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

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: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/

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.

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?

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.

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: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.