Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 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.
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.
It's covered by the RICO act (and other laws), and is known as extortion. It's basically summarized as, "I threaten to take legal action against you, if you don't pay me money."
They know perfectly well that Mr. Blogger, who may make hundreds a year, can't possibly defend himself against a single corporation who makes millions, or a group of corporations who make billions.
It's not even just the individual. They could take down Slashdot, as portions of the article are reused here. That *is* allowed by copyright law as fair use.
What these publishers are going to find out is, if they kill off the bloggers who are partially republishing their stories and providing links, the traffic to the original publication is going to drop. I won't say it would be huge. That all depends on the publication. How many people read the NY Times directly, and how many catch an interesting story on Slashdot and follow the link to the NY Times?
I strongly suspect that the average Mr. Blogger is not the target. They want the big fish with big money. Google News, Yahoo News, and other multi-million hit/day sites. I don't know, but I suspect, that they are already paying their tribute to the news corps for at least some of their feeds. This will severely impact mid-level news sites, who get tens of thousands of hits/day. They may make a few bucks at it from advertising, but that's a long way from being able to pay for feeds from AP, Reuters, UPI, etc. More often than not, the advertising revenue barely pays for their hosting.
As it's clear that they are litigious bastards, they will work their way down the ranks, until they're filing 100k "John Doe" lawsuits every week. It could very easily get to the point where if you posted more than a few words that could have been in another story, you owe or get shut down.
But, the litigious bastards will always win. Why? Because they have the money. They already own a decent portion of our political system, they can and will have laws changed in their favor. This has been proven time and time again. At very least, the litigious bastards can afford to keep it in court longer than you can.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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?
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.