Newspaper Publishers Demand Better Online Protection From Europe

The declaration emerged from attempts by publishers in Germany to have copyright law there changed to better protect newspaper publishers.

The Hamburg declaration stops short of calling for new rights but did say that it welcomed "the growing resolve of federal and state governments all over the world to continue to support the protection of the rights of authors, publishers and broadcasters on the internet".

The declaration claims that the business of publishing is no longer secure because of the digital distribution of its works.

"The internet offers immense opportunities to professional journalism – but only if the basis for profitability remains secure throughout the digital channels of distribution. This is currently not the case," it said. "Numerous providers are using the work of authors, publishers and broadcasters without paying for it. Over the long term, this threatens the production of high-quality content and the existence of independent journalism."

"For this reason, we advocate strongly urgent improvements in the protection of intellectual property on the internet," it said.

The publishers have not specified exactly what improvements they want to the way that intellectual property law deals with newspaper content. The German movement out of which the declaration grew had sought a right which gave them greater control over secondary use of their work.

Newspapers have long published their material online but have failed to generate enough revenue from that activity to offset falling physical sales and advertising.

Some have objected to aggregation by the likes of Google's News service, which publishes headlines and snippets of stories and links to newspapers' own sites for the stories themselves.