AP Says "Share Your Revenue, Or Face Lawsuits"

eldavojohn writes "The Associated Press is starting to feel the bite of the economic recession and said on Monday that they will 'work with portals and other partners who legally license our content and will seek legal and legislative remedies against those who don't.' They are talking about everything from search engines to aggregators that link to news articles and some sites that reproduce the whole news article. The article notes that in Europe legislative action has blocked Google from using news articles from some outlets similar to what was discussed here last week."

Comments

If you don't want people looking at it

[Alarindris]

don't put it on the friggin internet!

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[sneglive]

don't put it on the friggin internet!

http://sneglive.ya.ru/

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[interkin3tic]

I think they'd probably prefer not to, they'd prefer to go back to simpler times, before this damn internet thing, when they were still making money hand over fist.

If they succeed in this, the only thing that will happen is that some of my news portals will have less actual content and more blogging/editorials/crap (like fashion and celeb news).

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[InsertWittyNameHere]

NO! You get off my lawn! Damn whippersnappers and their mobile devices with aggregated digital news.

Back in my day if we wanted the news we had to walk to the newsstand, uphill both ways, and pay a hard earned nickel for it!

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Asic Eng]

I think they have a case when talking about "sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole" - it's clearly unfair to do that.

However to asking money from sites that merely link to the articles? That seems over the top and counter-productive. After all that brings traffic to the site which hosts the article. Linking itself must be free speech, and using the headline and 1-2 sentences in order to describe the link must be fair use.

One goal of The A.P. and its members, she said, is to make sure that the top search engine results for news are "the original source or the most authoritative source," not a site that copied or paraphrased the work.

That goal is ok, but they have no right to prevent a search engine from giving the user the site they are most likely looking for. If that's a site discussing the news, rather than the site presenting the news, they can address this by making their own sites more attractive. In any case - they get a link out of it.

Other than that: if you really don't want to be indexed (and not just pretend you don't because you want to get money from the search engines) then just use robots.txt.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[timeOday]

I think they'd probably prefer not to, they'd prefer to go back to simpler times, before this damn internet thing, when they were still making money hand over fist.

Oh, do you really think news was ever such a lucrative racket?

The news outlets have really thrown themselves to the mercy of the Internet revolution, sticking by their values, and look where it got them. I am very worried about the decline of "real news" in the US. A million bloggers don't make up for one real investigative reporter who has the time to do the legwork because they're paid to do it. I am starting to think we need some new law, like more stringent copyright within the first 24 hours after publication.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Ethanol-fueled]

more blogging/editorials/crap (like fashion and celeb news).

Like Newsweek? I took these examples from the website but the print editions are worse - more than half the mag is dedicated to ads and pop culture BS. If they don't want the internet to eat their lunch then they should print a magazine worth reading. Sure, Newsweek isn't exactly the New Yorker or Foreign Policy magazine, but it's really went downhill from being the respectable news rag I read as a kid.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[WoLpH]

Seeing as how most slashdot articles don't hit till atleast a couple of days after the original article. I'd say it would probably have to be a week for it to be effective. After which it would be old news and not beneficial at all...

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[funkatron]

If they succeed in this, the only thing that will happen is that some of my news portals will have less actual content and more blogging/editorials/crap (like fashion and celeb news).

blogging, editorials and crap are about the only things worth reading on most news sites

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Anonymous Coward]

A million bloggers don't make up for one real investigative reporter who has the time to do the legwork because they're paid to do it.

Unfortunately this is the wrong forum to say that you get a better quality product if people have the time to really work on it because they get paid. Just follow the discussions about Stallman and the GNU Licenses. Readers here don't care if people used to get paid for doing investigative journalism, or even if they are currently getting paid for it. Richard Stallman is King here. Journalists and newspapers should give away their work for free. Heck, if you don't give away your source of income after spending time and doing the legwork to create it, be it a computer program or a news article, they aren't interested.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[lucas_picador]

It's even more ridiculous and pathological than that: the AP is simultaneously whining about how aggregators link to their articles and also about how search engines DON'T link to their articles. This is typical schizophrenia from an industry that is in hysterical denial because the world has changed and their business model no longer works. They can't even articulate what they want; they just want to go back to the way things used to be, when Mommy used to play with them and feed them all day. Embarrassingly infantile.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Locklin]

A million bloggers don't make up for one real investigative reporter who has the time to do the legwork because they're paid to do it.

How many of those are there in the "real news?" Virtually everything is commercial or government "press releases" and "fluff news." The only leg work I see (as an outsider) are embedded reporters in various wars -which, for all their impartiality, are probably just as easily paid by the military.

I would pay for a news source that was just "investigative journalism," but why would I pay for 99.9% press releases and some "commentary" thrown in?

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[ouder]

AP is no longer the only news source out there. CNN and Reuters will be more than happy to fill the gap if the AP wants to put itself behind higher paywalls and legal barriers to linking. This would be a good time to sell your stock in AP if you have any, because this kind of backward thinking will lead to the same results as Detroit believing that they could solve their economic problems by making bigger, less fuel efficient vehicles. Companies that want to return to the 1980's are doomed to fail.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Anonymous Coward]

A million bloggers don't make up for one real investigative reporter who has the time to do the legwork because they're paid to do it. I am starting to think we need some new law, like more stringent copyright within the first 24 hours after publication.

Obviously only a REAL reporter could cover something like SCO vs IBM. So PJ from Groklaw for example isn't worth the time to read. Snark.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Eldragon]

Considering how 24 hour news networks (aka CNN) have been around for almost 30 years, and they have never managed to have any sort of investigative reporting, I think the decline of "real news" was a problem long before the internet hit the mainstream.

I think the Internet is going to bring us much better investigative reporters than we could ever expect from the traditional media. Michael Yon is an excellent example of what we can expect from the modern internet investigative reporter.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Anonymous Coward]

The news outlets have really thrown themselves to the mercy of the Internet revolution, sticking by their values, and look where it got them. I am very worried about the decline of "real news" in the US.

That's why the real news declined, because the news people pushed their liberal values instead of reporting on reality.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[JWSmythe]

    IMHO, it all started when the newspapers started to favor the wire services over their own reporting. They had to pay into it anyways, and paying the wire service fees could be cheaper than providing your reporter a desk, car, phone, etc, etc, etc. Oh ya, and their paycheck.

    Most websites and even print papers, are full of wire stories that they didn't originate. Those stories did start somewhere, but.....

    Then again, how many papers, TV stations, and web publications need to send their own reporters out to cover the same story? It's cheaper and easier to send one out and let everyone copy the story for a few bucks (going to AP/Reuters/UPI/or whoever)

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The news outlets have really thrown themselves to the mercy of the Internet revolution, sticking by their values, and look where it got them. I am very worried about the decline of "real news" in the US.

As someone whose formative newspaper, and other news source, reading years were essentially from 2001-2006, I must completely and totally disagree with you.

I'm not sure exactly what newspaper values were in the later decades of the twentieth century. But I certainly do know what they are in the early years of the 21st. They are the values of the establishment, as newspapers in particular are a central and inextricable part of the establishment. I watched paper after paper after paper, day after day after day, tow the party line, stifle dissent, spin stories upside down, manufacture controversy, manufacture consent, treat the powerful with kid gloves, and viciously destroy those who could not defend themselves.

In 2003, literally millions of people marched against the war in Iraq while not one major newspaper went against it. Every last prominent newspaper in the western world supported that war. In the aftermath, they continued to support it. Amid the scandals and lies that followed it, they still supported it, and freely repeated the excuses for the excuses for the excuses. They were all little more than government press sectrecaries, the world over.

And it's not just the war. That was only the most grievous failing of the newspaper industry. When it came to the financial industry, to the graft, to the unjust laws, to the violations of the rule of law, I can't recall a single serious newspaper investigation into anything aside from sex scandals and knife crime. How many important stories have we seen posted on Slashdot that will never, ever see the front, or any other, page of any national or international newspaper. Newspapers are toothless, only having fangs for those who they know cannot fight back. They have not, in my memory, ever seriously attacked those in secure positions of power. Ever.

I open up a newspaper and all I see is district court case reports, astroturf, human interest stories, AP stories and sports news. Oh and opinion. Opinion, opinion, opinion, opinion, opinion. Commentary and analysis from wholly unqualified windbags, and every letter of it bought and paid for.

You ask me why the newspaper industry is failing? The Internet!? Not likely. The reason they are failing is because they have failed to provide news, the "real news" you claim they still offer. They don't. Newspapers and the entire media industry have offered an entire generation nothing but tripe, gossip and the offical government line, and in so doing they have lost that generation. Probably forever.

I will certainly never again relay on any mainstream media for my information, on anything. I have, for all my formative news-reading years, relied on the Internet as a source of information. Poor as it is, it has served me better than any official publication. And it has served others in the same way. Others from my generation and probably from two others.

A demographic spanning some 20 years for whom newspapers, raid and television have been, are and will always be and unreliable sources of information. This is not some problem for young "pinkos" or anarchists who will turn to the Village Magazine or Indymedia or what have you for their news. No. The problems in the contemporary media are so deep, so systemic, and so pervasive across the entire political spectrum of the industry, that the young readers who have had to put up with them will never again turn to any outlet proclaiming itself to be an official or unofficial source of news. For them, journalism is a disreputable occupation, and anyone claiming to be one will always be suspect. They turn instead to the bloggers, and nobodies, and part time commentators. People untainted by a corrupt occupation or ind

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Eldragon]

I completely agree. I have gotten into the habit of counting the number of articles in my local paper written by local reporters, it averages out to about 5. All the other articles are from the AP wire, and I had gotten that news on the internet the day before.

I would much rather have my local paper ditch the wire services completely and fill that space with nothing but local/regional news. Even if that means they only deliver the paper 4 days a week.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[NeutronCowboy]

Then I would suggest expanding your news gathering. BBC, NPR, CNN and NYT all have excellent pieces of investigative journalism. Is everything on their sites or in their papers solid, investigative journalism? Of course not. But to say "virtually everything is fluff news" betrays more your lack of reading than a lack of good journalism.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[2muchcoffeeman]

Considering how 24 hour news networks (aka CNN) have been around for almost 30 years, and they have never managed to have any sort of investigative reporting,

Are you quite certain about that? Back in February, CNN won a National Headline Award in the Documentary Or Series Of Reports category for its special "On Deadly Ground: Women Of Iraq" produced by its Special Investigations Unit ... which, as you can see, has been working hard on a lot of things for a long time.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[maxume]

Isn't Newsweek relaunching themselves (or whatever) with a high end target demographic and a more serious focus? I think they are even planning on charging more.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Locklin]

CNN.com's Latest news:
* Italy earthquake toll hits 207
      Government press release
* F-16s chase stolen plane to Missouri
      Police press release
* Missing girl found dead in submerged luggage
      Police press release
* Suspected shooter's letter: 'Have a nice day'
      Police press release
* Commentary: What Turkey can do for the U.S.
      Commentary
* CNNMoney: Recovery hopes begin to blossom
      Interview with banker
* Honors student leaves work, disappears
      Police press release
* FBI suspects truckers in serial killings Video
      FBI press release
* Time: Why are army recruiters dying?
      Okay, published article but by Time Magazine
* Commentary: How to make your poor life richer
      Commentary
* iReport.com: Rabbit rescued from floodwaters
        Fluff

There's nothing here that the blogger "echo chamber" couldn't pick up on, certainly nothing that fundamentally needs leg-work. The Time magazine piece is worthwhile, so maybe subscribe to Time, but not CNN as a daily source of news.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Archangel Michael]

With the advent of mass media (TV, Cable, and now Internet) a good investigative journalist only gets one story. After that, if it was a good or excellent story, then they are doomed to fame, which will prevent any further investigative reports.

The problem is that fame breeds the inability to gather information quietly, and sources confidential, both of which are needed for good investigations.

But there is even bigger problem with investigative journalism in general. This problem is called MONEY. It takes a great deal of money to do a good investigation. Combine this with the previously mentioned problem and you can see the real problem. Unknown investigative journalists get no momey to investigate anything. So they have to practically starve while running the investigation.

Then you have the cases like that of Dan Rather who do investigative pieces, who don't investigate any of the sources and defend the conclusions of the piece even when the evidence is shown to be fabricated. We call this "Liberal Bias" most of the time, unless Fox News is involved, then we call it Faux News.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[JWSmythe]

    The unfortunate downside to that is, local news is usually boring. In traveling around the US and Canada, watching the local news is amazingly boring. The "best" parts are frequently the fluff pieces.

    "Local firefighters saved 56 kitties from trees this month"

    "Martha's Pancake house goes for world record flapjack"

    With some luck, something exciting will have happened, and they always stretch it out. On broadcast news, they announce it at the beginning, repeat the fact that it's coming up throughout the broadcast, and finally do the 30 second spot just before the end.

    For quite a few years now, local news that would be remotely interesting has made national news (via wire services, of course), so even when I've gone to a new city, I was already caught up. Sometimes I will have read it first online, so by the time it makes print or radio, it's already old news.

    I have a story up in my office, clipped out of a local tabliod.

    It's this photo (from AP, of course). At least our local headline was better than average. "Can't help but notice the cig still in his mouth" :) The text on my print copy is the same as on the story with the link.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[NeutronCowboy]

There's also CNN Presents, which are very well researched stories on a significant topic. The last one I remember was "Black in America". I don't think I've seen a better piece by any blogger. CNN.com works well as a site to give you a general overview of news.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[nicolas.kassis]

A million bloggers don't make up for one real investigative reporter who has the time to do the legwork because they're paid to do it.

Unfortunately this is the wrong forum to say that you get a better quality product if people have the time to really work on it because they get paid. Just follow the discussions about Stallman and the GNU Licenses. Readers here don't care if people used to get paid for doing investigative journalism, or even if they are currently getting paid for it. Richard Stallman is King here. Journalists and newspapers should give away their work for free. Heck, if you don't give away your source of income after spending time and doing the legwork to create it, be it a computer program or a news article, they aren't interested.

A million bloggers don't make up for one real investigative reporter who has the time to do the legwork because they're paid to do it.

Unfortunately this is the wrong forum to say that you get a better quality product if people have the time to really work on it because they get paid. Just follow the discussions about Stallman and the GNU Licenses. Readers here don't care if people used to get paid for doing investigative journalism, or even if they are currently getting paid for it. Richard Stallman is King here. Journalists and newspapers should give away their work for free. Heck, if you don't give away your source of income after spending time and doing the legwork to create it, be it a computer program or a news article, they aren't interested.

A million bloggers don't make up for one real investigative reporter who has the time to do the legwork because they're paid to do it.

Unfortunately this is the wrong forum to say that you get a better quality product if people have the time to really work on it because they get paid. Just follow the discussions about Stallman and the GNU Licenses. Readers here don't care if people used to get paid for doing investigative journalism, or even if they are currently getting paid for it. Richard Stallman is King here. Journalists and newspapers should give away their work for free. Heck, if you don't give away your source of income after spending time and doing the legwork to create it, be it a computer program or a news article, they aren't interested.

Huh? The GPL says nothing about preventing money making. RedHat is having an easy time beating expectations every quarter. 100% of their code is opensource and mostly GPL.

You have no idea about what you speak off. If they don't want the stuff to be aggregated they can very well put a Login prompt in front of it and give everyone an API for access. But they don't want that because it would prevent a service like google from indexing those sites and bringing more traffic. They have the choice but aren't liking the alternative so they are trying to get money out of services that are bringing them the traffic they want.

I'm not feeling very sorry for them, if they don't like what google news is doing then they don't have to participate. Google news only offers a summary with a link not a whole article which entirely depends on a news site to be open and have the text available. Why should google index them and pay a fee? They are the ones offering a service not the other way around.

The New York times does this very well, I pay for delivery, and when the articles are online later in the day, who the hell cares since it's old news. Oh and ads are still creating an impression through aggregation services. I still have to go to the original page to see the full text.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Quothz]

Are you quite certain about that? Back in February, CNN won a National Headline Award in the Documentary Or Series Of Reports category for its special "On Deadly Ground: Women Of Iraq" produced by its Special Investigations Unit ... which, as you can see, has been working hard on a lot of things for a long time.

That link sort of proves the GP's point. That piece of "investigative journalism" is a series of interviews in Iraq which demonstrates that life is really hard there for women. Gosh. There's not an investigation, as such.

I respect that reporters take risks when going into war zones and other areas of unrest, but that doesn't turn a human interest piece into investigative journalism.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[fugue]

I have a vision of a worldwide news site that pays well for good freelance work from anywhere, and need never accept fluff pieces or boring "local" news. It's easy enough to let each user set a preference for type of news story (local, violent, political, nerdy, etc). Does such a beast really not exist?

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[furby076]

I think the Internet is going to bring us much better investigative reporters than we could ever expect from the traditional media. Michael Yon is an excellent example of what we can expect from the modern internet investigative reporter.

Most Internet posters have no editors and are culling information from *real* reporting locations. How is someone going to report on the condition of an average Iraq citizen when they are not *IN* Iraq? How is someone going to interview Bill Gates for information on the next MS plan when they have no credentials? Hell how does the average Joe get credentials to be a WH press agent?

Professional news operations, while you make like to say how much they suck, do work that most of us are not qualified to do. There will obviously be exceptions, but for the most part you need people who do this for a living - which mean they spend at least 8 hours a day, travelling to various locations, and have resources to back them up so they can write stories which are checked by their editors and other staff. This costs money.

For everyone screaming "their model sucks, they suck, they stick to antiquated methods" - well whats your solution to make it so these companies make a profit? If you have none then maybe you should try and figure it out before spouting nonsense.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[lambent]

"I would pay...", you say? Well, have I got good news for you!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/announcing-the-launch-of-_b_180543.html

I'm hoping that this venture will actually work out, and produce viable material. I would gladly join you with paying for news that was actually well made, and not the crap/fluff that passes for news, these days.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[thetoadwarrior]

Why should bloggers be reliable when the big guys, like Fox news, are just as bad?

The problem started when cable news started and it became more of a race to be the whole of America's news provider rather than something local and 24 hour news has just completely ruined it because, while the world is large, there is not enough real news to fill 12 hours let alone 24.

The should clamp down on televised news first as that will be the easiest to control and will hopefully set the tone on the internet. If not, start regulating sites that earn money as a news provider.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Intron]

Sorry. The real journalists were all covering the Natalie Hollaway murder during that time. Nicer climate than Utah.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[FooRat]

While I loathe your reflex to call for a 'new law' (ugh) to protect the industry, the problem you point out is a simple economic one: It used to be that information *distribution* was naturally scarce, so newspapers could cover the costs of investigative work by charging for information distribution. In the Internet era, the cost of the actual distribution of information will virtually approach zero. But it still costs the same to do the legwork.

Basically: *distribution* has little value, but *investigation* still does, and always will have value. Nobody *should* be making more lots of money for distributing information when technology allows it to cost so little - artificially protecting that would just be protectionist welfare and damaging to everyone.

You are suggesting that nobody would be able to pay investigators if they couldn't charge for distribution. This simply isn't true. Since investigation has value, people won't mind paying to obtain its results in one way or another; if investigators disappeared, people would freak out, and a gap in the market would appear. This could be solved in many ways - for example, a company like Google could make use of advertising to subsidize investigators.

Don't be so scared that we're going to run out of news. It will naturally have value, because people will naturally demand it. No need to call government to help. Governments are absolutely the last people you want to trust with controlling impartial investigation!

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Anonymous Coward]

If you know of any real investigative reporters left in the U.S., by all means point them out.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[lena_10326]

A million bloggers don't make up for one real investigative reporter who has the time to do the legwork because they're paid to do it.

What about bloggers who blog about their surroundings? They're on the scene day in and day out. An investigative journalist dials up a couple contacts and interviews over the phone. Maybe occasionally they'll actually get on a plane. It seems to me someone on ground zero has a better perspective--the common man with a common blog. I'd place my bet on the million bloggers covering a million ground zeros.

A blogger may have an agenda, but then so may a journalist. They could publish blatantly wrong information, but then so do journalists (on a regular basis). If the blogger does so, they expose themselves to the risk of lawsuit by libel, but a journalist is shielded by their employer. Who has more incentive to get it right? To keep accurate records?

A blogger becomes successful for one of four reasons, I think. They may publish one sided biased information giving a segment of the population exactly what they want to hear; or, they build a reputation for reliability and accuracy; or, they package information in interesting ways; or, they write extremely narrow focused articles for which large outlets mostly ignore. This is no different from what differentiates professional paid journalists.

The difference today is the common man has the tools to compete with the monolithic enterprises of traditional media. I don't believe competition lowers the bar or the standards; it may generate more noise, but the market is better off today because professional journalists can be held to a higher standard. If they publish something wrong, the bloggers will not hesitate to jump on them for it. It's a form of peer review, only bloodier.

Besides, what's there to worry? Professional journalists still have their media backed prestige to land face to face interviews with leaders of nations and giant corporations. I don't know of any blogger who has that clout--at least not yet.

Amateur work is obvious, and so is quality. There's a great deal of education one must endure before one can write well, carry a logical thought, and distinguish between fact and opinion. This is often evident inside of the first 100 words of any article. The successful and notable bloggers are not amateurs. You will notice they are often highly educated, degreed or self-taught. Who cares if 1 million amateur bloggers are posting away like monkeys at a keyboard? Their readership is nearly zero, but they still have a right to make their point no matter how stupid it may be.

The problem with the print industry is the method of delivery--paper. There is a built-in latency with paper; plus it comes with an unnecessary expense. It's also a one-size fits all medium--no way to filter just the stories you want. Obviously, the next generation is in the delivery of news over the internet. Making money on the net can be difficult if your business model isn't sound or based on traditional methods, but it can also be extremely lucrative if it's done right. Look what happened to retail, travel, and auctions. Brick & mortar stores are down; internet stores are up. The internet stores got it right.

If print media can't compete with the bloggers on the net given these parameters then I suppose there is excess needing to be trimmed within the industry.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Kz]

Every last prominent newspaper in the western world supported that war.

that's a very narrow definition of 'western world', one that only includes USA and UK.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[dbIII]

I am very worried about the decline of "real news" in the US

That happened twenty or thirty years ago. Now get off my lawn or hand me a copy of the real "Times" from the UK.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Anonymous Coward]

Linking is fine...reproducing the whole article is wrong.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[mgblst]

I see no holes in your argument. May I also add.

If you don't want to get raped, don't go outside.

If you don't want to shot, don't live in the US.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Trepidity]

Didn't that lunch already get eaten by The Economist?

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[ClassMyAss]

For everyone screaming "their model sucks, they suck, they stick to antiquated methods" - well whats your solution to make it so these companies make a profit? If you have none then maybe you should try and figure it out before spouting nonsense.

The wonderful thing about an economy is that it's not the consumer's job to figure out how a company makes a profit, it's the company's.

If it's not profitable enough for them to continue, then eventually they will scale back operations and salaries, like any other failing business. It will either work and they'll continue on in the green, or they'll disappear like the thousands of other companies that go under all the time.

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[lennier]

"I watched paper after paper after paper, day after day after day, tow the party line"

Nice post and I agree with your sentiments but...

grr! Quit breaking English. It's TOE the line. Not tow. 'Tow the line' is one of those phrases spread by the very sloppy journalists you complain about who don't fact-check their work.

Toe the line, as in, a runner anxiously awaiting the start of a race, but being VERY careful to put their toe across the starting line, because if they do they will be disqualified.

So to 'toe the line' means to have an internalised sense of official boundaries, what is allowed to be talked about and what is not. To fall into place in a regimented system. To respect the Party and subdue one's inner instincts.

As opposed to to 'tow the line' would mean to haul something behind one... which doesn't really mean anything. A sort of sensible enough eggcorn, sure, if you didn't know what the actual meaning was, but if you're going to complain about the distortion of facts, start with the degradation of language.

http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/72/tow/

Re:If you don't want people looking at it

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I think "tow" can make sense here, if it means "promote the party line". Why do I enjoy contradicting you so much?

beginning of the end

[tritonman]

I guess this is the beginning of the end of the AP.

netcraft confirms it

[Em Emalb]

Newspapers are dying.

Hind sight is 20/10 (always better than 20/20).

Wither into irrelevence.

[Pig Hogger]

Sure. They can cut themselves from the "Intaweb"... They'll just wither and die without any traffic.

Go ahead, AP! Cut yourself off and fall more into irrelevence... The suits just don't understand that traffic is the new black.

Re:Wither into irrelevence.

[interkin3tic]

The suits just don't understand that traffic is the new black.

No, black is still black. How many sites get tons of hits but no actual profits?

AP may be hurting themselves by doing this, or they may have, you know, actually studied their own buisness and concluded that this is how they will survive. We'll get to see for ourselves. Or not, since if they go under, who is going to report it? AP news?

Re:Wither into irrelevence.

[russotto]

AP may be hurting themselves by doing this, or they may have, you know, actually studied their own buisness and concluded that this is how they will survive.

From the article:

The policies were adopted by the A.P. board, composed mostly of newspaper industry executives.

I think we can discount the second option.

Re:Wither into irrelevence.

[haystor]

Yea, they should have surveyed the slashdot pundits instead.

Re:Wither into irrelevence.

[jc42]

How many sites get tons of hits but no actual profits?

Ooh, ooh; I know! That would be my web site!

Actually, I'm more or less in charge of several web sites for several small organizations whose names or activities aren't very relevant here, because they're typical of zillions of orgs with an online presence. I fell into this because I understand how the Internet works, and most of the people in the organizations don't (and don't want to). They just want to type up their stories, and let the electronic magic be handled by someone else.

What's interesting about this to me is that it presents an interesting scenario: Suppose one of my sites has the same information as an AP news story about the site or the organization behind it. It sounds like, when we report the same news about ourselves, we would be in violation of AP's ownership of that information. So we could be sued by AP for reporting information about ourselves that AP has found, slightly reworded, and reported.

This situation isn't hypothetical. AP has had local news stories about some of these organizations. They may have got the information via interviews, or they may have got it from the orgs' blogs; we really don't know. In the past, we've provided the information, because people in organizations often want their activities to be publicised.

What we're wondering is: If we blog about our activities, and AP picks up the info and reports it, are they saying that we have to pay AP to have the same information on our own web site? If we've blogged about it and AP reports it, is AP saying that we must remove the information from our blogs?

It sure sounds like this is what they're aiming for.

This was an unlikely scenario back in the days of printed news, or even with broadcast news, since the news creators were rarely in a position to do the distribution, printing or delivery of the news. But the Internet has ended this division. News creators can now simply type up a few sentences and hand them over to their web server. Distribution and delivery to readers is handled by the web server without further human activity (or the death of trees ;-). Readers get the info from the original sources if they want. We can cross-link our sites to help people with similar interests find what they want. Google can help people find the right articles on our sites.

So are we really going to give the big news corporations complete ownership over all information about our organizations, to (mis)report as they see fit? Or can we little guys continue to report our own activities on our own web sites without harrassment from the news corporations' lawyers?

Re:Wither into irrelevence.

[Thelasko]

if they go under, who is going to report it? AP news?

Reuters

Re:Wither into irrelevence.

[_Sprocket_]

We'll get to see for ourselves. Or not, since if they go under, who is going to report it? AP news?

Who will report it? Slashdot. TWiT. Ars Technica. Digg. Dozens of other "new media" news sites. Dozens of bloggers and microbloggers.

The only question is whether they will be using the last story from AP or not. If they do, it will likely be for the novelty and historical importance of the event. Not because AP is the only source of news.

Re:Wither into irrelevence.

[Idiomatick]

AP...irrelevance?

People don't understand that there are only 2 or 3 english speaking international news services in existence. I know I know newspapers bad, twitter good. BUT Reuters and AP are the only things left on the planet keeping us from having no real news AT ALL. This isn't about a format going into obscurity or some bloated giant dying. This is about news itself dying. The implications of that are staggering.

Re:Wither into irrelevence.

[RayMarron]

Insightful? More like "sky is falling". Suing the source of the news would be moronic. Even if it did ever catch sombody's attention due to some text matching algorithm, the chances of it ever progressing past your reply of "we ARE the organization you're reporting on" is microscopic and doomed to failure.

Re:Wither into irrelevence.

[ralphdaugherty]

Suppose one of my sites has the same information as an AP news story about the site or the organization behind it.

      This is such a bs post it's unbelievable.

      A random blogging matching word for word an AP news story is like a random blogging matching word for word any other copyrighted material. Teachers deal with this routinely. I'm sure you can too.

      But your scenario of an AP story picking up your site's blogging, unattributed, a copyright violation, and you weighing in with that tearjerker "they'll own everything" is nothing short of pathetic.

      Grow a set of balls.

  rd

Re:Wither into irrelevence.

[jc42]

... the chances of it ever progressing past your reply of "we ARE the organization you're reporting on" is microscopic and doomed to failure.

I wouldn't bet on that. The "Intellectual Property" people are slowly ending "That was my story" as a workable legal defense.

Thus, for a few decades now we've had the situation where a musicians can be sued for performing their own work, because the fine print of one of their recording contracts gave ownership of that work to the recording company. Similarly, many published writers can be sued for plagiarizing from an earlier work of their own, because that text is owned by the publisher. In such cases, the publishing corporations could demand such contracts, because the alternative was that the creators' work would not be distributed at all.

To make the issue even more fun, dig around in the contracts that ISPs require with their customers. Many ISPs forbid running your own web server, but offer space on their server as part of the service - and the contract's fine print says that anything you put on the ISPs server is owned by the ISP. Sometimes they allow you to run your own server, but the contract says that any data passing through their server is owned by the ISP. So everything on your blog may be owned by your ISP, which in turn has the right to sell the content as they wish, e.g. to AP. There have been a few skirmishes over this, and a few years ago msn.com was forced to customer outrage to stop using things like images of their customers' children in advertising. But the courts haven't yet much dealt with this, so we don't know what the actual law may be. It's possible that such contract terms will be held unconscionable by the courts, but this hasn't happened yet (except maybe in a few very local courts).

There is a battle going on behind the scenes over the attempts of major publishers (such as AP in this story) to block individual distribution of "content" via the Internet. The intent is to restore the previous regime, in which a few corporations controlled the distribution media and individuals had to hand the rights of their creations to the corporations if they wanted something distributed. Saying that this is doomed to failure on the Internet is rather naive. Legislatures are highly susceptible to "persuasion" (via campaign contributions, aka bribes) by corporations to support such things, and we can see in the history of both text and music that the laws and courts tend to favor the ownership of such things by the big publishers. There's no reason to believe that the courts won't go along with it in the case of material distributed via the Internet, as they have done in the past with hard-copy publishing.

Just yesterday we had a /. story about the question of how one can make an "invention" public domain, to guarantee that nobody else can patent it and sue both the users and the original inventor for infringement. This is a serious kind of question, and doing everything correctly so that you can't be sued by a powerful corporation for using your own work is a difficult legal problem. It's especially problematic for people who just put their own words online in a blog or forum like this one, and don't thing of taking legal steps to preserve their right to their own words. Yes, /. states explicitly that its contributors (you and I) own the copyright to our own words. Most other sites don't. And your ISP may own your words on /. because your copyright transfers automatically to your ISP on the way out. This appears to be a situation that is open to a great many legal actions, which will make money for a lot of lawyers, but which may not settle the issues at all for a great many years.

Re:Wither into irrelevence.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have missed the recent story about the guy being sued for violating the copyright on images he created.

Message from Wikinews

[Anonymous Coward]

{{sosueme}}

Er... wait - someone's trying to get that template deleted. Hmmm.

Uh... no.

[PontifexMaximus]

So I take it they are going to sue each and every one of us? I mean who hasn't linked to an AP article at some time in the last year? I know I have on several occasions, mainly to point out the stupidity, arrogance and incompetence of our repugnant new administration here in the US.

I wish them luck with that, I mean the RIAA has done so stellar with their lawsuits.

Re:Uh... no.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Linking to it: not a problem.

Wholesale copy-and-pasting into one's own web template: big problem.

Re:Uh... no.

[nicolas.kassis]

That's not what the sites they are going after are doing.

Why didn't they adapt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did so many big companies get caught out by the internet? They had the capital, and the human resources to do something, but they just sat there and let it hit them with full force.

It wasn't like it crept up on them overnight!

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[Attila Dimedici]

Why did so many big companies get caught out by the internet? They had the capital, and the human resources to do something, but they just sat there and let it hit them with full force.

It wasn't like it crept up on them overnight!

It is really simple, under the companies' pre-Internet business model they made $X. Under every Internet business model anyone could come up with they would make at best $.0X. They continued using the pre-Internet business model as long as they could, hoping that someone would come up with an Internet business model that would allow them to make $X. It hasn't happened.
These companies that got caught out by the Internet are in businesses that just don't have the potential to make the kind of money they are used to in the Internet age.
These businesses used to have high barriers to entry. The Internet eliminated those barriers to entry.

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[click2005]

As with patent trolls, its much easier to let someone else do the work then sue them.

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[DeweyQ]

Google struggled to come up with a business model too. Now that their revenue is through the roof, people point to them and say: "Well that's obvious." Bold experimentation or visionary stubbornness is needed to latch onto a business model that WILL work in the Internet age. True, the Internet didn't creep up on them overnight, but a sea change can stretch on for years. Clay Shirky's article on this point makes sense to me: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[2muchcoffeeman]

As with patent trolls, its much easier to let someone else do the work then sue them.

Actually, this is exactly the reverse: do all the work of reporting the story yourself, then sue somebody who steals it without permission.

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[digitig]

AP's barrier to entry wasn't distribution, it was a worldwide network of skilled journalists. The Internet hasn't removed that barrier to entry, because bloggers on the ground don't have the detachment and big-picture view of the skilled journalist, and rarely have the writing skills. If anything is damaging AP's business model, it's not the barriers to entry, it's whether the product (informed, well written journalism) is in demand nowadays.

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[No. 24601]

Oh, give me a break. The idea of the "skilled" journalist is just that... an idea. Pure fiction. Sure, there are a few journalists who see their work as a profession and aspire to the highest standards of quality and truth, but the rest are just trying to make a buck and stay afloat. While I agree, the world may witness a drought of well-written, well-researched journalism... I think most people will turn to the mish-mash of blogs, tweets and "amateur journalists" out there. While none of them alone may be great journalists... it will be up to the reader to piece together what they read, assess its credibility and come up with an informed opinion.

Hey, wait.. isn't that what readers are supposed to be doing anyways?

So why again do we *need* 'skilled journalists'? Oh, right. The same reason we still need trains when we can now have cars.

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[dwandy]

it's whether the product (informed, well written journalism) is in demand nowadays.

There might be a bigger demand for well written journalism if people were used to getting well written journalism.
If the "news industry" hadn't become the "Press Release Industry", or if there was any meaningful amount of investigative journalism then maybe people would notice that these traits were now missing.
The reality is two-fold: The quality of The News has dropped and been dumbed-down, and quite frankly there are bloggers who can write - and it's these bloggers who have something to say that are getting the hits, not the millions-of-monkeys-to-write-Shakespeare.

Bottom line: the delta between Traditional Media and New Media is nowhere near as big as Traditional Media wants people to believe it is.

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[digitig]

So why again do we *need* 'skilled journalists'? Oh, right. The same reason we still need trains when we can now have cars.

Yeah, and you try to get from my home to my office in the morning. 45 minutes by train, about 2 hours by car. A bit less than £8 by train; £27 car parking, £8 congestion charge plus fuel by car. Read a book on the train, listen to some inane DJ in the car.

It's a good analogy (of course: it has cars in it). If you've got the resources to spare then you can do it all yourself. If you think the resources would be more effectively used elsewhere, use the prepackaged service.

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[digitig]

There might be a bigger demand for well written journalism if people were used to getting well written journalism.

My generation is. But I agree that it's getting harder to find. Again, though, if AP wants to throw away it's USP, the issue isn't one of barriers to entry, it's one of whether anybody wants their product.

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[FooRat]

No, the informed, well written journalism is still in demand - it always will be. The "problem" that damages their business model is that the costs of *distributing information* in the Internet era are close to zero - information that's interesting naturally propagates rapidly through many sites and channels. The news media can no longer really make money off charging for *distribution* of information because the distribution portion is no longer naturally scarce. Distribution as a product is separate from information-gathering (journalism) as a product - the information itself (has value, always will), vs. the technological means of distributing that information.

Many will go out of business, because technology simply makes it cheaper to distribute information, but somebody will figure out a business model for information gathering, because it will always be in demand.

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[digitig]

somebody will figure out a business model for information gathering, because it will always be in demand.

Maybe establish a large information gathering network, and charge those who publish the information they have gathered? Oh, wait...

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[Attila Dimedici]

AP's barrier to entry wasn't distribution, it was a worldwide network of skilled journalists. The Internet hasn't removed that barrier to entry, because bloggers on the ground don't have the detachment and big-picture view of the skilled journalist, and rarely have the writing skills. If anything is damaging AP's business model, it's not the barriers to entry, it's whether the product (informed, well written journalism) is in demand nowadays.

I was going to give examples of how naive your concept of "skilled journalists" is, but instead I will comment on the AP's barrier to entry.
One of the barriers to entry to something like the AP was getting news from where it happened to where people were. That used to be expensive. Now it is fairly cheap to connect to the Internet and send your information out from just about anywhere.

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[digitig]

I was going to give examples of how naive your concept of "skilled journalists" is

You will note that I said that the network of skilled journalists was their barrier to entry, not is. I am old enough to remember when they were commonplace.

One of the barriers to entry to something like the AP was getting news from where it happened to where people were. That used to be expensive. Now it is fairly cheap to connect to the Internet and send your information out from just about anywhere.

I think that barrier collapsed long before the internet. Sure, dictating over a telephone was more time-consuming than just clicking "send", but anybody could do it.

Re:Why didn't they adapt?

[Anonymous Coward]

The AP has spent the last 5 years desperately trying to innovate, and failing miserably. All discussions revolve around profit, but the organization did not evolve in a world where it was forced to compete in any meaningful way. The result, an angry dinosaur...

(in some ways, similar to the RIAA)

Those are some ugly death throes y'all are having

[Reality Master 201]

Oh well. Some AP reporting has been kind of shitty in the last 10 years or so, anyway.

Easy steps

[Thanshin]

1 - Tell someone a story.
2 - Wait till he tells the same story to someone else.
3 - Sue.

A great plan indeed. I can't foresee any way it may fail.

Re:Easy steps

[eldavojohn]

1 - Tell someone a story. 2 - Wait till he tells the same story to someone else. 3 - Sue.

A great plan indeed. I can't foresee any way it may fail.

I think it's kind of different. They are gaining revenue for telling the story. And it's not fictional ... and they will be held accountable if they get some facts wrong. And also that's how they make their money.

A more accurate analogy (though still flawed) would be:
1 - Do a lot of footwork to find the facts and tell them to someone to make a tiny sum of money.
2 - Wait till he tells the same story to 10,000 other people with your exact words and little to no attribution to you and he makes a nominal sum of money.
3 - Sue.

Not really a plan, as step 2 requires action on someone else's part. Hey, I don't predict this to fail the way the MPAA/RIAA are being backed by congress and the courts. Legal or legislative action is at the AP's disposal.

Re:Easy steps

[Joe U]

Even more fun is that the stories are news and facts.

So, tell someone it's sunny outside and follow the above process.

Here's an idea for sites, remove the links. Just type the URL in plain text, let the end user get a plugin that turns them into links (or simply copy and paste). Win! You didn't link to anyone, there is no argument to take down a link because there is no link, just some words.

2600 magazine did this with DeCSS and the court was happy. It's very difficult to have text removed, but easy to have links removed.

Re:Easy steps

[Anonymous Coward]

A more accurate analogy (though still flawed) would be:
1 - Do some footwork to find stories that don't go against government policy or big business interests and tell them to someone to make a tiny sum of money.
2 - Wait till he tells the same story to 10,000 other people with your exact words and little to no attribution to you and he makes a nominal sum of money.
3 - Sue.

Fixed that for you..

Possible shortcuts to #1 include

Using whatever they're spoon-fed by big business or the government.
Writing a story with no actual facts but mentioning terrorism, child porn or any of the other current scare tactic buzzwords.

Re:Easy steps

[elrous0]

1) Refuse to let Google and other search engines index your stories
2) Google removes all newspapers with AP content from its indexing
3) Newspapers, with falling print sales and no Google presence, go out of business
4) No one left to buy AP stories
5) ???
6) Profit!

Re:Easy steps

[Thanshin]

I notice you've included about four references to the flawed plan makingmoney.

How does making money give validity to wrong assumptions?

What if someone discovered a free replacement to fossil fuels? Would it be acceptable to sue him on grounds of some notions of unfair competition?

They decided they could get money from publishing information on a free medium. It was a doomed plan since day one, and now that time proved them wrong, they cry.

Re:Easy steps

[ponraul]

Didn't the courts rule on deep linking last decade in Tickets.com vs. Ticketmaster?

Re:Easy steps

[Anonymous Coward]

You analogy does not involve cars. You fail slashdot.

Re:Easy steps

[Atrox666]

Why can't these people just be original. Since the Bush government left office Fox News has done a tremendous job making up all their news from scratch.

Re:Easy steps

[Anonymous Coward]

Step #5: Collect Underpants!

Legislative remedies? Yuck.

[tepples]

AP wrote:

and will seek legal and legislative remedies against those who don't.

"Legal remedies" == we'll sue; easy enough. But what worries most is "legislative remedies". It reeks of "We know you're playing by the rules, but we don't like the rules, so we'll buy off a few senators to get the rules changed."

Re:Legislative remedies? Yuck.

[coryking]

but we don't like the rules

Well, lets hear them out! Maybe they have a valid case?

Maybe the AP tried to work with google to arrange a way both Google News and the newspapers represented by AP are happy. Maybe Google told them to piss up a rope instead of negotiating. What recourse do the newspapers have after that? Sue!

The thing you gotta realize is this isn't "tepples blog vs. Associated Press". This is two 800-pound gorillas here. Google drives a lot of traffic to these places and these places are what keep Google afloat. This is a business relationship and it sounds to me like Google is getting all the rewards and none of the loss while the newspaper is taking all the loss without any of the rewards. Worse, it seems Google has all the leverage in the relationship so rather than working with their "internet neighbors" they instead just tell the newspapers to fuck off.

It isn't polite to tell people to fuck off on the way up. You'll be needing their help on the way back down.

Re:Legislative remedies? Yuck.

[Tikkun]

t reeks of "We know you're playing by the rules, but we don't like the rules, so we'll buy off a few senators to get the rules changed."

The term you're looking for is called "Rent Seeking".

My 22 pence worth

[flyingfsck]

My website generates about 44 cents in Google revenue per day. The newspapers of the world are in for a surprise.

Re:My 22 pence worth

[Tanktalus]

My daughter is big into Mary Poppins recently, so this makes me think of the song: "Feed the AP, tuppence a click / tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a click."

Robots.txt doesn't work?

[forand]

This is very confusing to me. If websites don't want aggregators to compile all of their content for them and place it in a convenient (for the viewer) format and location then they should just make their robots.txt act accordingly.

Unfortunately this appears to be a money grab and if there was and doubt in my mind about that it was removed when they stated '[we] will seek legal and legislative remedies against those who don't [license].' Making new laws to maintain your revenue stream is a clear sign to me that you do not have a viable business model and are attempting to make things criminal without a valid reason.

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[Chabil Ha']

Of course it's a money grab--they've been feeding the cow this whole time and now it's ready to cash in. What's funny, though, is they're learning as the music and movie industries have that when you go digital, your product instantly becomes a commodity because of its ease of transfer. Perhaps they should embed ads into their own content to monetize it, and then sell subscriptions to premium (ad free, or pay-per-view) feeds to sites like Google and Yahoo for syndication.

There are better, saner approaches to content distribution than the knee-jerk lawsuit.

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

Robots.txt doesn't work at all if you ignore it. Its not some sort of iron-clad security method.

I also don't see what's wrong with wanting revenue for your work? Reporting isn't free.

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[CopaceticOpus]

Yes, but the big sites they're going after like Google and Yahoo will respect robots.txt. (If they don't, now that would be a story.)

Google isn't stealing their articles. They are linking to their articles, with maybe a snippet quoted which falls under fair use.

The trouble is that the AP wants it both ways. They don't want to exclude themselves from Google's traditional search results. And yet, they want to block Google from compiling search results about recent news into a single, useful page.

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[NormalVisual]

Google, Yahoo, and the vast majority of the aggregators they're whining about do in fact respect the robots.txt file.

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[NeoSkandranon]

But then how would anyone find them on a search engine? :)

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[hedwards]

Well, they kind of have to do so. In many states like WA, in order to win a lawsuit you just have to prove that the law was violated, but if you also want compensation you have to demonstrate that you took all reasonable steps to limit the damage.

If you don't have a robots.txt file at all that's on you, if it's broken, that's on you, but possible to win the first half and possibly some money. Really the only way that you can win and get money is if you demonstrate that the aggregator ignored the file.

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[Blakey Rat]

Google News actually pays for AP and Reuters, like a print newspaper would.

Sadly, I kind of see the AP's point here: there are tons of sites that will copy entire AP articles and republish them, and I really have no problem with them going after those sites with legal means. (Legislative, on the other hand...)

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[coryking]

This is very confusing to me

That is because it is confusing. If newspapers blocked the search engines, they'd get no leech aggregators. They'd also never get traffic--which is bad if your employees paycheck comes from advertising.

Google might not be a leech aggregation, but there are a lot of them out there Google (and slashdot, digg, gizwhatever, arstechnica) link to. You know the kind--fuckers who take two paragraphs of the story, surround it with ads, and then manage to get linked to dig. Blog spam.

What do you do about those assholes? Sure they might not be breaking the law, but they are assholes none the less. And often, it seems, those assholes take a real bite of the bottom line. What do you do?

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[coryking]

The trouble is that the AP wants it both ways.

"Both ways" implies this to be an either-or situation. I highly doubt it is either-or.

Perhaps this is just a political move on the part of newspapers to try getting Google to work with them. This is, or should be, a mutual business relationship. Just because you are hip tech company in Silicon Vally doesn't exempt you from working with your business partners.

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't business partners

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[Braino420]

This is very confusing to me. If websites don't want aggregators to compile all of their content for them and place it in a convenient (for the viewer) format and location then they should just make their robots.txt act accordingly.

It's worse. Members of AP (like the company I work for) actually compile all of their content and send it to Google,Yahoo, etc. themselves... The real complaint is that Google is supposedly going to start putting their own ads on Google News, and AP wants a piece of the action. Fair? I don't think so. In the current setup, AP members are the ones making the money; Google News drives traffic to their sites, which have ads (a LOT of them, actually a sickening amount of them, like I have flashbacks to geocities websites when I have to work on them).

It seems to me they need Google more than Google et al needs them, considering, you know, that Google is the one who /gets/ the internet.

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google actually posts the whole AP article themselves because AP doesn't have a site to link to.

Because the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association and the Canadian Press don't have a consumer website where they publish their content, they have not been able to benefit from the traffic that Google News drives to other publishers. As a result, weâ(TM)re hosting it on Google News.

Re:Robots.txt doesn't work?

[palegray.net]

That's the OP's entire point: Google and Yahoo! respect robots.txt entries.

Aggregator Aggro

[commandlinegamer]

It wouldn't surprise if 90% of web sites are just aggregators. I'd be more than happy if they withered and died. Here's a tip - if you don't have [your own] content you don't have a website. I'm all for the Web - it gives people the freedom to publish their own damn nonsense, I just can't stand the amount of duplication you need to search through these days to find anything, be it news, software or tasteful pictures of Reese Witherspoon's chin (she could always double up as a snow plough if times get tough in the acting business).

Re:Aggregator Aggro

[Anonymous Coward]

I would point out that Slashdot is an Aggregator with comment posting. It generates no actual news stories itself.

Re:Aggregator Aggro

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot usually has a distinct summary, does not aggregate all stories without selection and adds a very lively discussion forum. That is not what commandlinegamer is angry about. Too many blogs are just copy and paste jobs and add nothing to the content, except perhaps for a one line comment from the blog owner. It is also quite unnerving that one of the centers of mob surfing (Digg) has recently disabled links to other sites. Now it links to its own short-link URLs and shows other sites in a frameset. This appropriation of other people's content is wrong and doesn't help the internet one bit. Aggregators must go away.

Re:Aggregator Aggro

[commandlinegamer]

You must be new here..you didn't expect me to realise the full implications of my own posting did you?

Re:Aggregator Aggro

[hedwards]

Well, I wouldn't go that far, you can add value through aggregation. A good example is /. this is primarily an aggregation site which adds value via comments.

Actually scratch that, /. doesn't add value at all.

But by verifying or filtering content to particular tastes, they can add value in the form of saving people time or possibly providing fact check links to information in the article.

Re:Aggregator Aggro

[sarujin]

... Here's a tip - if you don't have [your own] content you don't have a website.

You mean sites like Slashdot?

Re:Aggregator Aggro

[FooRat]

The easy, rapid proliferation of interesting information *is* what's great about the Internet. When anything of relevance happens, you hear about it quickly and at almost zero cost, without having to pay anyone just to get that information. I don't bother to watch e.g. TV news anymore, because I frequently find that most of what is on is old to me, i.e. I've usually already read about it hours before from any of a trillion sources on the Internet where the information has propagated within minutes of it occurring.

Re:Aggregator Aggro

[DMUTPeregrine]

Except for "Ask Slashdot", Opinion pieces, and book reviews, which aren't really news. But /. is not just an aggregator.

Learning from the mistakes of others

[flaming error]

It is rather amazing that right after the RIAA experiemce proves that this is a spectacularly bad idea, the AP dusts it off and tries it on. Don't these guys read the news?

Link to the original article

[Bearhouse]

[censored]

Re:Link to the original article

[OzPeter]

[censored] .. but for a few $$ I can fix that for you

Another recent related story

[karvind]

Artist Sues The A.P. Over Obama Image. There seems to be a war going on ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/arts/design/10fair.html

SO no RSS feeds then?

[foniksonik]

So if I were to set up a website that let people put rss feeds of their choice on a portal page - and then added advertising of my own to that same page - and the user decided to choose one of these:

RSS Feeds

I'd be open to a lawsuit?

What if I then created a link that said "Get all the Associated Press RSS feeds" which then did the copy/paste for the user and created a page for them of all the above feeds?

Then based on user activity I found that every user (99.5%) was clicking that auto-AP button... so to provide good customer service I just added tabs to my interface with one of them being "AP News" by default.

All this while, the pages only show the Title, summary, attribution, date and a link to the original article.

So then I get sued... right?

What if I just made "widgets" that people could download to their Widget product of choice? How about a desktop application that does the same thing - ad free - but has a purchase price attached?

Any thoughts?

My current Mail program allows me to consume RSS feeds, as do a variety of widgets (online and off) and none of them are non-commercial and I'm fairly certain that none of them are paying the AP any license fee.

Re:SO no RSS feeds then?

[digitalhermit]

It works more like this:

Someone creates some content for a website. Their revenue is based on the number of people visiting the site.

Someone else comes along and aggregates multiple websites. Instead of people visiting the original site, they start to visit the aggregator because it's more convenient. The aggregator gets the views and the advertising money.

The content creators lose out, even though they create the content.

The argument from the aggregator site is that it pushes viewers to sites that they would never normally visit. E.g., a person in Florida may never read an Oklahoma newspaper unless there was a link somewhere on an aggregator.

Sometimes it balances out, but more and more, it's in favor of the aggregator.

I think eventually content will be separated from the presentation. Companies like the AP, like the local Herald, will switch from providing a newspaper or website into providing a standard feed, and charging based on that feed. This is very similar to how other media is shopped around.

There's a danger in that news will also become indistinguishable from entertainment (it's almost there already), but that may be the only way the newspapers can survive.

flawed by design

[Demonantis]

The internet was not built with bussiness models in mind. Unfortunately, businesses think they can shoehorn a model onto the interenet.

Re:flawed by design

[Richard_at_work]

What makes you think any market was built with business models in mind? The internet is absolutely no different to any other place someone can do business, only people like you think it is.

Re:flawed by design

[FooRat]

Well, it was originally created by the military with the goal of creating a robust, decentralized telecommunications network that could withstand large portions of it being destroyed in a war. But when it was commercialized, there most certainly was a business model 'in mind' - charging low amounts for easy, cheap, rapid and widespread information distribution. It's just a new, different business model, and it partially threatens outdated business models, but it does so precisely because it's a compelling value proposition to businesses who use it. And many companies have made a lot of money providing Internet services, and still do.

Are you really that stupid

[wiredog]

They do want people looking at, they just want to be paid for their work. You know:

"Information wants to be free, but information purveyors want to be paid."

Otherwise they can go out of business, and then where will you get your information?

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

They do want people looking at, they just want to be paid for their work. You know:

"Information wants to be free, but information purveyors want to be paid."

Otherwise they can go out of business, and then where will you get your information?

Calling the GP stupid?

Here's one. I want to be paid for my comments on Slashdot. I demand that Sourceforge, Inc. needs to share their revenue with me, or face lawsuits.

Oh, wait. If I don't get paid for my thoughts by Sourceforge, then no one will fill in the gap with snarky Anonymous Coward replies? Where will you get your counter-flames from then?

If you don't want to be indexed, there are plenty of technological methods to prevent it. If sites are "stealing" (and I use that in the most freaking loose sense of the word) your freely-available information, then perhaps you shouldn't make your information freely-available? Put it behind registration? Use Robots.txt? Put your users under some kind of license? I could go on.

You can't have your cake (giving out your information for free) and eat it too (suddenly want to get payment on your free information).

So, anyone know when I will start getting my share of the advertising budget here?

Re:Are you really that stupid

[MightyYar]

That doesn't make him stupid. He pointed out something very obvious - once information is out there, you have to exert a lot of effort to bottle it back up. In the old days, it was relatively easy to find out who was filching your information - now it can be hard to find out even what country someone is in, let alone who they are.

Does this mean the end for the AP? Maybe. Does this mean the end of news? I doubt it. Look at NPR and the BBC, for example. While relying on government or non-profits for news may bring its own issues, I seriously doubt that the information will cease to be generated.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[0xygen]

Who's republishing your comments?

Hmm, no-one, because they have a near trivial value?

If someone is republishing your entire output, it has value to them.

Slashdot stories might have made a better argument - but they are "paid for" by the site link the submitter gets.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Mr_eX9]

Otherwise they can go out of business, and then where will you get your information?

From somebody else who knows how to purvey information and still make a buck? Just a hunch.

To hell with the AP if they're going to go the route of the RIAA.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Hmmm... I think it's a little more than that. At least, they're specifically picking on Google in the summary's synopsis of the article. And why?

When I look at Google News, I see a page of links, the titles of which are almost entirely just headlines. The few that aren't just headlines include only a sentence or two from the article. How is this not fair use? And how is the AP entitled to any compensation for this? If you truly want to know more, you'll click on a link and, if it's an AP story, be sent to an AP website where you will get both the full article and the AP's ads.

For site's which don't play nice, ripping whole articles or outright plagiarism, then go ahead, bring down the hammer. But that's not a new problem. This, on the other hand, sounds an awful lot like the AP going for a money grab while waving a big lawyer stick. And what's worse is that they might succeed because the courts have time and again shown questionable judgment when it comes to cases involving linking and fair use.

re: Are you really that stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

... and then where will you get your information?

the daily kos??? :)

Re:Are you really that stupid

[hedwards]

You do realize that both the NPR and BBC use AP sources, right? Yes they do a lot of it on their own, but they frequently use licensed content. Content that they pay for. Or in those cases the people pay for. The BBC via tax and NPR via government grants and user donations.

But in both cases somebody is paying for the content.It is stupid to point that out. The free sources are just not as good as sources that are paid for in some form. Yes you don't have to donate to NPR, but if you live in a nation with a government news outlet you do have to pay. And ultimately if nobody donates to NPR it's not going to be there very long, content is expensive.

It's fanciful to imply that bloggers have the time to spend each day hanging out on a beat. Things may only happen a few times a month at the local city hall, but you still need somebody to hang out there for the scoop. I cannot imagine bloggers having that sort of time, at least not ones that expect to eat or have an apartment.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Sloppy]

Aren't they being paid by whoever is hosting it?

If nytimes.com is showing (and paying for) an AP article, and Google (or my site, for that matter) copies the headline and makes that a link to the nytimes.com, then people who follow that link are getting the content from nytimes.com. If AP doesn't want people reading that article on nytimes.com, then don't sell it to nytimes.com, but they sure got paid for what happened.

What am I missing?

Re:Are you really that stupid

[master811]

Except Google doesn't have Ads on the pages they have news on, so Google probably makes very little if anything on aggregating news.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[je ne sais quoi]

In the old days, it was relatively easy to find out who was filching your information - now it can be hard to find out even what country someone is in, let alone who they are.

Depends on how far back you go -- in the U.S just after its revolution nobody thought much about copyright, especially British copyright. I don't think the U.S. government even enforced paying back loans owed to British subjects. Back then I'm guessing it was pretty darn hard to figure out who was ripping you off too, especially if you were British and somebody owed you money.

The way I see it, you're absolutely right and media protection on the internets is just hopeless and a lot of these organizations' business models are obsolete and just don't know it yet. Right now I can get the same quality news from just about anywhere on the internets but what I'm missing is news that's presented in a half-way intelligent way and some informed opinion. If you look at the example from television, you have a hundred channels now (1000 on directTV!) instead of the old three broadcast networks. The problem is that they're mostly crap, because they present news like it's a soap opera or an action movie complete with sound effects. Granted, the only time I watch CNN is when I'm at an airport and they have those televisions everywhere, and I could be mis-remembering, but I don't think that CNN was always like this. I think it used to be much more straight-forward, just the news (e.g., when Ted Turner still ran it). What happened? Cable TV and Fox News happened. I think the newspapers are going through the same thing right now, they're getting drowned out in a sea of mediocrity and news as entertainment.

Interestingly enough, the only news show I can watch is the NewsHour on PBS. However, PBS only gets 1/6th of its funding from the government, the rest is from private citizens and organizations -- which is really dumb if you think about it. We do need GOOD news, and if private industry is incapable of making a profit then it must come from the government as a service to society.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[anonobomber]

Otherwise they can go out of business, and then where will you get your information?

From Slashdot of course!

Re:Are you really that stupid

[coryking]

The problem is a bit more complex, I think:

1) That AP article is not just on nytimes.com, but a lot of other news sites also aggregated by Google.
2) AP, nor those who syndicate it, have control over how or where their content is placed on Google. They only get to say "here is my newsfeed, have fun".
3) Because of #2, if you have 40 newspapers who bought an AP article but only nytimes gets listed on the "front page" of google news, the other newspapers aren't getting any ROI on their purchase.
4) Ponies.

but they sure got paid for what happened.

Sure, in the short-run they did. But the problem with AP is they too are basically a twisted form of a news-aggregates. They aggregate news stories and sell it to a hundred newspapers who print said stories and generate revenue by selling ads next to the story. Nowdays, those newspapers are aggregated by Google, who aggregates the newspapers in such a way that only a few of the newspapers displaying that article get any traffic in which to sell ads to.

In other words, maybe AP should cut the middle man and just sell to Google.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

And how can you make your money if people can't *find* your product, because it isn't indexed?

I think it is ridiculous to expect money for quoting a headline and a sentence. Whole article or substantial parts thereof? Of course they should be paid. But everything else is merely there to provide a searchable pointer to the full article, and those people (the ones hosting the full article) are the ones that should be paying, possibly more than they are now. Should I be paying AP everytime I link to one of their articles? No.

This is like expecting the phone company to pay businesses to be listed in the phone book, or publishers to be paid if a library lists the title of a book in a catalog.

I'm sympathetic with the premise that they need more compensation to stay in business, but this is a silly way to get it.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[geobeck]

What am I missing?

The fact that directly-linked news stories don't have to pass through a full-page Flash ad (with a tiny Skip button) that generates the majority of the site's ad revenue.

Watch out for increasingly invasive ad technology, like your cursor turning into a 100x100px Big Mac, or every second word of a news story turning into a link to a Wal-Mart.com product.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[JWSmythe]

    I've done some reading on the matter.

    AP wants to not only be paid, but paid well. They have base fees, plus in at least this story they would require at least $17.50. But, every time someone quotes the original article, that would add onto the fees. If there are more than 250 words, the fee is $10.

    I'm pretty sure that Slashdot is not an AP affiliate, and not paying the AP dues. Even if you go as low as only quoting $5, they want their cut. That includes quoting the title. If you simply post "I found the story How to squeeze every penny out of a failing economy", that makes them $12.50.

    Then again, I just made up that title, so hopefully it wouldn't count for much. But, if they then run a story titled that, and can predate it so it appears to have come before this posting, it's my word against their team of lawyers. When Slashdot gets the C&D, this post would be deleted.

    The AP method doesn't necessarily reflect the gray area of "fair use", but can you afford the lawyers to fight it over with them?

   

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Dupple]

The BBC is not paid for by tax. It's paid for by a license.

The BBC is wholly independent of and separate from the British tax system

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

They want Google to pay them for the headline. Why? Because they want more money. I agree it seems like changing for the same thing twice, but that never stopped anyone from trying.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[networkBoy]

how about the fact that titles traditionally can not be (C) ?
-nB

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Machtyn]

Likewise, how will they get paid if no one knows about the content?
For many people, sites like Fark and others make the drab news a little more interesting.

Now, I can understand going after sites that reproduce too much or all of the content. But going after link sites is silly (the originator still gets their ad revenue from non AdBlock users.)

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Alarindris: "don't put it on the friggin internet"

wiredog: "Are you really that stupid?"

He isn't, but apparently, you are.

wiredog: "information purveyors want to be paid."

If the AP didn't publish their content on the Internet free of charge, no one would be able to copy it, let alone link to it. Not surprisingly, like any other intellectual property holder, they will need to rely on more than the honor system if they want to realistically protect their work. Of course, the AP isn't considering making their content closed because they want to be able to easily draw in new customers. They want their cake, and eat it too. The answer is simple -- close your content, or accept that it will be copied, referenced, and linked to as permitted by fair-use laws or otherwise.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Uberbah]

They do want people looking at, they just want to be paid for their work. You know:

"Information wants to be free, but information purveyors want to be paid."

Straw man. No one is saying AP shouldn't make money. It's because AP is attempting to ignore Fair Use rights so they can nickle and dime (with a few zeroes added) for quoting parts of an article.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Elrond, Duke of URL:

And what's worse is that they might succeed because the courts have time and again shown questionable judgment when it comes to cases involving linking and fair use.

They said they would seek "legislative" solutions if this can't be solved to their satisfaction within existing law. In other words, if the portal sites continue to claim fair-use and don't pony-up the extra cash, the AP will turn to their liberal allies in congress to change the law and what constitutes fair-use. If you can't beat 'em, change the rules until you can. At least, that's what they seem to be threatening.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[JWSmythe]

Just because they are wrong doesn't mean they can't threaten you, and even drag you into court. If you can't afford to play it through in court, then you lose. It's a common legal tactic.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[maxume]

They show ads on news searches (and they also show matching news articles on regular searches).

Re:Are you really that stupid

[blackest_k]

The BBC had Live coverage of the Irish budget today - but unfortunately I wasn't allowed to watch it on line what with being in Ireland.
No worries though I just had to turn on my Satellite box and watch the BBC TV broadcast instead.

 

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Sloppy]

if you have 40 newspapers who bought an AP article but only nytimes gets listed on the "front page" of google news, the other newspapers aren't getting any ROI on their purchase.

That sounds like something Google could pretty easily fix, just by asking them nicely rather than suing them. (And it's sure not what AP is explicitly complaining about; they're using words terms like "unauthorized use" and suggesting that copyright has been violated, rather than saying Google playing favorites with whom they link to.)

What would Google's reasons be, for not dealing with that?

Re:Are you really that stupid

[networkBoy]

that much I understand (see link in my sig). In the case of Google though, I have a feeling they could afford the legal bill.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[somenickname]

What would Google's reasons be, for not dealing with that?

Here a few:

1) Not my problem
2) Too bad
3) Not my problem

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

But the problem with AP is they too are basically a twisted form of a news-aggregates. They aggregate news stories and sell it to a hundred newspapers who print said stories and generate revenue by selling ads next to the story. Nowdays, those newspapers are aggregated by Google, who aggregates the newspapers in such a way that only a few of the newspapers displaying that article get any traffic in which to sell ads to. In other words, maybe AP should cut the middle man and just sell to Google.

There's a pretty glaring problem with your suggestion, which is that the AP is a cooperative owned by newspapers and other news organizations. The AP can't "cut the middle man" in the way you suggest because the AP in fact is the middle man between the papers, owned by the papers, and exists to benefit the papers.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[MightyYar]

You do realize that both the NPR and BBC use AP sources, right?

Yup, but I don't see how that invalidates my point... they are simply examples of alternate funding models.

But in both cases somebody is paying for the content

Of course.

It's fanciful to imply that bloggers have the time to spend each day hanging out on a beat.

I didn't mention bloggers.

People want news. Someone will always pay for news, whether it be the free papers that they hand out on the subway or through donations to NPR. Maybe the AP can't exist in its current form, but where there is demand there will be supply.

Re:Are you really that stupid

[Hurricane78]

Well, then they should put a price tag on it. You know, something like PayPal. Duh. ...

Wait, now I get their logic! Yay.
1. I'm going to go downtown and give away my work.
2. And then I will sue everyone who takes it and/or gives it to anyone else.
3. ...
4. Profit!

I'll be rich!

AP Killed Printed News

[Thelasko]

The reason you hear stories about newspapers failing all over the country is because of the Associated Press. In order to cut costs, newspapers across the country eliminated most of their reporting staff and replaced them with AP newsfeeds. Instead of doing real reporting, they just "rip and read" from the AP feed.

The advent of the internet has given us access to many more news sources than we ever had before. Most of us have realized that all of the news papers have the same stories, word for word. This is why they are going out of business. If newspapers, and other news sources, are going to stay in business, they need to provide valuable content. They need to stop relying on the AP for content, we can get that anywhere.

Re:AP Killed Printed News

[homer_s]

The reason you hear stories about newspapers failing all over the country is because of the Associated Press. In order to cut costs,

You are confusing the cause and effect - if they were doing well, why would they try to cut costs?

Newspapers are dying because there are better ways to advertise and there are better ways to get news. And just like any other industry who cannot justify their business models - RIAA, US steelmakers, etc - they are considering 'legislative remedies'.

Re:AP Killed Printed News

[DeweyQ]

I believe you're both right: it is a downward spiral. Cost cutting begets poor local news coverage, which begets fewer engaged readers, which begets fewer advertising dollars, which begets more cost cutting. It is pretty much a chicken and egg thing.

Re:AP Killed Printed News

[Red Flayer]

You have it backwards. The reason newspapers are turning to AP for a moajority of their stories is that their circulations are way down, and so their ad revenues are way down.

Today, newspapers can't afford a full staff of reporters, so they've laid them off and replaced them with cheap copyeditors who rewrite the AP feeds.

It's quite a conundrum... newspapers can;t afford reporters due to decreased circulation, so they publish more vanilla news. As you point out, this means they get less interest from readers, which drives circulation down further.

Even if newspapers were able to field enough reports to cover local news properly, they'd still fail due to the internet -- the simply can't get enough eyes to pay for their content. The truth is, print publishing of news is going bye-bye. The only things propping it up right now are readers from earlier generations. They'll hang on for another 20-30 years, but then they will be gone. Especially since people will be able to get the news on their smartphones easily and cheaply.

Re:AP Killed Printed News

[Thelasko]

if they were doing well, why would they try to cut costs?

Because businesses are always trying to cut costs.

Re:AP Killed Printed News

[Thelasko]

Today, newspapers can't afford a full staff of reporters, so they've laid them off and replaced them with cheap copyeditors who rewrite the AP feeds.

Newspapers laid off reporters and turned to AP feeds back in the 1980s. The difference is, they can no longer make money at it.

Back in the 80s Newsrooms across the country installed satellite dishes to receive the news feed. This was expensive technology, and off limits to the average consumer. The internet made this technology obsolete, and the newsrooms along with it.

Re:AP Killed Printed News

[Red Flayer]

Yes, but the current layoff of reporters dwarfs the layoffs of the 80s.

New Jersey alone has lost 600 reporting jobs in the past year.

Re:AP Killed Printed News

[Idiomatick]

If AP dies will a new variety of news sources pop up? Or will all news that needs investigative journalism die?

Re:AP Killed Printed News

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

The reason you hear stories about newspapers failing all over the country is because of the Associated Press. In order to cut costs, newspapers across the country eliminated most of their reporting staff and replaced them with AP newsfeeds. Instead of doing real reporting, they just "rip and read" from the AP feed.

So you seriously think that every local newspaper should send reporters all over the world to cover all of the news stories they cover? So for example, the Podunk Times should have reporters not only in Podunk, but also all over Iraq?

The advent of the internet has given us access to many more news sources than we ever had before. Most of us have realized that all of the news papers have the same stories, word for word.

You're telling me it took you until the advent of the internet to figure this out? Jeez, I already knew this when I was in grade school, back in the mid-80s. I learned it in school!

If newspapers, and other news sources, are going to stay in business, they need to provide valuable content. They need to stop relying on the AP for content, we can get that anywhere.

And just where do you think the AP gets its content from?

Re:AP Killed Printed News

[JesseMcDonald]

if they were doing well, why would they try to cut costs?

To improve their profit margins, obviously. There's plenty of incentive to cut costs, even when you're doing well.

Re:AP Killed Printed News

[mgblst]

Sorry, this is such a stupid statement as to be unbelievable. It is disgraceful to see people talk this shit.

The reason they dropped their staff, was because people were buying less papers (due to TV, internet, etc...) and they had less money. The decline happened before they started losing staff.

Nobody compares a paper to another paper, this is utter bullshit. Whoever modded you up, and who will no doubt mod me down, should be shamed.

You are the classic ignoramus, no idea what you are talking about, completely wrong, but doesn't let that stop you.

Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[jgalun]

So far, as expected, every comment is about how stupid these old media dinosaurs are to repeat the mistakes of the RIAA/MPAA.

Let me ask a question. If the newspapers that create the AP content are going out of business, where will the content come from? And if everyone simply copies the AP articles without paying for it, where will the revenue stream come from to pay the writers?

I know, I know, everything on the Internet is a commodity now. But tell me - what happens when there is no one left to produce that commodity?

At some point the Slashdot crowd is going to have to face up to the fact that content producers need to get paid if they are going to continue producing. Just like movies - it's easy to criticize the MPAA, but who is going to pay the millions of dollars to shoot a major movie if everyone simply copies content without paying for it?

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Aggregation (like search) has value on its own. It makes content useful. Their ability to sustain a business on content is their own problem, perhaps we've reached a point where their content is not compelling enough to be a viable business.

This does not mean they are owed some piece of aggregation revenue. I'm mostly speaking of sites like google news, where you get a smallish snippet and a link to the source.

No industry has the right to exist, it has to prove its value. Right now, newspapers just aren't doing so.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Kozz]

I know, I know, everything on the Internet is a commodity now. But tell me - what happens when there is no one left to produce that commodity?

Why, blog journalists, of course. Am I joking or am I serious? What would be the result of a shift of this nature? Discuss...

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[whiledo]

Just like movies - it's easy to criticize the MPAA, but who is going to pay the millions of dollars to shoot a major movie if everyone simply copies content without paying for it?

I was agreeing with you up until this point.

Most people's problems with the MPAA has been with their willingness to fight technology rather than embrace it, often by using the laws they have paid to have put in place. They strive to not even try new methods of movie delivery, such as releasing a film at the same time on PPV as in theaters, easy non-DRM encumbered downloads for a less than a rental, etc. These other methods might fail, but the MPAA (or the studios that make it up) haven't even really experimented in these areas.

I know you didn't bring it up, but the RIAA is another example. Not only do you have the abusive legal stuff, but you have the fact that they are really just a layer of lawyers, managers and distributors that are no longer as crucial to their industry as they once were. They have done more to try releasing their content in new ways, but they still only do it begrudgingly and so they wind up shooting themselves in the foot. For example, the whole fact that for all these years, the only way to legally purchase music from a lot of popular artists was to buy into the whole iTunes+DRM bullshit. They only wanted to shift their business model if it would still give all the useless people the same fat paychecks as they had always gotten, without paying the actual content creators a nickel more.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[mehlkelm]

Just because this news 'system' is the only one (btw. it's not) doesn't mean it deserves to work forever. News won't die (neither will music).

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[PhxBlue]

And if everyone simply copies the AP articles without paying for it, where will the revenue stream come from to pay the writers?

This is a strawman. No one's advocating the practice of copying and pasting entire AP articles. Read the fscking article (or at least the summary) -- the AP is talking about demanding fees for Web sites who link to their stories or copy and paste excerpts with links to the full stories.

I know, I know, everything on the Internet is a commodity now. But tell me - what happens when there is no one left to produce that commodity?

Traditional journalists look down upon bloggers, but sometimes the only difference is that one group uses the Associated Press Stylebook and the other doesn't. I think you'll discover that if "traditional" newspapers go away, communities will step in to fill the void.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Mr. Underbridge]

Let me ask a question. If the newspapers that create the AP content are going out of business, where will the content come from?

Somewhere, like it always has. The AP didn't invent the concept of news. If the AP went under, news would come from different sources, probably with a different revenue model. Your question is like asking where the music will come from when the RIAA is toast. Content will still be created - already, the marginal value of generic news like the AP vs. talented individuals who specialize in subject-based internet sites is questionable.

And if everyone simply copies the AP articles without paying for it, where will the revenue stream come from to pay the writers?

That would be a great question if it were actually happening. Right now Google is directing traffic to these sites ("Oh NOES!"), with the benefit that they themselves become a place where many people go for aggregated news. Something, I'll point out, that the AP themselves could have done years ago. The AP is basically saying "Pay us to give us free traffic".

Sure guys. Whatever you say.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[DeweyQ]

Economics has some fundamental principle that can't be "wished away" or deemed untrue because we view them as "unfair". What happens when something that was once scarce and difficult to produce (content printed on paper, music pressed onto vinyl or CDs) becomes abundant and cheap (digitally copied)? The inevitable change in this basic economic truth means that content producers (creative types) will come up with a different business model.
Prior to mass media, creative people had patrons to sponsor their work. That was a different business model.
There are scarce goods associated with the creative process... like the artist's time. But in the future once an item is created, the copying and distribution is NOT a place where the artist will get revenue. And sadly the companies in the copying and distibution businesses will be like the buggy whip manufacturers of yesteryear.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[mkcmkc]

At some point the Slashdot crowd is going to have to face up to the fact that content producers need to get paid if they are going to continue producing. Just like movies - it's easy to criticize the MPAA, but who is going to pay the millions of dollars to shoot a major movie if everyone simply copies content without paying for it?

There's a dramatic difference between these two cases: the MPAA has no good way to stop non-customers from consuming their material, and so they need to be rational, smart, and reasonable if they're going to survive (or possibly they can get the government to bludgeon their customers for them).

News media, on the other hand, can just cut their customers off--it's really no different than selling gasoline in this regard. That's not to say that the Internet hasn't changed the playing field, but newspapers are going to have to adapt, and since there will always be a market for news, the smart ones will survive.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody wants news. They want confirmation of their beliefs. The AP could be replaced by a script with modules for "foreign policy", "taxation", "civil rights", and "human interest", and nobody would notice.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, blog journalists, of course. Am I joking or am I serious? What would be the result of a shift of this nature? Discuss...

This was a mistake on jgalun's part, underestimating the massive blogger population who are prepared, on a moment's notice, to fly all over the planet to get stories and report on them to the satisfaction of the trapped-in-the-90s pop culture junkies that read their blogs. Massive amounts of bloggers do this. All the time. And they never ever ever ever just sit on their asses, slurp down news from the AP or other reporting companies, and just bitch and whine about them. Never. Nuh-uh.

Because as we all know, there's an equal number of bloggers willing to sit in on senate hearings about the minutiae of budget reform and can fly out to war zones to get FIRST-HAND information on the injustices carried out by the armed forces on all sides as there are bloggers willing to do HARD HITTING REPORTING on some obscure manga artist, some cartoon series from the 80s and 90s that died with good reason, or zomg flying out to Comic-Con to booze and schmooze with people who think the exact same thing they do.

"Yesterday some crazy guy off in East Korea or wherever launched a missile. But I've got a bunch of new figurines from my favorite anime!!!1! They're the same as the old ones I had, just different sizes!"

Welcome to the future of hard-hitting reporting.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Nikker]

Some times the tree has to die to make way for a fertile field. If you think it was some act of genius that led to the idea of "reporting" then you are mistaken. This is something that has been around since the first person stood on a rock and told everyone what's going on in the area. If there was a way to record events in a very verifiable way then anyone can randomly point and shoot, the result can be commented on if not already there and we are back to where we started, the news comes back.

I believe news came to be because people wanted to be heard and I'm quite certain this is still the case. If the AP dies a slow and agonizing death many more will be able to be heard in its place. Provided we have some measures in place to verify the content we will actually be in a much better position then we are now. With digital encryption and signing parallel with GPS we could actually accomplish this.

So all I gotta say is "Burn baby burn!"

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[igaborf]

The problem is not that they are repeating the RIAA/MPAA approach. The problem is that they did exactly the opposite. Instead of protecting their content, they are giving it away. Even the AP: I have a free app on my iPhone from the AP that gives me the AP news feed. Newspapers wanted to get ahead of the digital revolution, so they put their product on-line. Some tried to charge for it, but there were enough who put it up for free that the for-charge plans failed. So they are stuck trying to make it work economically with on-line advertising.

The future of newspapers is dim. Soon, the only ones "reporting" news will be companies that are operating in other media: CNN, Fox etc. Ancillary, low-profit news media such as print and the Web will exist only as add-ons to the profit-making operations to "build the brand." Here in Hartford, for example, the sole daily newspaper, the Hartford Courant, recently announced that its newsroom operations were being combined with that of the co-owned Channel 61 station -- with the TV news director becoming the publisher of the newspaper. That's the model we're heading toward.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[NeoSkandranon]

Am I joking or am I serious?

Regardless, I hope you're wrong. It'd be like if the entire newspaper was editorials.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Explodicle]

it's easy to criticize the MPAA, but who is going to pay the millions of dollars to shoot a major movie if everyone simply copies content without paying for it?

(Emphasis mine)

1. You don't need millions of dollars to make a damn good movie. Take a look at Primer - awesome film with only a $7000 budget that went on to make $424,760 at the box office. Artistic vision can still be expressed without millions of dollars.

2. Many people, such as yourself, think one should pay for entertainment one has enjoyed. To say that everyone (but you?) will simply copy it without paying is unrealistic and cynical.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Colonel Korn]

I know, I know, everything on the Internet is a commodity now. But tell me - what happens when there is no one left to produce that commodity?

Why, blog journalists, of course. Am I joking or am I serious? What would be the result of a shift of this nature? Discuss...

I've seen a lot of blog "journalists" but never a blog journalist. If they do exist, they're very well hidden.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[kaizendojo]

Agreed, wholeheartedly, and well put. This "the information should be free" crap is always posted by people who want *everything* to be "free"...except of course the things THEY produce.
 
    The very idea that AP is wrong for wanting to keep their business alive by - shudder! - asking people to compensate them for the *considerable* expenses associated with producing content is like saying, "Hey, I know that pool is on your property and all, and you paid to have it built, but you filled it with rain water and that's free so I'm going to go swimming now - K-thanx-bye!"

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[nEoN nOoDlE]

The news is just like art, people will do it without getting paid for it, but getting paid for it would be nice. There will never be a slump in the number of people willing to share the information they know about current topics, digest that information, form an opinion, and tell you the opinion as well. Hell, I do it and I'm not a journalist. As long as there is news to report, an interested party will be there to report it, whether to live blog an Obama town-hall meeting or Twitter an earthquake before anyone else does. 3 years ago, news bloggers were considered a joke. Now they're invited to Presidential press conferences. No, there will be no lack of content once the AP is gone. The AP and the rest of the MSM are too ingrained in the political system and are too reliant on corporate sponsorship to have the credibility that journalists and reporters require. That is a part of why the newspapers are failing, along with the inability of old media to get to the readers as fast as the internet can. Also, there is nothing preventing online news bloggers from making a living off of their work. They're doing it right now, outside of the MSM, through ads or donations.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Anonymous Coward]

When there is a movie released that I want to watch, I buy a ticket at the local cinema, sit in a seat and watch it on the big screen. The way it was meant to be seen. Problem is I don't always make it to see them there and to me the DVD experience is far less valuable than the movie cinema experience (even with DTS/DD 7.1 at home.) I make the effort to go and see as many movies that I want to see in the cinema.

When I'm in a location that has worthwhile newspapers, I buy them and enjoy reading them while travelling on the train, tram, over breakfast or lunch or just sitting in the sunshine outside.

In other words I'm quite happy to pay for the traditional products because the experience in interacting with it is just so much better than anything online.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[witherstaff]

So skip the AP sources and listen to NPR, or the BBC. During the last pledge drive they talked how NPR has the most foreign journalists of any American media company.

I can only assume if the AP goes away the BBC and member supported NPR will keep on filling the holes that exist.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[windsleeper]

Let me ask a question. If the newspapers that create the AP content are going out of business, where will the content come from? And if everyone simply copies the AP articles without paying for it, where will the revenue stream come from to pay the writers?

Your line of thinking is very much tied to the current obsolete model. You need to think about the ways non-news content is created. For example, if you want content about new technology, you go to Gizmodo, or Engadget - these sites are doing front line journalism by seeking out sources, calling technology companies, attending PR events, etcs. None of their content is released via print and none of it is behind a pay wall. Best as I can tell, their writers are getting paid - probably via the large advertising revenue their sites generate. Good original content will attract a good audience, which will allow for monetization via advertising or other add-on services. Bad, repetitive or copied content will get little to no audience and will monetize poorly. If I were trying to monetize "news" today, I'd go for original content in a narrow niche, covering just politics, or just the economy, or just local news. Of course, such niche new sites already exist and many good ones are very successful. The "problem" is that the large media companies have no niche and no original content, and are therefore getting outclassed by the more nimble, more relevant and more original niche sites.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Uberbah]

This "the information should be free" crap is always posted by people who want *everything* to be "free"...except of course the things THEY produce.

Except of course that's a straw man. No one is claiming that AP doesn't have the right to make money, it's that AP is charging an arm, leg & a kidney for access, and ignoring fair use rights (i.e. threatens to pursue people for quoting a couple paragraphs from a story).

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Just because this news 'system' is the only one (btw. it's not) doesn't mean it deserves to work forever. News won't die (neither will music).

Um, I don't know what exactly you mean by "news won't die," but I think you better not mean that reporting will not die. Yes, stuff will still happen all over the world, but it would be quite easy to end up in a situation where nobody can get paid to report on it, which means that the quality of the information you can obtain on the news deteriorates massively.

It would be quite ironic if the Internet destroyed the 19th and 20th centuries' advances in news reporting, and actually resulted in delivering less and worse information to us, wouldn't it?

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[mdielmann]

I hope something similar to what is described in Eathweb (Baen Books) comes to pass. People subscribe to personas they're interested in, with methods to find personas that have something of value for you. Of course, all of this requires a number of elements to be in place: ubiquitous internet access, sufficient security to secure your persona(s), micropayments, accepting the premise of 'trust' for personas. But it would make for an interesting world, however unlikely it would be.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Eivind Eklund]

Assuming breakdown of the business models, the answer to this is simple: We are not going to get that kind of content. We're not going to get news of the same form as we had before, at least not paid the same way. And we're not going to get movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce; instead, we'll get relatively cheap movies, like El Mariachi ($7000) or Sin City ($4M, from a budget of $5M), which can make a profit at a lower revenue level.

And to me this is fine. It is a price I am willing to pay. I'll be about as entertained with a cheap movie as an expensive one. The only thing I feel afraid of is losing the in-depth reporter - but I feel that is more threatened by the consumption of TV news than I do by the existence of the Internet.

Eivind.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[cdrguru]

Who is going to pay for it? Nobody. Free is in, pay is out.

The Western Hemisphere has pretty much grown up an entire generation guided by the idea that if it is on the Internet, it is (or should be) free. Music is now (for all but the terminally stupid or guilt-ridden) free. Movies aren't far behind. Books, software, and anything else in digitial form is going to be right there with it.

The answer I keep hearing is there will be no shortage of content because people will create it for free, for the joy of creating. I suspect that most people that believe this need to spend 30 minutes with YouTube. Pay attention to things like Magibon and the ShayTards. Yup, there will be no shortage of content, that's for sure.

On the Internet two things seem apparent. The first is that a low price trumps all other considerations. The second is that quantity overwhelms quality every time.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[abigor]

So you're saying we need a site like Gizmodo to report on the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, or to analyse Australian foreign policy from the perspective of the EU member nations?

Gizmodo and Engadget cover relatively trivial consumer products. That's not what the Associated Press does, kid. Get a clue.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'll discover that if "traditional" newspapers go away, communities will step in to fill the void.

I think you won't:

Well, sorry, but I didn't trip over any blogger trying to find out McKissick's identity and performance history. Nor were any citizen journalists at the City Council hearing in January when police officials inflated the nature and severity of the threats against officers. And there wasn't anyone working sources in the police department to counterbalance all of the spin or omission.

From here.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[bit01]

I know, I know, everything on the Internet is a commodity now. But tell me - what happens when there is no one left to produce that commodity?

A news story anywhere in the world has somebody local who can report on it on the internet. A local blogger in other words. Like a newspaper stringer.

And guess what? People like to talk about their lives and will blog about it to the point of ridiculousness. For free. Many are crap but a fraction of those billions of people have something interesting to say. And that fraction is enough to keep most people entertained and informed for a lifetime. And aggregation and discussion sites find those people.

At some point the Slashdot crowd is going to have to face up to the fact that content producers need to get paid if they are going to continue producing.

At some point people like you are going to have to face up to the fact that what they produce is of little value, largely rehashed press releases and grossly overpaid, bad acting, that is being replaced by user generated content and other entertainment and information options.

it's easy to criticize the MPAA, but who is going to pay the millions of dollars to shoot a major movie if everyone simply copies content without paying for it?

Nobody I hope. Big budget movies and the corruption and huge numbers of middlemen and hangers on associated with them need to die. What hopefully will happen is that they become efficient, with no bloat, no million dollar SFX and with actual good acting on a reasonable salary, scripts with actual originality instead and with minimal marketing BS and reasonable prices. I'm looking forward to that day.

I have millions of web pages on wikipedia alone to entertain and inform me. Enough to last many lifetimes. Huge numbers of people with something interesting to say on every topic under the sun. All for free. The means of contacting like minded individuals on the most obscure topics. In seconds. Small entertainers all over the world making short films and browser games. Good fun. First class on-line university and other education courses all over the world. Right up to advanced graduate level. Travelogues and pictorials by travelers to every obscure place on earth. Fascinating. The list just goes on and on. It's not piracy that's killing big budget entertainment and news. It's cheaper competition. Much, much cheaper.

And that's ignoring all the real life options. Like hanging out with friends, walking the dog or joining a local sports club.

Bye bye.

---

I'm not worried about the use of DRM. I'm worried about the abuse.

Re:Calling all Slashdot Geniuses

[PhxBlue]

Maybe that's because they've moved out west: Nonprofit news Web site wins coveted investigative journalism award. Interestingly, the Voice of San Diego web site follows National Public Radio's basic format -- deliver a top-notch product and let people donate what they're willing to donate. Maybe the more traditional newspapers could construct a similar model ... that is, if they don't mind ditching their decades-old mindsets of what a newspaper "should be" and get with the times.

tl;dr: Newspapers can either adapt or die. If they choose the latter, they deserve no pity from us.

Newspaper Employee

[Professor Fate]

This is a legitimate beef. News gathering organizations spend a lot of money and sometimes put people in dangerous situations to get a story. Hopefully, they won't go all RIAA over this, but it's reasonable for them to expect some compensation from people who are profiting from their work.

As a disclaimer, I should mention that I work for a newspaper. At least for now.

Re:Newspaper Employee

[Anonymous Coward]

why? it's just a digital copy anyway. there was no theft.

show me how those arguements don't apply here.

Re:Newspaper Employee

[Attila Dimedici]

The problem is there are more people who are willing to report news than there are dollars people are willing to pay to receive news. Anybody can start a website and report news. Whether that news is reliable is another question, but since the advent of the Internet people have discovered that the old news sources aren't terribly reliable either.

Aggregation

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone has to pay reporters wages, this is the whole point to the AP.

I think AP also does aggregation, but the newspapers actually pay for the articles.

As the newspapers are dying, so is the income AP has expected.

If you read the article...

[wiredog]

It's very clear that they object to people putting some, or all, of the content of their articles on those peoples' web pages. So if "the pages only show the Title, summary, attribution, date and a link to the original article" then, no, you don't get sued. You aren't showing the article, or part of it, just the title and summary they distribute via their RSS feed.

   

Re:If you read the article...

[foniksonik]

How is google doing this? I use google news regularly to view headlines and summaries... If I click on a link it goes to the source, not some google branded/ad supported page with the content.

What websites are we talking about who are just scraping the content and putting it on their site? That is a clear violation of copyright and should not be tolerated... but aggregators are not doing that... Google does go a step further to show their own summary (first paragraph or something) but that is hardly 'the content' and if it is then it's not much of a story to be complaining about.

Almost sad

[dwhitaker]

It is almost sad to see the professional journalism dying - or at least having the traditional roles it took in society go the way of the dinosaurs. 15 years from now, the news market will be a much different place, and I hope we figure out a way to have integrity and accountability in the new model. I do find it odd though that some industries who fail to adapt get government funds while others, who could arguably provide a public service, are left out to dry.

Re:Almost sad

[drewvr6]

I agree. Journalism will turn to propaganda for either of the two main parties with a solid, but muted independent voice. We can already see this in broadcast news as CNN, MSNBC battle with Fox for who can spin the best. I fear news will become only blogging posts provided by people espousing their own rhetoric in the guise of news.

Re:Almost sad

[Anonymous Coward]

"Professional" Journalism died some time ago, what's left are propagandists. And they aren't even particularly competent at that.

Re:Almost sad

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more than sad. It's dangerous. We need strong and insightful journalism to keep the political and business leaders of the world accountable. We have to keep professional journalism going somehow, in order to augment the growing amount of direct reporting by people on the web. There's a place and a need for both.

But this approach to maintaining AP's business is just stupid.

I could not agree more

[WindBourne]

the press companies have not learned how to make money in this new age. The problem is that few have figured out that they need to encourage new readership and learn about them, rather than drive them away. Sadly, that has more to do with the horrible management in place in near monopolies, than it has to do with the net "stealing" content.

Re:I could not agree more

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the problem is that the Internet drives the expectation that everything is for free. How do you make money on something that people expect to get for free?

Re:I could not agree more

[WindBourne]

Yeah, Google sure did not figure it out yet. Papers like westword have been making money for years. All that is required is good management with good ideas.

Don't these guys read the news?

[bobbuck]

Yes, but just the AP.

Linking?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_040609a.html

I just linked to the article(Press release) about me going to be sued for linking to articles...

Ball's in your court

Re:Linking?

[2muchcoffeeman]

http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_040609a.html

I just linked to the article(Press release) about me going to be sued for linking to articles...

Of course, there's nothing in that press release that says anything about suing people for links. AP's specifically looking for copy-and-paste bloggers, along with outfits like AllHeadlineNews.com. Ever seen AHN? It's notorious for telling its contributors to produce "their" articles by repackaging other sites' online news content (rather than doing any actual work themselves), then reselling that content. AP's already filed one lawsuit alleging that AHN does just exactly that with the fruits of the AP's labor.

Re:Linking?

[bipbop]

What? Are you telling me a summary on Slashdot is inaccurate?? My--my whole world is crumbling!

AP Is Pricing Itself Out Of the Blog Market

[ausoleil]

I work on a popular sports blog and also another up and coming blog, and both feature commentary on relevant news (college sports and golf.)

We would love to use AP content for our blogs, with proper uasge, citations, trackbacks and the like. So we try to contact AP for licensing information and cannot reach a human and get no call back for weeks.

When they do return our inquiries, they gave us a price so ridiculous that it was impossible to fit it into any workable revenue model. It's not that we are cheap or expected something for nothing, it's just that they wanted a fee so high that it just couldn't be done.

We came away with a definite impression that AP didn't *want* to work with us and that their numbers were just go-away-leave-us-alone figures that they knew they had little chance of getting a sale from.

Now we avoid their material like the plague.

Re:AP Is Pricing Itself Out Of the Blog Market

[2muchcoffeeman]

They're not giving you "just-go-away-leave-us-alone figures." They're giving you the price it costs to pay the human cost (salaries, benefits, travel costs) of reporting the news you say you want to give your readers. It's not cheap.

Of course, you could try the old-fashioned way: do the legwork yourselves. How much do you suppose that costs?

Re:AP Is Pricing Itself Out Of the Blog Market

[ausoleil]

You are making some incredible assumptions and those assumptions are erroneous.

We do in fact cover a great deal of the same stories with original material of our own. And in fact have won awards for precisely that.

Further, it doesn't cost five figures to produce 65 articles a year, and if it does, then I need to go into journalism as a career, because apparently that's an easy path to riches. That's especially true when these same articles are already used in local and wire stories and that our audience is a fraction of that.

The price was indeed exorbitant, and what remains a fact is that if AP wants to price customers out of the market, then they will not gain any revenue whatsoever.

Re:AP Is Pricing Itself Out Of the Blog Market

[2muchcoffeeman]

That's especially true when these same articles are already used in local and wire stories and that our audience is a fraction of that.

Aren't those articles being published by media outlets that pay for the privilege?

Further, it doesn't cost five figures to produce 65 articles a year,

Salary, benefits and in most cases travel and other necessary expenses (telephone, for example). It adds up.

It comes down to this: Either way, you're going to pay somebody --- and more likely, a whole bunch of somebodies --- to do the work. How much would it cost you to pay somebody to research and write those 65 articles as bespoke works that you own the copyright for?

Re:AP Is Pricing Itself Out Of the Blog Market

[phantomcircuit]

They're giving you the price it costs to pay the human cost (salaries, benefits, travel costs) of reporting the news you say you want to give your readers. It's not cheap.

It is cheap when they're selling the exact same information to every newspaper on the planet...

Re:AP Is Pricing Itself Out Of the Blog Market

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought bloggers were replacing news organizations anyway! Those dinosaurs, with their garbage ethics and proper procedures, are going to be replaced by citizen journalists who will be completely 100% impartial and never sell themselves out for a cheap buck.

The AP should be begging you for content.

Re:AP Is Pricing Itself Out Of the Blog Market

[ausoleil]

You're missing the point.

We are not asking for anything free. We're not asking for anything nearly free.

We are asking for a reasonable market rate. Like UPI, which we got a much better deal from.

If the AP doesn't want to do business, fine, we can operate without them and do so effectively. We are not aggregators or regurgitators, nor plagiarists. In other words, AP material is a convenience and not a necessity for us.

Interestingly, reporters employed by AP newspapers have used us for sources, have quoted us, have interviewed us, have had us on their radio programs and have used (with our permission) our materials.

Buying senators

[bobbuck]

Can you buy a senator on a newspaper budget?

Re:Buying senators

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you buy a senator on a newspaper budget?

Probably. If you look at the individual recipients of RIAA money, you will find that the amount on a per person basis is not all that much. And yet the money works wonders. The only time it would cost real money is if they were forced to outspend some other PAC.

Re:Buying senators

[Rural]

No, but the a senator needs the media to be elected.

Re:Buying senators

[Anonymous Coward]

you just need a little addendum to the next loosely information technology related bill, not a full fledged patriot act

Re:Buying senators

[2muchcoffeeman]

Ha! You may have noticed the distinct lack of monster buyout/aid programs for struggling newspapers and the thousands of former employees they've put on the street the past couple of years.

Alternative revenue schemes

[mangu]

don't put it on the friggin internet!

What they are trying to do sounds to me like suing people who took a brochure from a pile under a "Take One!" sign, without paying the $25 price that was printed in small letters in page ten of the brochure.

May I suggest an alternative scheme? They could start charging people who read the headlines at the newsstand. I often do that and walk away without buying the paper. Thats the equivalent of looking at the Google link.

To cut the story short

[jlebrech]

They should just give us tasters.. then tell us the buy the newspaper to read more.

Is there an AP release of this

[kimvette]

Is there an AP release of this that we can copy & paste here? ;)

A lot of sites syndicate summaries of it through fair use. google's cache is fair use, as it is represented as a snapshot of the original host site and cached in case the site goes temporarily offline, not misrepresented as google's own site. google's news site draws readers to your own site(s). bloggers, etc. draw more eyes to your content and responsible bloggers will link to the source they borrowed the content (for fair-use purposes, usually to critique the content), drawing more content to your sites.

If you do not want google (or other search engines) to index, crawl, cache the site, may I introduce you to robots.txt?

If you do not want people to take advantage of the Fair Use exclusions, may I suggest you get out of publishing anything anywhere and just keep your precious "intellectual property" to yourself, or at least, keep it off the internet altogether? Trust me, you won't be missed. You're old world anyway. New networks who a) understand fair use b) understand technology and c) know how to market themselves will take your place soon enough either way. Just expedite the process and get off the internet, please, if you cannot understand how the both the Internet and how Fair Use works.

Now I understand some of what is going on is not Fair Use, but when there is a critique included (even if an article is quoted in entirety) let's assume that the content was copied in entirety for the sake of convenience of the reader, since even sources like CNN and FAUX^H^H^HOX make links go dead after a few days, so the reader would have to hunt archives on those sites to dig up the articles. Having said that, without an article ID, how is the original reader to locate the original article? Obviously quoting the entire article (which is generally just a few paragraphs to begin with - come on, admit it, your "IP" is over-valued in your minds) is not unreasonable, and as long as credit is given to the source and it's for the purpose of critique or a response, where is your complaint? It should be limited to those who engage in content scraping without adding any substantial new content, i.e., obviously not fair use -- not just what you wish isn't fair use.

Thanksforplaying.

Re:Is there an AP release of this

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_040609a.html

Re:Is there an AP release of this

[Anonymous Coward]

per your request:

04/06/2009

AP Press Release

AP Board announces initiative to protect industryâs content;
Further rate reductions and new "Limited" service respond to member needs

NEW YORK â" The Associated Press Board of Directors today announced it would launch an industry initiative to protect news content from misappropriation online.

AP Chairman Dean Singleton said the news cooperative would work with portals and other partners who properly license content â" and would pursue legal and legislative actions against those who donât.

âoeWe can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories,âoe Singleton said at the AP annual meeting, in San Diego.

As part of the initiative, AP will develop a system to track content distributed online to determine if it is being legally used. AP President Tom Curley said the initiative would also include the development of new search pages that point users to the latest and most authoritative sources of breaking news.

In addition, further significant rate reductions and new content options for member newspapers were announced Monday at The Associated Press annual meeting, in San Diego.

The pricing changes will bring a further $35 million in rate assessment reductions for 2010, while providing the option of a âoeLimitedâoe service for newspapers with minimal world and national coverage needs. AP will continue to provide Member Choice Complete service for newspapers that want full access to APâs worldwide reporting. The changes are a direct result of member input and are being instituted through revisions to Member Choice, APâs text news pricing and product plan.

Also as a result of member feedback, AP has introduced an option, effective from Jan. 1, 2010, for members to elect to cancel their membership on one-year notice. Those who elect to continue under the long-standing two-year notice requirement will receive an additional discount on their assessment. The not-for-profit cooperative has already introduced flexible new licensing that allows its members to develop new revenue by using AP content in local niche publications, weeklies, online products and other special products.

âoeWeâve listened to the needs of our members, and come up with a revised plan that is clear, simple and flexible, and that also provides them with significant rate relief to help during these tough economic times,âoe said Singleton, chairman of the AP Board and vice chairman and CEO of MediaNews Group Inc. âoeWe feel it is critical to help our members during these extremely difficult times, and these numbers show our deep commitment to doing that.âoe

On Saturday, at its quarterly meeting, the AP Board of Directors also discussed the need for rate, term and product changes for segments of the local broadcast market. AP is preparing broadcast plans, to be addressed in July at the boardâs next meeting.

The cuts announced Monday come on top of $30 million in rate reductions that were instituted last year for 2009. With this yearâs revised plan, AP estimates an additional $35 million in rate discounts to members in 2010. Overall, AP estimates that these reductions will reduce its revenues from U.S. newspaper members by approximately one-third between 2008 and 2010. The total assessment decreases for newspapers are expected to average just under 20 percent, although they may vary widely depending on the levels of text and other services that each newspaper selects.

The revised Member Choice plan is designed to provide flexibility and customization that will allow AP member newspapers to choose the level of content that best serves their needs, while also enabling them to control their costs. Under the plan, two services will be offered. âoeAP Member Choice Completeâoe will provide full access to all of APâs English-language text reporting. âoeAP Member Choice Limitedâoe will prov

you are dead on until the end

[circletimessquare]

simply because the "slashdot geniuses" are correct on one point: there is no way to compel the payments you insist on. otherwise, it is as you say: if everyone leaches content, and no one pays content creators for their efforts, there will simply be no content. but all of the models for forcing payment are old-school, pre-internet, that simply do not translate

so its a conundrum

however, i don't think old school media can, or will fade away. they have something no imbecile on the internet has: trust. they are impartial. well, as impartial as is possible: no media source is truly impartial, but however you want denigrate the impartiality of old school media, surely you don't think anything on the internet is better

so i don't understand how they can monetize this "resource" of trust that they enjoy, but they do have it, and no one else has it, so there must be SOME way to capitalize on that... i just don't udnerstand how yet, really, and i don't think anyone does

Typical Slashdot response

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue isn't so much linking to AP stories or posting a quote or headline from an AP article, it's reproducing entire articles without permission.

I don't see how people can justify wholesale theft of other people's work in this way. Investigative journalism is not cheap, if you can't pay the wages of your journalists, they're not going to go to Afghanistan or to a disaster area and put their lives at risk.

It's not about using an outdated business model or anything like that. There are no AP concerts, no AP videogames, they have very few avenues to generate income. If their work gets stolen, not only is someone profiting from their work, they're taking revenue from them and their partners.

Why can't we all get along?

[QuincyDurant]

Without AP, the Internet suffers. Without the Internet AP suffers. Under both scenarios, newspapers suffer.

It would be nice to have the Internet, AP, and newspapers. How about a half-a-cent micropayment from readers of the stories distributed all three ways?

Re:Why can't we all get along?

[DeweyQ]

Two points:

1. Newspapers, despite their name, have for years not been primarily about reporting "hard" news -- painstakingly gathered from "reporters on the ground". They are about building community and engaging the reader for advertising purposes. (Note how lifestyle, entertainment, reviews, editorial, and even classifieds far outweigh the news sections of most newspapers.)
2. Like radio, the consumers of the content in newspapers don't really pay the bills. Subscriptions fees were primarily designed as a way to measure engaged readers. The newspaper can tell their advertisers that they have X number of readers engaged enough to pay for the content. With the Web, metrics can be done far more accurately... and the content providers can tell the advertisers exactly how many people visited a specific article.

Given these two historical points -- as well as the tendency towards zero marginal cost for reproduction and distribution of digital content, I personally don't think micropayments make sense.

Re:Why can't we all get along?

[QuincyDurant]

Newspapers need more money to survive. Reporting hard news, which newspapers do at least some of, are part of any daily newspaper's contents and close to 100% of AP's.

Circulation revenues, which pay for at least some of newspaper costs, are at least part of what they need to survive.

Some specialized magazines, btw, depend entirely upon circulation--Mad Magazine and Consumer Reports come to mind--because paid advertising is inimical to their purpose.

As mentioned several times above, hard news from professional reporters and esp. AP drives the very blogs and web sites that are suggested as the future replacement of newspapers. The cost of news gathering of course not zero.

I don't know enough about micropayments to know if they constitute a technically feasible solution--it might cost two cents to deliver a 1/2 cent payment for all I know.

But I do know newspapers need money like a hog needs slop.

Re:Why can't we all get along?

[DeweyQ]

OK, I will grant that circulation currently does pay some of the cost of producing a newspaper. To be a little ruthless though (perhaps killing the hog or at least lopping off its legs): reams of newsprint and a huge printing press are definitely not going to be needed in the future. Digital copying and distribution have a very very low cost. Value associated with content -- Consumers Reports is an excellent example -- remains even when the distribution medium is 100 percent digital. Consumers Reports can still command a pretty reasonable online subscription fee.

However, I continue to assert that newspapers are bleeding money primarily because advertisers are putting their money elsewhere. Craigslist replaces classifieds; Google replaces much of the targeted advertising. Lamenting that journalism will die without being propped up by an unsustainable business model is counterproductive. Anyone who cares about journalism (and you'd think the newspapers themselves would be leading the charge) should be experimenting and forging ahead with innovative new business models. Micropayments, subscriptions, and even banner advertising have been experimented with in recent years. The success with them has been underwhelming to mixed.

Clickthrough rates are much more measurable than CPM (cost per thousand -- the old eyeballs estimation); today advertisers on the Web know exactly what they're getting for their money. Imagine if newspapers had been the pioneers in search and clickstream analysis like Google, Overture, and others ended up being? Maybe we would not be having this debate.

This might work

[PinchDuck]

No one values anything that is free. Of course, the flip side is that they are competing with free, which is hard to beat on price.

its more than sad, its scary

[circletimessquare]

a free press is integral to the functioning of a modern democracy. hell, the printing press gave birth to the foment of ideas and individuals who created modern democracy. without a free press, those in power feel at ease to engage in shenanigans while no one is watching. the free press is the light that sends those cockroaches scurrying. with no free press watching, the cockroaches do their thing, and rot our social institutions

but its not like a free press is under attack from some callow ideology working against democracy, the free press is simply losing its economic lifeblood and fading away. and its losing it from a technological innovation that everyone thinks is an even better fountain for the free exchange of ideas

except this new medium has no economic underpinnings. such that there is no structure to it, there is no scarcity of resources that forces it into limited models that are small in number and easy to constrain to trust and impartiality. instead, on the internet, we get rumor, lies, fearmongering, propaganda, spread with the same reach as old school media but beholden to nothing or no one, certainly not any standard of behavior, and costing absolutely nothing to run

so what gives? is the internet, supposed great leap forward in the exchange of ideas, actually the death knell of good ideas, by drowning it in a sea of mediocrity and lies?

Re:its more than sad, its scary

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been quite a while since this "free press" has been more reliable than finding your own information from the internet, these companies chased after more and more profits with their infotainment style news and that decision is now what is costing them, not the big scary internet as you describe it.

Lopsided Fight.....

[IHC Navistar]

This is going to backfire BIG TIME.

Piss off search engines badly enough by demanding that they pay you for listing your articles on a search will simply result in search engines NOT displaying sites that have the articles.

Search engines have multiple avenues of generating revenue, and will always have business, since they are generally the 'Starting Point' for internet activity, and are *very* well-known throughout the world. News sites, however, require that you know their url *exactly* if you want to view their site without having to use a search engine.

AP is trying to start a fight that it cannot possibly hope to win, and is on its way from reporting the news, to BEING the news. Google and other search engines have AP by the short hairs, and I don't forsee them playing nice on this one.

Re:Lopsided Fight.....

[sricetx]

Yes, you're right; this strategy is bound to fail. Why are the suits always so damn stupid when it comes to the internet? Do MBA programs select those with low IQs or is there something with the business school curriculum that encourages faulty thinking and stupidity? What Google and Yahoo should do is flex a little muscle and just stop indexing AP content whenever they hear any hint of these types of threatened lawsuits and teach the AP a little lesson in why they shouldn't try the legal blackmail approach. I think the AP needs the search engines and aggregators more than the search engines need the AP.

Re:Lopsided Fight.....

[IHC Navistar]

Bingo. There is nothing wrong with listing news articles in searches, especially since news sites, along with schools and governments institutions, have some of the downright crappiest search engines ever written.

Listing articles in search results is no different in telling someone where you read a particular article, or what news sites might be best, or actually have, the articles they are looking for. A query in a search engine is the electronic form of asking somebody a question.

AP just put themselves spread eagle. Now all they need to do is ask for a swift kick in the crotch ( read: file a lawsuit).

Re:Lopsided Fight.....

[Dhalka226]

The problem with your logic is that "search engines" aren't one homogeneous entity. If suddenly people can't find the news they're looking for through Search Engine A, it won't be long before they begin trying Search Engine B instead. This instantly becomes a simple means of differentiation between engines. To use a real-world example, don't you think MSN or Yahoo would be absolutely dying for Google to stop listing sites with AP news articles?

I also think you're underestimating the reach of the AP. The majority of news (in the US) comes from the AP or use the AP reporting as a basis, and as such they do carry a heavy influence. Other outlets might be able to get away without paying the AP, but I think search engines will pay up long before they start trying to blacklist it.

Re:Lopsided Fight.....

[Todd Knarr]

You might be right, if people stopped finding the story through Search Engine A. But they won't. They'll continue to find the story, just through outlets not taking their story from the AP wire service. So Search Engine A continues to be the favorite, all those other outlets get a big boost in traffic from suddenly showing up higher in the search results (because all the AP-carrying sites aren't showing), and the sites that use the AP are left trying to explain the sudden drop in traffic to their sites.

As for the last, remember that Google doesn't index the AP. It indexes newspaper sites which themselves carry AP stories and pay the AP for the right to do so. So the AP is getting paid for their stories. They're just not getting paid by Google. And why should they be? Google isn't carrying their stories, why should it have to pay for something it's not doing. All Google does is tell people who is carrying AP stories, and I don't see why I should need the AP's permission or pay them a fee to tell someone else that a certain Web site has a specific AP story on it (which is what the AP seems to be demanding).

Re: "Easy " steps

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google can't list your content without a contract-

just how much are you willing to pay Google?

Are YOU really that stupid

[LateArthurDent]

They do want people looking at, they just want to be paid for their work.

Then maybe they shouldn't put it up for free? Maybe they should try some type of subscription model.

Otherwise they can go out of business, and then where will you get your information?

The answer to that question is the same reason newspapers are NOT using some type of subscription model: "just about anywhere." There's no shortage of information online, and people who try to charge for the content suddenly find out that their clients are still finding the content they want elsewhere.

What happens in the highly unrealistic scenario if they all go out of business and you can't find the news anywhere online? The market will be ripe for new companies putting information up under a subscription model, now that they no longer have the free competition.

Ah, they want to be paid through ads? That's fine too. It's a really stupid idea to do and simultaneously make demands of the search engines bringing people to your website, much less sue them. I don't understand why google doesn't just quit linking to any newspaper that complains of the news aggregation, and then wait for THEM to offer to pay google a percentage of their profits if they'll just start listing and aggregating their news again.

Google already licenses AP content

[brunes69]

The summary alludes to the opposite, but Google has been paying AP a license for a long time.

You can see it on most major stores on Google News, if the story originates from the AP, the link goes to a Google-hosted version of the page, rather than to the other site.

Well, maybe they should!

[coryking]

I like to visit "real" newspaper sites that have good discussion systems. Almost all of the local newspapers in Seattle have horrible comment systems that are tucked a way in such a fashion that only real nutcases seem to inhabit them.

Worse, they all seem to use digg-style "up/down" moderation. "Up/Down" moderation is horrible for anything outside product reviews. It creates a feedback loop where those that go with the group think get rewarded with "+55" and those who go against get shunned at "-11" with no way to get out of the hole.

Slashdot may not be perfect, but after using dozens if not hundreds of other discussion systems, they do have pretty much the best out there. DailyKos is close second, but only because a limited set of users can down-rate a comment and even those users can only dish out a couple down-rates a day. Anything that grants regular users the ability to make an unlimited number of down-rates will quickly turn into a cesspool of wackos.

So yeah, newspaper sites could learn a thing or two by ripping some of what slashdot does right. Slashdot could do the same and finally add a rich text editor to the comments so I can finally highlight a string of words and make it a link...but that is a different story :-)

Pot, meet kettle

[cochranjd]

Interesting that journalist (a group of people who make a living bringing you information about things that do not "belong" to them - events) are mad about websites bringing you information about things that do not "belong" to them - AP stories. What's next a car salesman complaining how slimy the real estate agent that sold him his lot was? If so, I suspect I'll have to read about it somewhere else now.

Re:Pot, meet kettle

[2muchcoffeeman]

Interesting that journalist (a group of people who make a living bringing you information about things that do not "belong" to them - events) are mad about websites bringing you information about things that do not "belong" to them - AP stories.

AP's not selling the event itself. It's selling the coverage of the event produced by its employees and its member news organizations.

What a great idea!

[Rambo Tribble]

Make it so that people can't find the content! That will boost revenues, you bet!

Increasingly, it has become clear that those who manage our industries and government are just plain incompetent, even at feeding their own greed. Who is giving themselves a bonus for this brilliant notion?

Mod INSIGHTFUL Please, not Funny

[RoverDaddy]

This is the core of the matter. How many times does somebody say/think "This news was reported by a blogger", when what really happened was "This blogger wrote an entry online after reading a professional report somebody else was paid to create"? I seriously doubt that bloggers act as 'primary sources' of news reporting (meaning they are actually THERE, watching what's happening and writing original copy), more than 1% of the time, except for outlying events like technology conferences. For local news, like the three car accident that tied up I-95 for 6 hours last night, I'd suggest your chances of learning about that from a blog are very close to zero.

A balance needs to be struck somewhere. Content IS valuable. The 'fair use' crowd might be correct in this particular case, but what kind of victory is gained if we lose the content anyway?

All about the double dip

[Glass Goldfish]

It's not that the newspapers don't want Google linking to their website. They want the ad revenue of course. They just want Google to pay for the privilege of linking to their website as well. Think of ISPs who want you to pay for an Internet connection and then want websites to pay for a premium connection to your system.

This is probably why AP is going about it, rather than an individual newspaper. If an individual newspaper complains to Google, Google will simply remove them from being listed. The newspaper loses to their rivals and no one gets the double dip. If legislation required Google to link to the newspapers and pay a small fee every time someone clicked on a link, I think AP would be happy. If Google was not required to link to the newspapers, it probably would just link to the websites of a country which didn't have this legislation. It's pretty much asking Google to subsidize the newspaper industry. I'm not a supporter of this.

Re:All about the double dip

[malcomreynolds]

It's not about Google, Yahoo and others posting the information they paid for. As is clearly stated in the article, it is about Google, Yahoo and others posting information they did *not* pay for.

Why is it so wrong to want to be paid for your work?

What profit?

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

I think they'd probably prefer not to, they'd prefer to go back to simpler times, before this damn internet thing, when they were still making money hand over fist.

Um, the AP isn't really run for profit, silly. It's a cooperative of news organizations that exists to allow its members to share stories, so the papers can publish stories about regions where they don't have reporters. All of the AP's valuable content is supplied by the members. In effect, the AP and the other news agencies are the first news aggregators.

Re:What profit?

[Quothz]

Um, the AP isn't really run for profit, silly.

While the AP is, indeed, a not-for-profit organization, that doesn't mean it isn't trying to make a profit. No, really:

The Olympics and the presidential election also made the AP incur higher expenses, one reason that pretax profit fell 18 percent to $37.3 million. Net income, however, rose 4.5 percent to $25.1 million because of lower tax expenses. The AP remained debt-free, though its cash balance dropped 26 percent to $34.5 million at the end of last year.

Nothing was

[coryking]

The internet was not built with bussiness models in mind

The earth wasn't formed with business models in mind either. It didn't get formed with property lines or international borders, yet here we are with subdivided parcels of land, passports, fenced borders, and massive armies to protect the whole thing. Nowhere in the instruction manual for earth did it mention any of this.

Re:Nothing was

[Demonantis]

I mean to say the core ideas is not designed for a business model. Using your analogy its like giving all the land away to the people that need it then deciding that you shouldn't have. The current infrastructure built on the internet simply does not support the standard business model it hasn't since it was built.

You're missing the point by a mile.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

This is not an issue about robots.txt. The real question here is much, much simpler: who is going to pay for news reporting on a national and international scale?

The AP does, in effect, two things:

1. Pay for news reporting all over the country and the world.
2. Aggregate the news stories and provide them for members and subscribers to republish promptly.

The problem is simple: search engines and other web aggregators are, at best, only good for (2). Even that is arguable, actually, since they only aggregate content that's already been published; the news agencies aggregate before publication. But in any case, the web news aggregators aren't actually doing a lot to actually fund news reporting.

Re:You're missing the point by a mile.

[Anonymous Coward]

so here's what would happen if it was allowed to run its natural course.

AP would lose money and stop writing and publishing content. aggregators would have nowhere to get content from. laid off reporters would have to go work for the new "news" divisions of the aggregators who actually SUCCEEDED at #2. google would become the new AP.

From NPR and wire service reports

[wiredog]

and wire service reports

Missing the point.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

What happens when something that was once scarce and difficult to produce (content printed on paper, music pressed onto vinyl or CDs) becomes abundant and cheap (digitally copied)?

You're missing the point. News reports are produced by reporting, which is as scarce of a resource as it always has been. The cheapness of reproducing the actual finished report doesn't affect the cost of reporting.

Re:Missing the point.

[DeweyQ]

I really don't think I'm missing the point. I said scarce goods "like the artist's time". The reporting is indeed a scarce resource. However, payment for that effort doesn't necessarily need to come from the copying and distribution side of the business model. In fact, my assertion is that, with zero marginal cost for copying and distributing, that part of the creative process doesn't make sense as a means of recouping the cost of reporting.

I mentioned patronage only to illustrate that the current business model is not the only possible one.

Who the hell mods this up?

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

What we're wondering is: If we blog about our activities, and AP picks up the info and reports it, are they saying that we have to pay AP to have the same information on our own web site? If we've blogged about it and AP reports it, is AP saying that we must remove the information from our blogs?

Um, no, silly. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if somebody sent you such a notice by mistake, but (a) they don't have the right in that situation to demand that you take it down (since you didn't get your content from them), (b) it's not in their interest to pursue frivolous legal claims.

But without the AP, new might have variety!

[neo]

Since everyone is picking up the same boiler plate stories from the AP and putting practically NO spin on them at all, I would be happy to see the AP disappear. "Reporters" are literally sitting on the AP wire for a new story so they can jump it and post it as their own story.

I have CC pictures up on Flickr and one was used in an AP story about, of all things, Obama's old pool table. The picture I took was of my grandmother's pool table, but it was free (with attribution) so it ran... and ran... and ran... I stopped ego surfing for it awhile ago but there were double digit "news" sources using the image on the web.

Forget that it wasn't a picture of Obama's pool table. Forget that a story about auctioning a pool table hardly counts as news. Think of the fact that each of these news outlets were basically copy/pasting the same story over and over.

You're getting one view of a story from the mainstream and it's usually the AP version. The sooner we lose this single new filter the sooner we may get a variety of reporters take on a story.

If you want to get paid for your work

[Alarindris]

don't put it up for free on the internet!

Wait a second. . .

[kimvette]

They want revenue from sites which link to their articles? Here's a hint, AP: If you put it on the interweb, it's going to get linked to. However, if you try to squeeze money out of people, they'll just lift your content and NOT link to you, causing you to lose revenue.

Think of links to your content as free adverting, driving more product (readers/viewers) to your site or affilate sites. Or, if you're so retarded, er, um, I mean "mentally challenged," more directly to the point: links to your stories are free money. Take it and stop complaining about it.

FWIW, I'd LOVE to see Yahoo. Google, et. al ban you from their indexes/indices for a month. You'll change your tune real fast, because with newspapers dying, the Internet is all you have keeping your gangrene-infested corpse alive right now.

There is plenty of legwork being done by bloggers

[sean.peters]

At least at the national level. See http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ for an example - it started off as a single blogger who actually dug for news. Now it's up to about a dozen people, and they do a really good job of reporting.

The problem, in my view, is LOCAL news. There's no one who's really filling the role of the local paper in holding the local politicos accountable. It used to be that the county board had to tread at least a little bit lightly when cutting crooked deals with real estate developers, for example... because they couldn't discount the possibility that the County Post was checking up on what was going on. But now the County Post only publishes online, and only AP stories and blogs. There's really very little local reporting going on any more.

What am I not getting?

[blackbox_jones]

Search engines? Aggregators? Don't they want people to link to their site? I'd think that the standard would "if you bring us readers, we like that, that's good. If you reproduce all our content without bringing viewers to our site, that's bad." Litigating against people who link to their site seems self-destructive to me. What don't I understand?

they better not use Europe as an example.

[Anonymous Coward]

European news outlets may have gotten some of the laws they where asking for, but it doesn't seem to prevent them from falling over.

What makes you think advertisers want YOUR ...

[crovira]

model.

They have their own web sites now and don't need to advertise on anything else but the web (That's why they got a web site.)

The business model of the press has never worked properly but as long as "the power of the press belonged to those who owned one" as Liebnitz famously said, they were forced into it because its takes a lot of money ad hard work to keep an offset press fed.

But now they own a computers, or even access to one, put up their web sites and let Google find them.

Their expenses are minimized (they aren't paying for the press, the paper, the inks, the transportation or for all of those people,) and the company is much better off handling marketing and sales through the internet.

Its is definitely not perfect, but its so much cheaper than the old way of trying to do things that its good enough.

Without some self-interested bodies to enforce "perfect", like the newspaper publishers, good enough will do.

Specially since its rolling up the costs of marketing and advertising and CRM into one tighter wad.

The internet and web 2.5 has destroyed the existing power structures utterly, they just don't realize it yet.

That is actually a good business model

[crovira]

and as long as you don't charge more than people think its worth, you can make money.

Distributing links to .PDFs via RSS onto a "For $" site is the way to go.

Nuts To That.....!

[IHC Navistar]

So the AP wants money for web sites that list or link to it's articles?

NUTS TO THAT!

Just being the asshole that I am, here is my reply:

-----

A.P. Seeks to Rein in Sites Using Its Content

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: April 6, 2009

Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that Web sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not.

A.P. executives said they were concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds.

They said they did not want to stop the appearance of articles around the Web, but to exercise some control over the practice and to profit from it.

The group's new stance applies to thousands of news organizations whose work is distributed by The A.P., as well as its own material, but the debate about unauthorized use has focused on newspapers, which are in serious financial trouble, and which own The A.P. The policies were adopted by the A.P. board, composed mostly of newspaper industry executives.

The A.P. will "work with portals and other partners who legally license our content" and will "seek legal and legislative remedies against those who don't," the A.P. chairman, William Dean Singleton, said Monday in a speech at the group's annual meeting, in San Diego. "We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories."

News aggregators and search companies have long asserted that collecting snippets of articles -- usually headlines and a sentence or two -- is allowed under the legal doctrine of "fair use." News organizations have been reluctant to test that idea in court, and it is still not clear whether The A.P. is willing to test the fair use doctrine.

"This is not about defining fair use," said Sue A. Cross, a senior vice president of the group, who added several times during an interview that news organizations want to work with the aggregators, not against them. "There's a bigger economic issue at stake here that we're trying to tackle."

But the details remain to be worked out, she said, including how to limit use of articles and how to share revenue. When asked if The A.P. would require a licensing agreement before a search engine could show specific material, Ms. Cross said, "that could be an element of it," but added, "it's not that formed."

One goal of The A.P. and its members, she said, is to make sure that the top search engine results for news are "the original source or the most authoritative source," not a site that copied or paraphrased the work.

The A.P. will also pursue sites that reproduce large parts of articles, rather than using brief links, and it is developing a system to track articles online and determine whether they were used legally.

Neither Mr. Singleton nor a statement released by The A.P. mentioned any adversary by name. But many news executives, including some at The A.P., have voiced concern that their work has become a source of revenue for Google and other sites that can sell search terms or ads on pages that turn up articles.

At a time when newspaper revenue is collapsing and some papers are closing, the prospect of a share of revenue from Yahoo or Google is more tempting than ever. But executives at some news organizations have called the ire at the search engines misguided, saying that much of their own Web traffic arrives through links on search pages.

"We believe search engines are of real benefit to newspapers, driving valuable traffic to their Web sites and connecting them with new readers around the world," said Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman. "We believe that both Google Web Search and Google News are fully con

Don't we all want to be paid for our work?

[malcomreynolds]

How many sysadmins do we have reading this? We are knowledge workers or perhaps, better yet "information workers". We are paid for not only having the information in our heads but also for processing that information into something useful (e.g. a backup concept, a Perl script, a freshly installed database.) The company we work for gets paid for providing that processed information to customers. (or at least they *want* to get paid)

How would *we* feel if our customers sold the backup concept or Perl script to someone else? Is that OK? What about cloning the hard disk with the OS and database we installed? Is that OK?

AP pays reporters to either to go get the stories or pays for already written stories. In other words, they pay for someone's knowledge and for the processing of that knowledge into a more easily usable form. How is that different from a Perl script? If we get upset because AP expects people to pay for that story they paid for, then we cannot get upset if our customer decides to make money off of that Perl script we wrote. They don't need to sell it, just implement it 1:1 on a different system.

If I wrote a book on Linux, in all likelihood the information is available for free somewhere on the Internet. I am simply processing it a more usable form. (perhaps easier to read) Since "information wants to be free", everyone should have the right to simply copy the book and give it away to whomever I like, right? Or perhaps 1000 sites provide half-page excerpts from the book and "by coincidence" a tool that will combine those excepts into a single document. That's OK because no single site it providing the entire book, right?

Let's assume you are not the one who copied it, but you simply have link to a website which contains my complete book. Perhaps that is not directly illegal, but it is not immoral? Unethical? Unfair?

On my site I do not have a copy of your Perl script or an ISO image of the hard disk with the database you installed. I just have a link to the site that does. Even if the script is available for free on *your* website, shouldn't *you* have the right to say what other people can do with it?

If we are not going to respect the right AP has to make money from their work, why should I care when *your* job is outsourced to India? Like your company when IT operations end up on Mumbai, Google is simply trying to save money. That's OK, right?

Re:Don't we all want to be paid for our work?

[Todd Knarr]

How would *we* feel if our customers sold the backup concept or Perl script to someone else? Is that OK? What about cloning the hard disk with the OS and database we installed? Is that OK?

Except that what the AP is complaining about isn't the equivalent of your customers giving away the backup system, it's about someone who isn't your customer telling anybody who asks "These are all the people using this nifty backup system, talk to them if you want it.". And when people who get that referral go to your customers and get the backup system, well, your customers paid you for the right to do that. Because when a newspaper pays for an AP wire feed so they can put AP stories up on their Web site, that's exactly what they're paying for: the right to show AP news stories to anybody visiting their Web site. If the AP wants to say that's not what newspapers and news sites are paying for, I suspect they'll be getting some letters from annoyed customer legal departments quoting relevant contract provisions.

What the AP wants isn't to get paid when a news site reproduces their stories, they're already being paid for that. What they want is to be paid whenever anybody out there says "Hey, news site X is carrying this neat story! Go read it!". Well, I want a pony, too, but that doesn't mean somebody's obliged to give me one.

Re:Don't we all want to be paid for our work?

[malcomreynolds]

To so extent I might agree that my analogy is not 100% the same. However, your's is not either. I think the book would be a better one. Assume I wrote a book and someone takes an except from it and publishes it as an article in a magazine. Neither I nor my publisher get anything for it.

While code snippets or excerpts from books fall within the category of "fair use", I personally believe the article snippets do not. If the article contains 1000 words, then a 50 word snippet is 5%. Do you have the right to borrow my book from someone who bought it themselves and then re-print 25 contiguous page of my 500 page book? By the time I read the first 50 words of the 1000 word article, I have already gained the "news benefit" and without anyone paying for the work done. Obviously there is more to the story, but readers still have benefit from the 5% plus the aggregate site benefits, all without paying the person who actually did the work. So, it is not like "Hey, news site X is carrying this neat story! Go read it!" because the aggregation site is obviously providing more than just a headline. With the snippit the site is giving you the *intended* benefit (news) and gaining a commercial benefit themselves. AP gets nothing for their work.

Then you have the issue of sites providing links to people who have simply copied the article without paying for it. I personally think it is unethical to have a commercial benefit from that link without paying for the material. People visit the aggregation sites because they are aggregation sites. They then collect advertising income. It is even more unethical to gain commericial benefit and then hide behind the statement "I didn't provide material illegally, I just pointed you to it."

The biggest problem I see is the freetards who do not want to pay for other people's work and are the first ones to complain when someone doesn't pay them. These are usually the same group who say you *must* follow the GPL (or whatever license) but do not have to listen to others about how to treat the other person's work. (that is, they can distribute music or articles all they want) It's hypocritical to put it mildly.

I personally support the right of the record companies to prosecute people who share music to the general public, although I do not support the tactics of the RIAA. It is not your place to say the record companies are making "too much". They made an investment in a band, have to cover the advertisement and distribution costs and run the risk of the album being a flop. Is it wrong for them to make money? If you think so, then simply stop buying CDs and DVDs, and stop going to movies. If enough people did that then maybe the record companies would get the message. However, by putting music or news articles online without paying for that right, you are stealing or at least you are aiding the theft. If you download it, you *are* stealing. Period. You have no absolute right to that music. (In Germany, there is no problem with making a copy for your sister or neighbor. However, making it publicly available is illegal.)

I run an informational website for *free*. I have Google ads to help cover my costs. Is it really fair or ethical to block the ads? Although you are not paying for anything, you are actively denying me a little big to help cover my costs. Is that ethically or morally correct? Certain features are only available if you register (for *free*). Is it fair or ethical for people to publicly provide a username and password to access these features "anonymously" so you do not have to register yourself? (this *has* happened) This is worse in my mind than stealing movies or music, as you would have access to the features and information for free if you were simply willing to following my rules for *free*.

It seems like too many people believe that as long are you are not personally effected, then you should not have to pay for other people's work. I would be curious to know how many people reading this think it is OK to provide others with a usern

Robots.txt...

[msauve]

why should a web site have to explicitly exclude content. Why shouldn't exclusion be the default, and there be a standard for including/permitting content to be cached/indexed/???

Re:Robots.txt...

[DrJimbo]

why should a web site have to explicitly exclude content.

Maybe because that is the agreed upon standard that is already 15 years old.

Why shouldn't exclusion be the default, and there be a standard for including/permitting content to be cached/indexed/???

Some enterprising company did introduce an opt in protocol named Sitemaps in 2005. The name of this company you ask? Why Google of course.

When the robots.txt protocol was established in 1994, it made sense for it to be opt-out. The Internet has evolved mightily in the ensuing 15 years and now opt-in would probably make more sense, but we can't go back in time to change the protocol. But this really isn't about opt-in verus opt-out. The robots.txt file is rather trivial to implement. If the AP has the technical know-how to run a fairly sophisticated web site, they must have the technical know-how to write a robots.txt, even if it would be slightly more convenient for them to use a slightly different format.

If they don't want Google to index their site, the should provide the proper robots.txt file. It is really not that difficult. The difficulty occurs because the AP wants Google to index their site but they also want Google to pay for this priviledge.

Corporate Censorship

[scdeimos]

Re-reporting news with attributions has always been acceptable in the past. This new behaviour amounts to nothing short of censorship. It's censoring as a source of revenue, however, instead of censoring "to protect the people" as governments try to do. I'd like to see governments step in and step on these guys to end this now.

Re:Corporate Censorship

[malcomreynolds]

Who said it has been "acceptable"? I don't know of anyone. It has simply been tolerated. Marijuana use in Holland is tolerated and you usually don't get arrest for smoking or even selling it. However, it it is still not acceptable. AP didn't bother with the problem until now because we were not in a recession. Now we are. Newspapers are closing and so they are loosing customers. Either they get the freeloaders to pay for the work or they stop doing the work. Besides, it is not an issue of "Re-reporting news". It is an issue of copying someone else's work, earning money by copying it and not paying for the original work. I know this is /., but please RTFA.

think it through

[circletimessquare]

"finding your own information from the internet" leads you to sources of trustworthy news... which happens to be the free press, or a derivative of, that you just dissed

Meh.

[msauve]

Maybe because that is the agreed upon standard

Agreed upon by whom? Obviously NOT by the web site owners who don't want their stuff archived.

that is already 15 years old

Copyright law has been around much longer than that.

Re:Meh.

[DrJimbo]

[robots.txt] Agreed upon by whom?

The link I provided answered that question.

Obviously NOT by the web site owners who don't want their stuff archived.

We disagree. The problem is NOT that AP refuses to use or understand the robots.txt convention. The problem is that they obviously DO want Google to index their site. If the didn't, they could simply say:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

But they don't say that. Adding that little file is a thousand times easier than configuring a web server so this notion that there is some sort of technical hurdle or opt-in versus opt-out philosophical disagreement here is absurd. If the AP forbids Google from indexing their site then the amount of traffic they get will plummet which would be financially ruinous.

The AP wants Google to index their site and they also want to get paid for Google providing this service to them. But Google doesn't want to pay for providing this service so the AP has a very simple choice:

1. Let Google continue providing the free service, or
2. Ask Google to stop providing the free service

robots.txt = the Evil bit

[Millennium]

Remember the April Fool's joke a while back, where they talked about adding an "Evil" bit flag to IP packets? The idea was that malicious network traffic would turn this flag on, and then firewalls which didn't want to accept such traffic could block it out.

This was, of course, just a joke. Even had anyone tried to implement it, no malicious coder in their right mind would turn the bit on. The problem with robots.txt is that it suffers the same weakness: malicious code can simply ignore it. Thus, it provides no real protection; it's useful as a guide for well-behaved robots, but not as any sort of defense.

Perform a miracle: RTFA

[malcomreynolds]

No, AP does not want "money for web sites that list or link to it's articles". The want people to pay for their work. If you have a link "AP story about earthquake in Italy", they are not going to say anything. However, provide verbatim copies of the lead paragraph you are beyond the scope of "fair use" as it has already provided the news service.

If there is a page with 20 headlines, and absolutely nothing else, I am likely to click on one or more of the links, thus going to a site that has paid for the AP feed. However, if there are 20 headlines which include the lead paragraph, I have already gained the necessary benefit without clicking the link. So the paying customer does not get the benefit of my visit, only the freeloader does.

AP says, ""This is not about defining fair use. There's a bigger economic issue at stake here that we're trying to tackle." Either companies like AP find other sources of revenue or the only thing we have left is Faux News. Since they make up everything in the backroom anyway, they don't have the the costs of sending people to war zones or areas devastated by earthquakes.

Pay people for their work!!!

I don't think you know what that AP word means!

[Anonymous Coward]

> AP for content, we can get that anywhere.

You do know that the _ASSOCIATED_ Press is owned by the newspapers themselves, right? The AP retreads their own stories.

Belgique Redux

[Mana Mana]

> 1) Refuse to let Google and other search engines index your stories
> 2) Google removes all newspapers with AP content from its indexing

Google reached its own accord with AP years ago. Google is not in the cross hairs of the AP.

No one mentioned it months after the Belgium incident, but, the Belgian newspapers griped loudly publicly that their loss of Google traffic was hurting them!

Easy enough

[dave87656]

I think google should simply take AP off their service. There are so many news sources most of which are happy to have google index them to bring more traffic to their sight. Adieu AP and don't let the door hit you on the way out.