Inside the AP's Plan To Security-Wrap Its News Content

suraj.sun writes with an excerpt from this story at Ars Technica that the "Associated Press, reeling from the newspaper apocalypse, has a new plan to 'wrap' and 'protect' its content though a 'digital permissions framework.' The Associated Press last week rolled out its brave new plan to 'apply protective format to news.' The AP's news registry will 'tag and track all AP content online to assure compliance with terms of use,' and it will provide a 'platform for protect, point, and pay.' That's a lot of 'p'-prefaced jargon, but it boils down to a sort of DRM for news — 'enforcement,' in AP-speak."

Comments

Re:I thought Slashdot was filled with geeks

[Freetardo Jones]

You actually expect either the submitter or the editor to read the article instead of just mischaracterizing the story by just making shit up?

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Pointless

[Hatta]

No, Bridis replied. "What I'm talking about, and what has really riled up our internal copyright folks, are the bloggers who take, just paste an entire 800 word story into their blog. They don't even comment on it. And it happens way more than most people realize."

If that happens way more than people realize, then people are unaware of these sites. If people are unaware of these sites, then they don't visit them, in which case they cannot be competition to the AP.

Re:Pointless

[InverseParadox]

If that happens way more than people realize, then people are unaware of these sites. If people are unaware of these sites, then they don't visit them, in which case they cannot be competition to the AP.

Not necessarily.

In order for someone to realize that that has happened, they need to both see the story on the blog and see the story attributed to the AP. I don't find it particularly implausible that many or most people reading such a blog might not read the AP directly; I'm not positive I've ever read a story directly from the AP, as opposed to a citation of an AP story by someone else. (A case where their prominence works against them; many people (and more news organizations) cite AP reports in their own stories, but few people - other than those doing the citing - seem to feel the need to read the originals.)

If most people see the story in only one place, then most people won't realize that the story is being copied wholesale. If the one place where they see the story is the AP and they don't visit the blogs, that's fine; if the one place where they see the story is the blog and they don't visit the AP, then that's not so fine. The argument would be that the latter is what is happening.

Has DRM in any form ever actually worked?

[electricprof]

I recall the early days of development, sales and distribution for PC software. A bunch of different anti-piracy methods were pursued, we all heard about the enormous amounts of money being lost to piracy, etc. In the end all these approaches really did was piss off the legitimate users and make the software less attractive. It's not exactly clear to me if the software industry really has any effective DRM system now, although they seem to have some things that look they are trying to protect themselves. I suspect the media industry will go through a similar evolution ... kicking, screaming and whining all the way.

The AP Has No Clue What They're Doing

[vertigoCiel]

So, if you can't be bothered to RTFA, the AP obviously has no idea what they're talking about. Some snake oil salesman came along and told them that Microformats are magic digital beans that will protect their content with some sort of "tracking beacon" that will phone home and prevent infringement.

This is so cluelessly ridiculous that I can't decide if it's hilarious or just sad.

Re:The AP Has No Clue What They're Doing

[wytcld]

That's why it's so important that our access to AP content must continue unrestricted. Where else can be get so many articles by so many writers who have no idea what they're talking about?

With blogs, we generally visit those where we already know the level of "idea what they're talking about" from past reading or reputation. But the AP is an outfit that slaps its trademark across writing of such uneven levels of "idea what they're talking about" that reading them becomes a constantly-entertaining puzzle for each article: "Can you spot everything that's wrong with this picture?"

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Why is this tagged "republican"

[tjstork]

Republicans are farmers, miners and oil drillers and then small business owners at the core. There are plenty of rank and file Republicans who would just as soon let IP laws fall by the wayside because liberals are so concentrated in businesses that benefit from copyright laws.

Re:Not again

[Anonymous Coward]

First people bitched about newspapers becoming redundant because it's all 'recycled stuff from the AP'. Well, what happens when the AP is gone? I guess we'll be left with talking heads regurgitating the news.

AP is a news gathering service. Sometimes they swindle regular Joe for a free photo/ video/ article, but most AP submitters are freelancers working to gather news full-time. As a former news-gatherer (didn't make enough money to cover my business insurance) - I'll gather stuff for free once my bills and housing become free too. If I had a cushy CS job during the day and did news-gathering at night, yea, I'd give AP my stuff for free.

Hell, even getting a copy of court transcripts require a small fee; a FOIA request, etc. Information shouldn't be censored, but I don't think charging $0.75 cents is unreasonably prohibitive that it could be considered 'elitist' or censorship.

Information, in my opinion, has always been out there for "free," but the problem you see, who wants to take their time to get them? Who wants to spend the hours between 9:30a-5:30p every Tue and Thur in city hall listening to council people debate? Journalists are there to distill information, and with the help of the editor decide what's relevant to people. Unfortunately what people "demand" these days often overrule the editor - i.e. Michael Jackson's death 'conspiracy.'

I think in the end whatever the AP bigwigs decide, or what the netizen thinks what should be "free," the people in the frontlines gathering news will still be fucked.

Re:That sound you just heard

[nurb432]

AP hasn't been a "professional news gathering service" for a long time. They turned into a bunch of biased 'editorialists' decades ago.

And now they want to restrict access to their drivel? Cya..

This is more worrying

[Obispus]

From the Ars Technica article:

Down the road, of course, the AP might go to Congress and ask that whatever tracking and rights system it settles on be given the force of law. It's not as crazy as it sounds; European publishers already hope to get a law enforcing the Automated Content Access Protocol.

If content providers get the ability to enforce moronic schemes like this one, many people may find themselves in the receiving end of lawsuits--even some who just followed older fair-use provisions.

AP wants free money "because I'm worth it"

[David Gerard]

AP has asked the Government to examine Google News and other content aggregators, claiming they contribute insufficiently to their income.

"The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it. We told them to pay up or stop using our stuff, and they said OK, they'd stop using our stuff! We need the Government to bring back balance, 'balance' defined as being able to make them give us money because we want it. You'd think the Internet wasn't invented to give news publishers and record companies free money!"

The AP argues that traffic from search engines does not make up the cost of producing the content. "Ad revenue has collapsed, so search engine traffic doesn't bring in enough views to pay for itself. Our inability to sell ads is clearly Google's problem."

The AP suggests the exploration of new models that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site through DRM and lawsuits and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation. Basically, they should just give us money because we want it. And the music industry too. How about a bailout? Go on, gi's it."

Re:Robot Scrapers

[grcumb]

The plan is to basically embed some sort of web bug in the HTML, which will help AP identify the scrapers, which will allow them to file an honest lawsuit, in which the infringing scraper will show up in court, hat in hand, and beg forgiveness.

This is sad for several reasons.

1. The AP believes that these scrapers are actually a serious threat to the AP's revenue stream.
2. The AP believes that the people who run these scrapers won't be able to strip their tracking bugs out
3. The AP believes that it'll be able to find and sue the operators and make them stop, instead of just driving them into jurisdictions that don't care.
4. The AP is confusing these scrapers with legitimate aggregators, like Google News, and legitimate bloggers, and thus making lots of enemies

I think you're wrong on the last count. I think they are thinking primarily of 'legitimate' aggregators. I think their entire plan is predicated on being able to coerce large search engines to comply with their rules of behaviour with regards to their material.

I agree that this is technically naive and suicidal as a business tactic. Even if the large search engines agree to whatever conditions are put on the use of the content, they'll only do so to the extent that playing nice serves their needs. The only leverage AP would have in case of non-adherence to their rules is the suicide option - cutting off access to their own content.

But vested interests the world over have demonstrated their capacity for self-inflicted damage and, more to the point, their ability to damage others on their way down.

Count on a large-scale political push to 'protect their rights' - and to enumerate those rights in the most profit-making way possible, even if that means trashing fair use entirely.

Count as well on Google, Microsoft and whoever else is running a top-tier US-based search engine to compromise themselves (and their service) in order to avoid getting kicked out of the boys' club that is the American corporate establishment.

And count on the anarcho-geeks of the world to have the entire process deconstructed, reverse-engineered and made a mockery of within about 4 days, too. They will be litigated and even prosecuted for their pains.

The net result will be that AP's demise will be delayed by a few months, and the development of a robust, gift-based online economy will be delayed by some multiple of that.

Re:Your services are no longer needed

[commodore64_love]

>>>I got skeptical with the anti-government rant and quit when you cited a fictional sci-fi television show for "evidence".

First-off I didn't cite it as evidence. I never used that word, despite you falsely-quoting it. Second, are you saying a lesson can never be learned from fiction? "A Modest Proposal" about serving children as food, never had any impact on society, or led to welfare programs for the children? AMP may have been fiction but it did make people stop-and-think.

All I was doing was expressing an opinion that reporters are pro-big government biased, and that you really can't believe what you see on the TV, because it's so easily distorted. I then cited "Illusion of Truth" not as evidence, but as a demonstration of how easy it is to chop-up what people say, rearrange those quotes, and turn them into a negative outcome. That was why the author wrote that episode - to make people stop and think.

If you prefer a real-world example, just watch "Bowling for Columbine" where the producer rather creatively takes 3 different Charles Heston speeches, rearranges them, and merges them together as one speech. What gives it away is the color of Heston's tie which changes from red to black to red in a mere two minutes time.

This producer won an award for his outstanding "reporting" but I call it biased, slanted, distorted. The evening news is no better, with their distortion of the truth (an illusion of truth), never once suggesting a less government solution, and instead always recommending more-and-more government. Clear bias.

At least with internet-based news reporting, instead of just hearing the one-sided view of the national megacorps, we'd get to hear a wide variety of views which is healthier for society.