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

RightHaven

[Frosty Piss]

I'm sure they will have worked out the bugs that RightHaven have, and continue down that same road..

Re:RightHaven

[wiedzmin]

First thing I thought of, when I saw "NewsRight". That, and Einstein's definition of insanity.

Re:RightHaven

[Jane Q. Public]

"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."

Uh... I hate to be the one to break this to you, but that has been the way TV has always worked -- and newspapers, too, for a couple of hundred years, at least.

So you think that suddenly this is an insufficient model for making a profit? Or what?

Agregators are not doing anything wrong, if all they are doing is giving a summary, and a link to the original source. It is EXTREMELY clear that this constitutes "fair use".

Here's how the first call will go down....

[LVSlushdat]

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!!!!

slashdot

[bs0d3]

does this include slashdot?

Re:First post

[devent]

Eh, not at all. The aggregators are using their right of fair use to aggregate news. They are not re-posting the original articles under their own name.

That is another example how cooperations are greedy and try to extend copyright at all costs. It depends on what NewsRight will actually do, because TFA doesn't know yet. But maybe then even Slashdot will be required to pay.

It's just beyond me, why the "... 28 co-investors, 30 additional companies taking part, and 800 news websites" are not coming together and start their own news aggregator web site. But than they have to produce something instead to resort to "lawsuits and threats of lawsuits".

Re:How a bout we try a little tenderness?

[migla]

I don't contribute to the NPR. Mainly because it's not my NPR.

I did use to get bills for SVT when I had a TV, though, and the public service broadcasters SVT (here in Sweden) or YLE (in finland), like the BBC (I'd imagine) are in a whole other dimension of journalism compaired to any of the commercial offerings, being politically and commercially independent.

I'm not saying your points of 1 or 2 are wrong, but that the solution to a copyright economy which is/{should be} dying is for people with the means to pay for it, as in from each according to their abilities etc., because we all want information and an informed public and not to be playing silly ownership games with bits, don't we?

"Nationalise" or more appropriately "globalise" the AP.

We (as in people in general) should pay a fraction of a cent or whatever for the AP journalists to keep doing their job, IMO.

I'm not going to try to force it, but I just think it would be a sensible thing to do. We all benefit from the AP and the likes, don't we?

Google+ Appears to Mitigate This

[Araes]

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.

Re:RSS as Fair Use

[ScrewMaster]

He was still a US citizen who...

We now live in a world that simply by order of the president, any US citizen...

You know one of the reasons the rest of the world thinks you suck?

Yeah, that's it right there, only US citizens have rights in your eyes.

How you derived that nonsense from what the GP said is beyond me. Besides, we're in the process of criticizing ourselves in this thread and we don't need irrational comments from the foreign peanut gallery.