OpenAI, Perplexity and Meta. Dreyfus said: “What I don’t understand at this point is when I have a direct relationship, when I have a partnership with several platforms, and… will sign other deals this year, how can SPUR be useful for me as a member?”

Dreyfus added that he believes collective action can make you “less agile, less powerful” because of a feeling of “diluted responsibility”.

Of the data standards currently being developed by SPUR, David Buttle, founder of DJB Strategies and one of those leading SPUR behind the scenes, said “usage needs to be the fundamental unit of value in the market” equivalent to impressions in the digital advertising market.

He said this would be better than a market based on how many times content is scraped.

“How many times was a piece of content used in a context window and presented to a user in a substitutional way is foundational to how this market needs to form.

“We know that caches, offline caches of content, are being used more extensively, and unless you compared the value to the number of times you’re potentially losing a consumer on your own and operated properties, then you’re not going to be able to set the price, and we’ll probably end up losing money in this market, as we have in search and social, so that’s a standard and a norm that we need to establish in the market.”

Buttle also said that the addition of the new SPUR members “marks the moment that the industry recognises that collective action is the way that we put ourselves at a better strategic footing”.