Summarise, do not reproduce
Unless the client holds the licence.
The press review nobody licensed
Copying articles into an internal monitoring report is reproduction. In Belgium that needs authorisation.
How we work
Why we raise it first
A great many organisations circulate an internal press review that reproduces articles, in the comfortable belief that internal use makes it exempt. It does not. Belgian and European copyright permits short quotation, citation and analysis; systematic reproduction of press articles requires authorisation from the rightsholders, obtained through the societies that represent the daily and periodical press. Internal circulation is still circulation.
That matters commercially because the exposure sits with the organisation doing the circulating, not with whoever assembled the report. A supplier who quietly delivers full-text articles is handing over a liability along with the convenience. So we say at the outset what may be circulated: summaries, references and short citations as of right, and reproductions only against a licence the client holds and can evidence.
The same instinct governs the research itself. We name every source and we report what we could not find, because a dossier that shows only what supports the question is more dangerous than no dossier at all. And we do not convert findings into advice: what the texts say is our work, what they mean for a particular decision belongs to a lawyer, an ITAA-registered accountant or an FSMA-authorised adviser.
Our principles
Three beliefs behind the method
Name every source
Including the ones that found nothing.
Research is not advice
Conclusions belong to the regulated professions.
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