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."

Comments

RSS as Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:RSS as Fair Use

[nurb432]

And in a few weeks it wont matter. All they have to do is point a finger in your general direction and you are 'disappeared'. Then you have to pay lots of money to fight your way back online.

Re:RSS as Fair Use

[Amouth]

i think the aggregators should just be fair and delist these people.. you don't want them showing your content - fine.. rather than them learning how to use robots.txt just stop crawling them completely.. i'm sure that be great for their traffic streams.

Re:RSS as Fair Use

[Darkness404]

He was still a US citizen who was assassinated without any chance for a fair trial.

We are no longer free when the president can be judge, jury and executioner. Was al-Awlaki a bad person? Of course. Was Ted Bundy a bad person? Of course. The difference is Ted Bundy was lawfully tried (and then executed), there was no trial for al-Awlaki, instead he was assassinated without any chance for a defense and without any basic rights expected in a "free" nation.

Keep in mind that al-Awlaki wasn't killed by soldiers trying to apprehend him (as those behind the killing of Bin Laden says that the soldiers were trying to capture him alive when he attempted to shoot them) but instead was assassinated by a drone.

We now live in a world that simply by order of the president, any US citizen can be killed without trial and without evidence and without any defense. That, is a very disturbing reality.

Re:RSS as Fair Use

[brit74]

I have to admit that I'm not terribly concerned by al-Awlaki's assassination. Although I agree with Nursie - one of the things that struck me in all this talk is how US citizens are supposed to have certain rights to trial, while we're not concerned with other people in the world having that right. Kill an American citizen without a trial: That's terrible and we can't stop talking about it. Kill a citizen of another country: It doesn't even warrant comment or concern. It's obvious that if al-Awlaki had been Canadian or French or Egyptian or Pakistani, we wouldn't bat an eyelash. I just think it's a weird contradiction for people to get on their soapbox simply because he was American.

> "it is only dictators who kill their own citizens under the pretense of "war""
Somehow, I don't believe that. It's obvious that he was a soldier in a war against the United States. I'd bet money that Americans were also killed by Americans in World War 2 - afterall, there were some German-Americans who went and fought on the side of the Nazis to "defend the homeland".

Re:RSS as Fair Use

[Slur]

As a person born in America but by no means inured to its culture, I can assure you it pisses me off equally that we hold people at Guantanamo Bay with no legal recourse and no rights of habeas corpus. It especially concerns me because these actions are diametrically-opposed to the ideals upon which this republic was founded, namely to protect powerless individuals from the tyranny of the powerful by a rigorous application of due process. And whose interests are really being considered?

One interesting thing I want to point out is that al-Awlaki would not have been assassinated if he was residing here, or in France, or in Britain, or in any country where the US wouldn't be able to act with impunity. These actions are reserved for places whose lawlessness we find convenient.

Now that the genie is out of the bottle, it's going to be really hard to get it back inside.

Re:RSS as Fair Use

[Mitreya]

I have to admit that I'm not terribly concerned by al-Awlaki's assassination.

You should be.

Kill an American citizen without a trial: That's terrible and we can't stop talking about it. Kill a citizen of another country: It doesn't even warrant comment or concern.

You are drawing your own, unwarranted conclusions. Those of us that disagree are equally concerned about both events. The only difference is that they represent a disturbing progression. First, US drones targeted non-citizen (accused) "terrorists" and even used that as some sort of justifications (these are evil terrorists from another country!). Now, US drones can and do target citizen (accused) "terrorists". I can only assume that the rate of assassinations will increase, gradually moving on to people whom even you might be concerned about.

It's obvious that he was a soldier in a war against the United States.

Uhm... What war? Do you mean the "war on terror"? The one that hasn't really been declared, doesn't have any clear sides or battlefields? I have an idea -- why don't we start killing all those soldiers in the (drug) war against the United States. I mean, by your logic, all those drug users are "soldiers in the war against the United States". Some of the drug dealers even kill US citizens (I am pretty sure a lot more people die shot by drug dealers than from terrorists attacks). Also, maybe we want to start taking on all those soldiers in the "war on poverty".

Re:How a bout we try a little tenderness?

[Anrego]

The problem is that it's well within the content providers ability to block legitimate sites from aggregating their content (see: robots.txt). They don't want to do that. Instead they want the benifit, _and_ want those sites to pay them.

Re:RightHaven

[alexborges]

Well I think its time they collect. AP, NYT and news agencies have people on the ground and they pay them to provide info. We as a free society (not the US only, all of occident), need this kind of setup to get information. Even if its slanted, at least the payment is for info itself, not for the slant.

If we leave this market untouched, then all we are going to hear about, is whatever advertisers are willing to pay for.... think about it.

I think this is absolutely necessary

[JakartaDean]

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.

Re:RightHaven

[wagnerrp]

Why is it time they collect? I'd actually like to see some analysis that compared gained traffic from click-throughs, to lost traffic that only read the summary on the aggregator. Let the aggregators disconnect those participating news sites, and see who gets hurt more by the separation.

Shoot...I betcha is another motive...

[ibsteve2u]

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.

Re:RightHaven

[TrekkieGod]

Well I think its time they collect. AP, NYT and news agencies have people on the ground and they pay them to provide info. We as a free society (not the US only, all of occident), need this kind of setup to get information. Even if its slanted, at least the payment is for info itself, not for the slant.

If you want to pay to support these guys, then get a subscription. Aggregators are just providing summaries with links back to the their websites with the full story. I really want Google to just delist all these guys from news.google.com in response. "Well, we're not going to pay you guys, but if you feel that it's unfair for us to grab this content from you, that's fine, we'll stop." Then they can immediately watch their page hits fall by 40% at least.

If anything, the news websites should pay aggregators to please include them.