Slashdot Mirror
AP to Charge Members to Post Content Online
oboreruhito writes "The Associated Press has announced that, effective Jan. 1 2006, it 'will begin charging newspapers and broadcasters to post its stories, photos and other content online.' The article says online portals that are already subscribed to an online service won't be affected; the change is that newspapers and broadcasters, which have had the privilege of posting online at no extra charge over their usual licensing fees for print or TV, now have to pay extra. How will this affect sites like Google News and Fark?"
Why would it affect fark? They just link to em...
OMG F1R57 P057!
Slightly less photoshopping and still no cure for cancer.
How will this affect sites like Google News and Fark?
My guess is not much at all. It's the sites that Google and Fark link to that will need to pay the AP. If the number of AP newswire sites drops, it will most likely be made up for by homebrewed stories citing the AP newsfeed as a source.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Google might be affected a little, but anyone that is paying the AP to carry the story will still have it posted, and google (or fark) could get to it that way.
Depending on how much they are charging, though it might force other sites to start charging online subscruption fees, as a large amount of free news will not be there anymore...
Google News hotlinks there images from the stories in question... so I'd guess that there is no issue, since they are not really a news site, just a link to other news sites, a news site search engine basically.
It will have no effect on them. Like Fark, Google posts links and short blurbs.
This just means there will be less redundant AP links. That's a good thing because the remaining links may actually be original reporting.
How will this affect sites like Google News and Fark?"
More boobies links!
Thanks, AP! : )
You can't take the sky from me...
One of the things I like about Google news is they don't draw a line between AP/NYT/ and other online content like slashdot or inquirer.net don't see how this would effect them at all.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
well, Google will simply not take AP feed directly, but will continue with other feeds - who in turn would have used paid AP feed.
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
Associated Press
Just think. In the future, it would have cost the Sun Sentinal to print this "story" stating that the AP will be charging to post their stories...
They are part of the conspiracy anyway. Who cares.
It just links to them. Same with Google News. Google posts a blurb, but its length is short enough to avoid copyright infringement (i.e., less than 100 words). The images in Google News link directly back to the domain where the story was posted. Sounds like the AP is asking everyone to prioritize Rueters over them, inadvertently. It also sounds like the AP is starting to recognize the Internet as a very influential source of information. It's not nearly ubiquitous as radio and TV, but it reaches a powerful demographic.
Not so sure about Google and Fark which are purely online, but it seems logical that traditional newspapers will pass on the cost to their print subscribers.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Still, this has been a long time in coming. Popular sites like drudge/google news linking pictures from the AP wires, AFP, and other sources are:
#1: Not liscencing the content, which is exactly what the AP's et alls standard business practice is,
#2: Actually costing money due to bandwidth.
I don't think it's going to be long untill the major wires actually close their content to subscribers only. It would be a sad day for me, as I love getting my news hot off the wire, but I can understand why the AP/Reuters/AFP/UPI would do it.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Your dog will want 1 of 1,390,000 steaks?
"About 300 commercial Web sites, including popular destinations such as Yahoo, AOL and MSN, already have been buying AP content, said Jane Seagrave, the news cooperative's director of new media markets."
Most of the commercial web-sites are already buying content. It'll be mostly small-time portals and bloggers who'll be really affected. Think of all the blogs cross-posting APs content.
Also, bloggers who post APs content on there websites might be discouraged to do that henceforth. Imagine, if bloggers are not allowed to link content to AP/reuters or other authentic news sources -- blogging might suffer.
Hell, even slashdot carries AP articles. Will Slashdot be affected ??
--
All your content are belong to us.
Panzer Kardinal Joseph Ratzinger would not approve that. He's the new Pope now, so you've better watch out what you link to!
How does this affect me?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
One can only hope that they pick up stories from other news agencies. It would be nice to visit different sites and actually not get the exact same overdramatized POS article from AP.
Why do slashdot articles end with inane questions that obviously aren't interesting or useful? They just drive discussion away from actual article. Instead, we have a whole page of people agreeing that this almost has almost no impact on Google or Fark.
(Yeah, yeah, offtopic.)
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
Also while aggregating news for Newster.net I realised that many news sites insert advertisment in their RSS feed. Now this is the stupidest thing that a publisher can do. Newster publishes the headlines and links it back to the orignal site. I thought that was FREE advt enough for them. But inserting advt in RSS feeds only leads them to be black listed at Newster.net
fuvoo: watch something
I can think of a few possible outcomes:
1. Online newspaper sites become more inundated with ads. An annoyance that can be somewhat mitigated by Firefox+Adblock.
2. Articles by independent and/or local writers will become more prominent.
3. The AP gradually slides into irrelevance (from an influence and mindshare perspective at least), as newspapers reduce the number of AP stories posted online and other syndicated news agencies pick up the slack.
bp
This has to do with letting newspapers, etc., use the feeds they get from AP for online press. The newspapers are paying for the premium of having breaking stories delivered in preformatted form so they can get them out with little work. They pay so they can their news on time so their readers can in turn get their news on time through them. All the article is stating is that the AP is instituting a pricing cchange for this service that they have been providing and that it will affect what existing customers are paying.
Aggregators and bloggers link back to these sites but since they don't pay for an AP feed they have to wait for the news to be posted. Their situation has not changed as a result of AP's policy since they were never customers to begin.
This decision won't affect Google and Fark at all, since they simply link to other sites that post the AP's content. It will affect Yahoo! News, since they do post original AP content.
BTW, it's a PITA to use the AP's content. I used their feed to add headlines to the site for a TV station. They can't just have an XML feed; noooo, they have to post XML-formatted articles to a usenet server, adding an extra layer of complexity. You have to fetch the most recent post from the headline group, parse it for the links to the articles, then fetch the articles, then parse them for links to the image content, then fetch those articles, then parse them for the image content, which has to then be watermarked with the AP logo (or labeled directly underneath the picture; running it through ImageMagick to add the watermark was easier). (And to make matters worse, I had to write the stuff to do this in Perl running on Windows.)
What happens when people start dying?
"I don't think it's going to be long untill the major wires actually close their content to subscribers only. It would be a sad day for me, as I love getting my news hot off the wire, but I can understand why the AP/Reuters/AFP/UPI would do it."
Why can't we "borrow it" just like we do everything else?
"Also, bloggers who post APs content on there websites might be discouraged to do that henceforth. Imagine, if bloggers are not allowed to link content to AP/reuters or other authentic news sources -- blogging might suffer. "
So much for the "new journalism" model. Guess people will actually have to work for their news.
Blog:" Local cat found up a tree. Firefighters baffled."
I think allot of "mainstream" news sites with go subscription only. On Local Paper site may go to a password protection schema, buy the daily paper the password goon fro 24 Hours, buy a yearly subscription get a 12 month password, or something like that. Who knows. I just think its puts a hamper on the freedom of information. I for one Like using Fark and Google News. I think sites like Fox News and CNN will still be free.
"Sites like google news just provides link to the orignal site. This is FREE advertisment for the orignal sites. But some of these News sites like AP are so ignorant that they dont realize the value of this free advertisment. Their loss."
Pre-Internet: Loss? What Loss?
Post-Internet: Oh you're going to lose if you don't give me free news.
Seems to me that all the talk about google is off topic.
This has no effect on my ability to post a link to an AP story, say on Yahoo.com.
What it does is target places like http://www.nj.com.
This is the web site of the Newark Star Ledger. For years, this site has been taking stories off of the New Jersey state wire and posting the stories on line, without paying anything addionally to the AP.
All this change means is if nj.com wants to continue posting state wire stories to the web site, it will have to pay for the right to do so.
Everyone is hyperventilating about this story. The AP has always gone after sites that post entire stories without first getting permisson or paying for it.
The only thing this changes is that now the MEMBERS (meaning radio stations, newspapers and television stations) will have to pay extra.
Google is NOT an AP member (membership means the AP can take stories from it's members and rewrite and put on it's own wires.), nor is Yahoo (it's a customer -- it doesn't provide stories to the AP, only pays for them.)
Does that mean they'll only charge slashdot once for dupes?
I don't get it.
"I just think its puts a hamper on the freedom of information."
Freedom!=Free. A common mistake amoungst those infected with the RMS virus.
To be honest, this doesn't really surprise me. I work for a company that provides newspaper-centric ISP services, and we've fought with AP for years over feeds, images, you name it. We host many of their partners, and we reduce the overal bandwidth between us and AP by doing a single aggregate feed which is only enabled for genuine AP-carriers. Yet time after time, we've had to argue with AP over the article posting rights of their own customers.
This is yet another kink they're throwing into the mix, as now we have to know which of the AP partners have actually paid for online publishing rights. This will likely irritate our programmers, and probably reduce the amount of our customers re-publishing AP data, but that's about it.
Personally, I don't understand the point of publishing AP online if you're a local paper, anyway. Often this data isn't differentiated from the paper's own articles, and ends up getting archived as such. Many papers these days require registration or pay-access to their archives, which are now diluted with articles that have been replicated thousands of times over by newspapers all over the country.
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
Maybe the AP will have explicit notifications in each story proudly proclaiming that
[It's just about that way already anyway.]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
There is always Wikinews, a public domain news source.
Get your Unix fortune now!
"To me, it seems most likely that traditional newspapers will pass on."
A geek would say this. However what percentage of the total population (not just the US, remember) are geeks? Geeks will put up with reading content off a screen. Geeks will put up with doing the extra work just to be cheap, that others wouldn't.
Mod Parent Up.
If the wires are pay per view, the only news reported will be news that someone wants you to see, paid for by the interest the news best serves.
Poster might be going for funny, but I think there is lots of insight into that statement.
The Wire Service Guild has spent far too many of its resources outsourcing news - like Reuters moving editorial content to India - and this will reverse the money flow back to the AP (in the US).
...
Even the Bene Gesserit know that the News must Flow
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It will force news gathering and dissamation away from central media sources to a more distributed outlets that are harder to manipulate and have more direct accountability as a whole. It will also bring more individuality and integrity to the news process.
... and if the big media industry dies becasue of it, then that is their problem, not mine.
I can't count how many times I've seen the same old garbage re-hashed by diferent reporters who didn't know a damn thing about the story other than what the AP report told them. Hell, why didn't they just cut out the middleman and let me read the AP story myself without all the spin and personal BS opinions.
The truth is, what this is really about is the media industry living in a wet-dream that says "nobody should get reliable news free of charge, tracking, or advertizements" - well I hate to tell them this, but they can and they should
In fact, they could start some sort of P2P news sharing for stories, which would get around this proprietary news source. I can see the bean counters at the newspapers wanting to do something to cut costs, especially if the fee structure is predatory.
So corporate P2P news sharing actually sounds like the beginning of a decent business plan.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Does anyone know whether Yahoo pays AP for their photos off the wire? For years I've been using the "news photos" link from news.yahoo.com to see up-to-date photos. Do you think this free service will end now?
Reuters must be happy. It's about to gain a serious foot up on AP.
What were they thinking?
Ha! You think that's annoying? You should have seen their file formats before they moved to XML. In the early 90's, I had to write an NT service that would listen to their news feed and properly classify incoming stories. Based on what I had to deal with there, I can only conclude that they entered their story headers by means of repeatedly striking a keyboard with a spastic orangtan.
Well, OK, it wasn't quite that bad. I would have killed to have gotten the data in a semi-reasonable format like XML, though.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
but they can pry our right to link to news sites from our cold dead hands (or do referer checking)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Duke will still suck
Your dog will still want steak
AP will get a UFIA
Kitten's will still die
It will still be a trap
Fb- will still be the father
There will still be no cure for cancer
Hilarity will still ensue
Frnace will still surrender
(Insert favorite cliche here)
In Soviet Russia, AP links you!
This may affect Fark.com, but it will probably just mean an increased number of Boobie links being posted to make up for the lack of AP stories.
Free Scotland!
But all the stories I come across (OK, a lot...) are the same, i.e. identical, all with the (AP) tag at the end. So what difference would it make if they disappeared to an extent? AP must be losing money H over F to try this stunt.
Market forces correct a lot of stupidity, and they'll correct this as well. I for one welcome our new more diverse media, which will result.
--Mike--
Haven't they learned from the NYTimes experience? The stuff that is free and redistributed survives and gets popular. This will only hasten their demise. I doesn't make sense to restrict content that you want people to read! Why, it's like a flower charging bees to pollenate it! It just wouldn't last long.
People here seem totally comfortable that one of the highest traffic sites in the world will get a free pass on paying this fee. Watch for Google's "we only link" excuse to be challenged.
I suspect at some point people will try to make the point that linking == publishing in court, and in Google's case may be succesful since Google does republish part of the text. Also, they have bags of money and are an easy target.
This is why you usually see license agreements state "in whole or in part". Google is republishing these stories, at least in part. I don't think that can be disputed.
AP is simply moving to a model that Reuters has used for decades.
. . .al Qaeda and all the other islamofascist death cults for the free publicity they've been giving them?
You can't just hand-wave and apply some subjective label and presume the issue goes away. The content repurposing debate has just begun, and don't be surprised if by time it is over, linking and republishing the first paragraph (aka the summary) will be considered legally tantamount to publishing the content.
Because that would mean more b00bies and photoshoping! Yay!
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Interrogative, What THE F..K?
That was a pretty neat:
"OMG F1R57 P057!"
arrangement of "first post" claim by the parent poster.
As for FARK, IFF they have to pay, they'll probably be yelling, "INT WTFARK"?
(And, API might be thinking: "These FARKERS are going to PAY! if they don't PAY...")
(hehehheh, laugh)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Badly...
Except, Google can start charge content providers who are not willing to give them the content for showing up in Google search.
Newspapers and broadcasters that currently liscense AP's material for their print/broadcast mediums will now have to pay an additional liscense fee to reproduce it within their online properties.
I see nothing wrong with this
I work in the news busness and I would like to add a few things here.
First and formost AP is a virtual monopoly in the U.S. Think of Mircosoft and then think 10 times worse. The AP has been scared whitless about the internet for years but not for the reasons you might think. The AP monopoly has been sustained by having control over the means of distribution of the news. It should be clear that the internet represent a threat to the distribution system that has permitted the AP to maintain it monopoly.
The AP is a "cooperative" it is owned by its members, the newspapers and broadcasters. But if there ever was a case of the tail wagging the dog this is it.
The AP has for years owned a service that puts its content on line for members. This service cost member's several hundreds dollars a week. The problem has always been that the members could figure out how to take the AP content from their systems and post it without the use of AP system.
So now, in order to get to these papers and broadcaster AP will try and charge for this kind of use as well.
Now the members could object to this, but they wont. No matter how badly the AP treats it members it members always roll over for them. Why, you ask?
Because AP has a Monopoly in state and regional reports. If your a daily newspaper owner you need those reports unless you want to staff reporters all over your state, something few newspapers can afford to do. So AP knows this and has you right where they want you. They charge a great deal of money for the first part of the AP report, the state report the one you need, and then a little extra for the others (national, regional, photo, etc.) Then they sign you up on a self renewing contract which renews every night at midnight. You have to give them a one-year notice to drop the service. The result is that no newspaper ever does this because to replace AP with Reuters or UPI would require you to pay for two news services! Again something few small market papers can afford to do.
UPI, Reuters and AFP are all fine services at covering major national and international news but none of them have the regional and state coverage that publishers need. Only AP offers that and they will do what ever it takes to maintain that monopoly.
Now you ask how do they get all this state news this news? Does AP have reporters stationed in each small city in the state. Well this is where it get's really weird. No they don't have reporters all over everywhere. It turns out they get the news from the very papers that are paying them. They take those stories remove any reference to the original paper and resend it to all the "members". If you did this in college they would kick you out but in the case of the AP it's called a business model.
The other agencies always cite the source of the story but not the AP. So the AP member is paying, and I mean paying a great deal a midsized paper pays well over $3000 a week for the normal AP service, to have their own storis sent back to them. In one paper I am aware of the majority of the state report is the copy of that very paper sent back to them 24 hours after it was printed.
Well I hope some of you have found this informative.
well google is already paying for the feed (if it gets one -- but i thought they just lined to the AP website) since they are not a print publication. all this means is that some places will stop carrying AP stories online, which will cut down on the duplicates in google news search, hence making it easier to use and read.
If AP is going to charge sites to post content, the media outlet posting it (especially newspapers) will want to make up for the cost.
You know what that means: More registration and information-gathering, so the sites can charge advertisers higher fees based on the demographics of site visitors.
It will have effects because only the more "newsworthy" stories will be available in free areas (CNN, Yahoo, ABC News) and local stories that would only make a half-dozen places will disappear from the Internet. Coming across an "amusing" story will be much harder without actively searching for it.
Somehow I doubt that they're an easy target. I suspect that they've been using some of their "bags of money" to beef up their legal staff.
They may turn out to be the same kind of "easy target" that tSCOg found IBM to be. (And if they aren't this time, they will be next time.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
5 bells signified a Bulletin, and 12 bells a Flash, defined in the AP stylebook as a story of overriding importance that can be told in four words or less. Needless to say, the sound of 12 bells would bring every other activity in the newsroom to a halt as everyone huddled around the teletype.
Flashes occur very, very rarely.
Today we had two Flashes (I am paraphrasing, because I am unable to find the originals):
Today's Flashes cheated a little bit on the four-word rule, but that's OK. Previous Flashes have included stories such as "Men Walk On Moon" and "Nixon Resigns."Dear AP, Could you please provide a service where Flashes (and maybe even Bulletins) are sent by SMS to my cell phone? Google news alerts just aren't the same.
Slashdot is the Wikipedia of the Internet. Anyone can submit information. But is it correct? Apparently with the rating the OP got. It was peer-approved too.
I think it's a little funny that the article is an AP story, posted on the site of someone they will soon be charging for that privilege. It's almost like it was meant to be a private memorandum, but was then mistaken as an article.