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AP and 28 News Groups To Collect Fees From Aggregators
jjp9999 writes "The Associated Press is launching the NewsRight project to make aggregators pay for content. Some of the top names in the news industry are currently on board, including New York Times Co. and Washington Post Co, and they're currently negotiating with Gannett, Tribune, Cox and News Corp. The project will license original news from the media companies and collect royalties from aggregators. The use of lawsuits and threats of lawsuits are already on the agenda. NewsRight's first salesperson starts work this week."
I'm sure they will have worked out the bugs that RightHaven have, and continue down that same road..
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
This is covered under Fair Use as one of the provision is reporting the news. Most RSS only provides a small snippet, enough to cover the basics of the story and is not subject to copyright.
Righthaven, is that you?
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
If this will affect slashdot.
I bet this ties in to SOPA ..
Let them keep their content, and their ad revenue. Screw them.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
NewsRight will target companies that “make heavy (and commercial) use of content originated elsewhere. They are being asked to become payers rather than free riders,” states Poynter.
What's wrong with this model? Its similar to how the FSF sues large commercial GPL violators because they breached copyright the FSF owned.
Or socialism?
What if we'd just pool together alot of money to employ loads of journalists to do quality journalism, kind of like the how the BBC and other public service broadcasters work?
It seems to me they (like BBC, SVT, YLE, NRK, which are the ones I've watched/listened to) do actual real journalism instead of commercial bullshit.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Newsright Salesdroid: Hello Google? I'm from Newsright, and I'm calling to set up your payment plan for aggregation of AP/Gannett news on your website..
Google: Say WHAT?? You've GOT to be kidding... We are NOT going to pay YOU!! In fact, YOU should be paying US to publicise YOU..
Newsright Salesdroid: If you don't pay, we sue..
Google: (sound of lots of laughter) Tell ya what.. Why don't we just NOT aggregate your content, that way we're happy/you're happy...
Newsright Salesdroid: Ummm... I guess that would be ok...
FAST FORWARD A MONTH..
Newsright CEO at management meeting to salesdroid on Google account: WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO??? Traffic to our clients is down 85%, and they are
PISSED... You're FIRED!!!!
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
does this include slashdot?
The news sites are getting add'l advertising from folks steered to their sites from Google, Digg, /., etc.
That is a valuable service that generates revenue for the news organizations.
This may not bode well for the north country gazette
I thought the whole point of distributing news articles through the Associated Press was to share them so ANYONE in the media, including so-called "New Media", could publish them.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
... suddenly cried out Stallman Was Right!
I agree completely, migla. People should really spend more time digging in depth to find well thought out arguments instead of knee jerk reactions based on something as superficial as a title. Its not like a title is supposed to be some type of summary of the internal contents. They should probably just get rid of that box completely.
might actually have to ---summarize a topic instead of copy-pasting the first fucking paragraph---
what will become of the site?
Yes, it is, but the "traditional media" pay AP for that privilege and the argument is that so should the "new media" that publish these articles.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Reporters: pay a license to NewsRight or don't write silly programs to auto review our content.
Doctors: go through AMA accredited medical school and certification or forget about giving flu shots.
Lawyers go through private (!!!) Bar association with its arbitrary rules to get into the profession or forget about practicing law
Actors: no more than 2 SAG appearances without joining the SAG or you are in violation of the law.
Programmers: all software should be free. Everyone should give away the secret sauce which makes their software run or they are acting immorally. For some added injury, let's invite hundreds of thousands indentured workers on H1 visas, to compete with professional programmers on wages and work conditions. Let's not call them immigrants (with all the rights of green card holders). Let's make them depend on their employer for 5-10 years to get a green card.
Yes, there are top programmers who make what a doctor makes. But top doctors, lawyers and actors make 100 fold. I wonder why that is. I wonder what lawyers would cost if most lawyers thought that legal services were a right that must be given away as much as possible. You might think that I am trolling, but the pattern is unmistakable. Professions which do not give up control over results of their labor have higher wages.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Conan O'Brien may be about to push the envelope on late night. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GME5nq_oSR4
I've got an instinctive negative reaction to news like this since it usually has something to do with the RIAA or such extorting money, but as long as this only applies to sites that really are just leaching off of newspaper content I'm not going to cry about it. Or course that isn't what's going to happen, in a few months we'll hear about how they're suing some sap with a two-bit blog who made a comment about such-and-such.
Ah well. I give a little more slack to the newspapers since they're one of the few commercial enterprises that actually do provide a necessary public service. Ideally, of course, they would be not-for-profit - every time we spend seven weeks hearing about Micheal Jackson and about nothing important I punch a stockholder in the teeth. None the less, we would be far worse off if the New York Times and the Washington Post weren't around.
That would be barratry, not barristry.
Barratry is the practice of filing frivolous and baseless lawsuits in an attempt to harass and extort.
Barristry is something quite different.
It sounds like this is an attempt to create the MPAA of news. On one hand, I feel like this won't really affect the casual reader since most folks get their news through a source that would not have problems with this (e.g. local channels, newspapers, Google News,e tc.) On the other hand, I feel like it's an immoral attempt to control the flow of information.
It seems that Google saw this coming, as there have been several stories in the last couple months about the fact that quotations, or wholesale reprints of articles posted by users on Google+ are being rated higher by the Google algorithm than the original articles. If this is actually true, and not just tinfoil hattery, then users may just become the routing mechanism for news while the official aggregator becomes a bit more barren. A similar mechanic may also work with sites like Twitter or Reddit if they are able to argue that they're not aggregating the news, and their users are just posting links to articles.
By working as a group, they gain enough leverage to get what they want. If any of the individual companies pulled out of these news aggregators, the agreggators would be no worse for wear and the news company would suffer the lack of traffic. So, they band together to extract their protection money. Smart... probably illegal, but maybe not. After all the RIAA and the MPAA seem to operate as illegal trusts with impunity.
NewsRight demands fees. Microsoft pays and pretends they're taking the moral high ground, in a complicated fashion that actually kicks the money back to them somehow. Other big aggregators tell them they'd rather just not include the content, and blacklist the NewsRight providers. Newsright finds some small 1-person website run by a disabled female veteran putting out news for the blind in a screen-reader friendly format, and sues her for One Millon Dollars. Streisand ensues, and Newsright crawls away with its tail between its legs. Meanwhile the members of Newsright cut side deals with the big aggregators and/or withdraw from the organization.
They might as well go with an already established brand.
I'd like that with a side of golden goose, please.
I read the news. A lot. The current system is broken. Look at sites like my.yahoo.com, which used to aggregate credible sources and provide links. I could choose a Reuters group, a Sports Illustrated group, Asia News, whatever. Clicking on a link would take me to a Reuters, eg, page. Now all the news links go to news.yahoo.com and give shit like this: http://news.yahoo.com/single-tuna-fetches-record-736k-japan-auction-040041043.html That's a yahoo.com page, with Yahoo links and ads all over it, with a small logo suggesting that the article came from AFP. Yahoo is eating AFP's lunch (and all the other people who do the work getting the news and writing it up). Parasitic is the best way to describe this. If this new venture can get good sources of news rewarded by collecting from aggregators then how does it make things worse? I'm completely in agreement with fair use; this ain't it.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
I can't find any reason to argue with that. If the AP is funded by membership fees of some kind, so should anyone else using it as a source.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Heil to our new Media Overlords.
How about stop providing RSS feeds. Or at least put it behind a pay-wall. Ever here of robot.txt? Stop suing because of your technical incompetence.
Dumb-asses.
-CF
Anyone here run a News aggregator (you know, like Yahoo! News)? Because I've never seen /. link to an AP story so ya'll come off as whiners, whining because you think you'll have to pay for an RSS feed which is clearly not the case.
IMO, news aggrigators cause a homoginzation of news stories. Now, news papers will have an incentive to publish unique, interesting stories.
Step back from the question of copyright in the Internet age, fair use, quantity displayed, etc. Think about the meta-concepts, and it just doesn't feel right.
Here's how the free market that is all sunshine and puppies is supposed to work: Joe makes something that he thinks people will enjoy. He puts it out on the market, and asks for some price. Bill walks by and decides he'd like to have that thing. So he looks at the price, compares it to his perceived value, maybe makes a counter offer, eventually he gives Joe more than it cost Joe to make it, and gets a product that is worth more to Bill than it cost. They both win, and they both decide to do it of their own free will. They're both so pleased with the transaction that they start thinking of ways to make it happen again. Bill goes and collects more dollars (by starting his own thing-making operation). Joe uses that money to make more stuff (by going out and giving his dollars to other people who sell materials). It's this crazy self-catalyzing engine of productivity.
Now we have content. Bill decides not to pay the creator, but to profit from the content. It may be legal, but he's making a profit without paying the person who put the stuff together in the first place. Meanwhile, Joe doesn't start where he should, either. Instead of thinking, "Gee, there's a whole new way to distribute news. Maybe I could find a new way to package and sell this stuff. Maybe make it easier for new guys who are going to compete with Bill. Might even be a disruptive competitor will come along, pay me for access through this new system, and put Bill out of business. I should put out a press release saying that I'm looking to develop new kinds of relationships with entrepreneurs who are willing to pay for privileged access." No, instead of trying to innovate and compete Bill into irrelevance, he sues. I figure this largely boils down to Joe not wanting to develop a new product or new customers, he wants to take money from the companies that already have a lot of it because it is easier.
I can't see either side as being the noble bastion of what is in the best interests of advancing the progress of science and the useful arts. Seems like both sides are total ponces who should be tossed under the bus at earliest convenience. Bill not paying, and Joe not innovating -- they're both consigning themselves to certain death. If Bill were paying, Joe wouldn't be pissed off and looking for ways to sue. If Joe were coming up with ways to package and sell his media to partner distributors that was a value-add compared to scraping (and I can sit here and come up with half a dozen ways off the top of my head), he wouldn't be getting his lunch eaten by a total elimination of the operational principle that made copyright work (copying used to have a non-zero cost).
Right? Wrong? They're both idiots, and neither side has come up with a remotely acceptable answer to this new reality. The sooner we can get over our addiction to what worked 20 years ago and come up with some new answers for funding the creators of content, the better. Until then, this whole mess is fundamentally broken and I would rather see both sides crash and burn, see what comes from the ashes, than continue the charade that something good can come of this.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
NYT could simply post their articles behind a pay wall, or setup a robots.txt or only publish their articles in print.
They are simply struggling with a new reality. Once portrait painters made a mint and wealthy families got them selves a portrait every year. That job moved onto photographers. Then it moved onto home cameras and film and now it is gone, eroding every step of the way. Now all that is left is the Santa photo at Christmas.
The do some product placement by including the shopping center logo, you pay a small fee, and you walk away with a photo of your precious pulling at a fake beard.
It sucks to be them, but if they don't innovate and adapt somebody else will.
And then i start the NEW FREE PRESS...and then....
Did I just say that? The next thing you know I will be wearing a "Bra on my Head" Weird Science
All cows eat grass!
I have some answers for you:
Third-tier newspapers. Neighbourhood and college newspapers tend to be members of "newswires". That membership will grant the publication permission to print stories which are posted on the wire. Whenever a story in your city newspaper is prepended by "REUTERS" or "CANADIAN PRESS" or whatever, is a story from the wire. The Associated Press isn't forming NewsRight to chase community papers, because (at least the legitmate or mainstream papers) are already paying customers, and have been for decades.
Paraphrasing. In both American and Canadian copyright law, facts cannot be copyrighted — only creative works conveying facts (i.e. the writing itself). So paraphrasing a story is "okay" it's considered weaksauce journalism, but not illegal. Keep in mind that proper paraphrasing isn't trivial; it involves telling the story your own way, not just changing a couple of words in the original and passing it off as your own. That's "plagarism" (read: copyright infringement) and definitely illegal.
It's worth remembering that there are cases where permissive licenses are attached to text, either implicitly or explicitly. Companies want newspapers to reprint portions of their press releases (although again, "weaksauce journalism"), and occasionally there's a piece of relevant writing licensed under the Creative Commons (though these tend to be opinion pieces and columnists, not news. It's a bit more common for photos.)
I'm happy to try and answer any more questions. (I was the editor-in-chief of a university newspaper.)
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
The original article on Poynter also conspicuously fails to mention the recent RightHaven debacle.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Why didn't they give the man a fair trail then? Whats wrong with the international court in the Hague, that the USA won't ever participate in it or send people there to be tried? The USA has an allergy when it comes to trialing people for war crimes. They have their own Guantanamo Bay for foreigners they don't assassinate right away or for "prisoners of war" that no country is involved in. They put their own citizens in jail for over a year without even starting a trial for suspicion of leaking secret information (Bradley Manning). They lure people into the USA so they can arrest them if they think that "friendly" nations they have treaties with may not extradite them. The USA has given not only their own citizens, but the entire world the idea that they don't abide to their own written constitution, or even to a general concept of justice.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Once they start enforcing payments out of channels that happen to be one of the main distribution channels of "free speech", because some companies think they aren't getting enough money, they aren't going to give themselves a better reputation at all. In general, if you're into the business of selling something, you won't get more money for it than people are willing to pay. If you're going to extort them into paying more, they'll either stop using your product, or fight you back hard. Both are not going to give you more money for the same amount of work, so that business model will make you lose your position fairly quickly after you failed to adjust. You may be able to get commercial news websites to pay up if they haven't already, but some hobbyist blogger that's not making money from redistributing your content, isn't going to have money to pay you. In the end, the whole concept of "copyright" is about getting a fair share of the profit someone makes out of your original work. If the profit is zero, the fair share can never be more than that.
Everyone with a smartphone is a reporter these days, so the economical value of "news" has declined due to the plethora of sources. The distribution channel is no longer a way to control the value either, so there is nothing left that makes "news" a sellers market anymore. It may be that reporters and agencies will get paid less -or even nothing- for their news contribution, but that's the way society works.
The news agencies will end up being on the same side as all the companies that made things that were replaced when society found a substitute more appealing. How many factories that made traditional light bulbs have been closed the last decade? How many coach building firms had to close shop because Ford and others decided to manufacture cars on an industrial scale? How many professional furniture makers do you know personally? We still use artificial lighting, transport with wheels to sit in and chairs to sit on. They have evolved over time and so does "news". People have gossiped since the start of time and they will always continue to do so. They just don't need news agencies to do it globally for them anymore.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
There may very well be Internet-only news papers (I don't know any though) that have their own newsroom and do their own writing as well, but this is about aggregators that automatically take content published on other sites and don't get their news directly from agencies like AP/Reuters.
This sounds like it would facilitate real Internet-only news organisations. That do some selection of the news, make it interesting for a certain demographic/locality and can publish complete articles on their own web site - including reprints of article from many other papers without having to ask time and again. Which actually could allow a boost to these web sites as they don't have to link out anymore, and can go about their business legally. Basically just like any traditional paper.
There likely is an ulterior motive in this: Some of the media sources (uh...is Murdoch still on AP's board of directors?) and politicians (uh...all of 'em?) don't like the fact that it is so easy to prove that they're either lying now or lied at some point in the past. I.e., they'd like to eliminate your ability to pull both versions of "the truth" up and show them to the deluded.
You think the Wayback Machine will get an exemption?
I don't...guess if I'm right, that will tell you something.
There is another angle that involves creeping capitalism, the ability to hire unlimited numbers of lawyers, and the outright ownership of the highest court in the land: Once this precedent is set, how long before Google et al have to pay a fee to show previews and even links to content?
And finally...me, I'm not thrilled about a central clearinghouse for news distribution; the possibilities for censorship are absolutely disgusting.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
1. Don't want your content out there without being paid for? Stop putting it out there. Until real journalist materialize, these "News Groups" (sic sic sic) content is propaganda, spin, and lies, happy to see all these fascist journalists disappear from the face of the earth, they are the ones keeping the people dumbed down and brainwashed anyway. Nobody needs their fascist rss feeds
2. Article doesn't NAME the 28 news groups (sic sic sic), I wanted to add them to my blacklists for all my Splogs now, instead of mucking around, waiting for a take down notices at the most inconvienent moment. Maybe time to not host in the USA ever again?
3.News Groups (sic sic sic) can't have it both ways, if you publish it to the web and make it available to the public, you can't then say you are going to charge for it afterward. A hidden path to the RSS feed is no excuse. If your port is open, and there's a path facing the web, it's available and free! Otherwise get off the web.
4. News Groups (NG's) are NNTP, e.g. alt.binaries.pictures.supermodels , not this new conflicting fascist name. (like NForce vs GeForce pretty soon I get an 3D animation looking for a video driver!)
5. When Civil war comes to the USA (and it will after the monetary system, and markets fail), it would be wise to remember these enablers who deceived the public over the years. These fascist journalist ought be remembered as the front line brainwashers who kept you in the dark until it was too late. Not much different from domestic terrorists definition when you consider they have used fear and intimidation to change our political view. You should have been pooping into their public files and complaining to the fcc all along. Alas the FCC itself is fascist, a POTUS appointee.
6. Oh well, enjoy your time left, Planet Earth is about to get thermo nuclear hot when this US/Israel/Iran/Russia/China thing finally goes hot.
I hope North Korea cab re-unite with South Korea, might be the only good thing that happened in the past two decades.
7. If News Groups (sic sic sic) want to get paid for everything, then they should not be funded by our government. Audit CAFR and expose this. Or be apathetic and do nothing. I guess things are about to get so bad it really doesn't matter.
8. I hope I live through this civil war and if I don't, I will try to take out the brownshirts who attacked me or my family first.
"You know one of the reasons the rest of the world thinks you suck?"
You know one of the reasons we don't take you seriously? Because you want us to take you seriously so badly that you come of sounding like a whiny 14 year old girl.
Good grief. Become a man.
Go to http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/APNewsFeeds and you'll find links to subscribe to their content through Google,Yahoo, and MSN.
One has to wonder who is in charge of places like this.
you might want to read some of Clay Shirky's work because, guess what, the old model is suddenly insufficient.
Best Slashdot Co
However, no attempt was made to capture al-Awlaki. Instead a concerted (successful) attempt was made to assassinate him, and in fact in such a way that capture was not ever possible. The act was against both U.S. and international law.
No, it is NOT "black and white". It's just plain black. It wasn't war, it was murder. According to the law.
And how is it against the law? The strike was done in Yemen, with Yemen's permission and approval. So no sovereignty was violated, no treaties broken. So what law(s) were broken? You'd have to come up with that before it can be called murder. And it is a black and white case. The US killed him under a war proclamation. You may disagree with that, but that's also black and white.
You attempt to justify this by stating that Yemen's sovereignty was not violated, but this is wholly irrelevant. The issue is not whether Yemen as a state was aggrieved -- the issue is that the US government is openly assassinating people without any recourse to due process protections guaranteed under the Constitution. And please read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights -- they actually aren't that long, and you'll find that they distinguish between citizens and people or persons, with most of the rights and protections applying broadly to this latter category (i.e., to everybody, regardless of citizenship).
Assuming that US law still counts for something, then how is it possibly anything other than murder to kill al-Awlaki (and two weeks later his 16-year-old son) without any attempt at applying due process? For example, what was he charged with? Who issued his arrest warrant? How was arrest attempted? Who was put in immediate danger of bodily harm, and how, to justify the application of deadly force during the attempted arrest?
But there were no charges, not proper formal legal charges. There was no arrest warrant issued. There was no arrest attempted. No one was in immediate danger of harm.
You also attempt to make the case that there was some sort of "war proclamation" that justifies this, which suggests that you're a bit confused about war legalities. War in any legal sense is declared by the US Congress, not "proclaimed". And, for that matter, there have only ever been five declared wars that the US has participated in throughout the whole course of US history. More here. The only two in the 20th century were WWI and WWII; none have yet been declared in the 21st century. (Think about that for a moment. For all the war the US wages, most of it isn't even legal by the US's own standards.)
Your argument fails, due to misinformation. Please, read the foundational documents of US law. You will learn much. Notably, you will find that the underlying legal framework of the US is designed to be as fair and impartial as possible, precisely in order to protect against the "we don't like you so we're going to kill you" kind of indiscriminate state behavior that the US government is increasingly fond of.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
"And how is it against the law?"
See my reply to the other person who asked this question.
"You attempt to justify this by stating that Yemen's sovereignty was not violated, but this is wholly irrelevant."
No, I did not. I didn't even bring the subject up. The only relevance of Yemen at all is that it was outside the war zone. I made no statement about its sovereignty at all, except to state in my other reply (exactly as you did here) that it is irrelevant.
"You also attempt to make the case that there was some sort of "war proclamation" that justifies this, which suggests that you're a bit confused about war legalities."
No, again I did not say this. Are you sure you are replying to the right person? I am well aware of Congress' responsibility to declare war. I think you must have the wrong person.
"Your argument fails, due to misinformation. Please, read the foundational documents of US law. You will learn much. "
I am a long-time student of U.S. political history, and I neither stated those things or disagree with you. I am pretty sure you replied to the wrong person.
"The US killed him under a war proclamation. You may disagree with that, but that's also black and white."
No, it did not. That is the only place I disagree with you here.
Awlaki was never shown to actually be an enemy combatant. See the article I linked to in my reply to that other person. The fact is that the U.S. had detained Awlaki previously but had to let him go for lack of evidence that he was actually involved in any terrorism.
The only thing we know him to be "guilty" of is speaking out against the United States. That is not a crime, or an act of war.
Your "proclamation of war", regardless of whether it is Constitutional (it is not) still doesn't cover assassination of people who are not enemy combatants.
I screwed up the markup -- the "and how is it against the law" paragraph in my previous post was instead from the post by Gr8Apes that I was replying to. Apologies for the confusion.
The next three quotes are actually what I wrote, but your reply makes me think that you think I was replying to you? Gr8Apes brought up Yemen and the war "proclamation" in his post, as I intended to quote in my reply. I fully agree that you (Jane Q. Public) said none of those things.
In the same mien, my exhortation to read the Constitution and Bill of Rights were directed at Gr8Apes. I've read your posts over the years with interest precisely because you come across as well-versed in US political history as you do.
... or maybe something is horribly wrong with Slashdot today? I hit the "Reply to This" link under Gr8Apes post, and my reply to that does appear just now as properly below Gr8Apes post -- does it show up differently for you?
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Somehow I missed noticing it in the preview, but the line you reply to here was actually from the post by Gr8Apes that I was replying to. I must have borked the markup, as the quote tags clearly didn't work the way I'd intended.
That aside, I fully agree with the points you make, and I was actually trying to make similar points in reply to Gr8Apes.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
soon i will only get the news the govt wants me to hear! i wont even have the ability to search out the anthrax mailer, or Americans being tortured, i wont be able to look for article about yellow cake in iraq or heroin in Afghanistan, only what the govt deems beneficial to me. searching takes too long and its too much effort. I'm glad someone can think for me, cause i have a hard time myself.